Throughout different cultures and time periods, women were considered to be attractive and pretty for different reasons. For example, in the Renaissance period, heavier-set women were considered beautiful because it meant they were healthy, and most likely wealthy, because they had ample access to food. Today, in the United States and in many countries all over the world, the exact opposite mindset has set in. Today, being beautiful means a person must be thin, (sometimes extremely thin) and fit and "perfect." In addition, in today's world, being beautiful is now a goal unto itself.  Many girls and women in today's American society strive to look great and to be beautiful, and those physical goals are the sole focus of their every day life day after day. There are various factors that have contributed to society's change of attitude, but according to research, the most prominent contributor to this way of thinking comes from mass and social media. With the growing popularity of technology over the past few decades, the media has brainwashed young women into striving to be unrealistically thin, a goal that has caused many women to suffer from body dissatisfaction, depression and eating disorders. Women were not always this focused on their body image and attractiveness. Through out the 20th century, many women feminists were preoccupied with successfully getting the right to vote, with achieving equal pay with men, and with the fight to question and challenge traditional gender roles. In this regard, before World War I and World War II, the traditional woman's role was to be a loving, subservient housewife. Women took care of the house and the children and men went off to work to earn a living. Men were the head of the household and in charge of all important decisions. But as more women joined the work force during the two wars, women began to see themselves differently, and women and some men realized that women were capable of handling themselves in the workforce, and in arenas other than the home.  Traditional gender roles that defined women as just a pretty face slowly evolved. However, with the use of social media becoming ever more popular in the early 2000's, once again women are being portrayed solely as thin and perfect objects whose worth is determined by how much they weigh and how good they look.  In magazines, commercials, and TV, the girl who is popular, successful, and usually paired with an attractive man, is always skinny and beautiful. This message teaches young girls that in order to be successful in their life, they too must be thin and beautiful. This mind set not only sets women back in history, but also is very emotionally damaging to a young female audience. 

There are various studies that prove that the psychological damage caused to girls is not only limited to girls in the United States, but the damage is hurting girls all over the world. In "Presenting Thin Media Models Affects Women's Choice of Diet or Normal Snacks," Barbara Krahe and Christina Krause studied German women that were exposed to thin and normal-sized media models, and then monitored their eating behaviors. In this study, fifty undergraduate female students at a college in Germany were selected and randomly assigned to one of two conditions, beauty advertisements with thin women and beauty advertisements with normal sized women. After the participants were exposed to these advertisements, they were given a break and offered a variety of snacks, each of which came in diet or non-diet version. Significantly more women exposed to the thin-model advertisements picked diet snacks than women exposed to the normal-model advertisement (Krahe and Krause 351). Krahe and Krause also describe a detrimental amount of self-objectification among the women. Most of the time, when we experience or hear about women being referred to as an "object" with little to no worth or value, it's the men of a society that are doing the "objectifying." In this case, the college women were actually doing the objectifying themselves. They thought of themselves simply as "objects" when they did not meet the normative standards of beauty in their society. Not meeting the impossible standards of models and actresses can lead to psychological problems like appearance anxiety and body shame (Krahe and Krause 349). This experiment is a good example of how simply being exposed to one advertisement can affect the way women pick what they are going to eat next, and by extension, how they will feel about themselves.  For many of the women, this small clip showing thin and attractive models caused them immediately to be dissatisfied with themselves and to have lower self-esteem.  Instead of these bright German university students focusing on their studies, and using their smarts to change the world for the better, this one advertisement caused them to remain focused on their external looks and not their internal self-worth.  It's no surprise that since women are constantly bombarded with millions of similar commercials and advertisements, all day every day, that our collective self worth and feelings of intrinsic value have been affected negatively. 

Another study that proves that constant exposure to perfect models and the thin-ideal in media is damaging to women is "Can The Media Affect Us? Social Comparison, Self-Discrepancy, And The Thin Ideal." In this experiment, Gayle R. Bessenoff recruited one hundred twelve female undergraduates and after an examination, separated them into two groups, high self-discrepant and low self-discrepant. In this article, self-discrepancy is described as a way in which a person feels like she falls short of significant beauty standards.  According to Bessenoff, self-discrepancy is a contributor to social comparison and the negative effects that come with it. The subjects were exposed to two different kinds of advertisements, clothing advertisements with thin women and product advertisements without thin women. Following this, Bassenoff measured the levels of self-esteem, body dissatisfaction, bulimic tendencies, and the drive for thinness of the participants. Bessenoff found that the exposure to the thin-ideal advertisements lowered self-esteem and increased levels of body dissatisfaction and depression. He also found that the women with higher levels of self-discrepancy were more prone to social comparison to the thin women, ultimately leading to negative consequences (Bessenoff 241). According to Bessenoff, when women compare themselves to others, especially thin women presented in media, they begin to suffer from low self-esteem, weight concerns, and even eating disorders. This is an issue because since media is a tool used in communication, school, work, and every day activities, it becomes an unavoidable part of most young girls lives and ultimately subjects many of them to feel these negative effects. 

Again and again we see that striving for the "thin ideal" can be psychologically damaging, and studies show that the primary cause of this is mass media's effect on women. However, in the study, "Judging The Difference Between Attractiveness and Health: Does Exposure to Model Images Influence the Judgments Made By Men And Women?" Ian D. Stephen and Treshi-Marie Perera demonstrate how the media can not only effect women's perceptions of themselves, but also men's perceptions of women, which is yet another external factor that can strongly influence women and their body image. Most men portrayed in mass media are either muscular or have a normal body weight.  Both men and women accept these portrayals. On the other hand, most of the images of women in the media are women who are underweight, not normal weight. These underweight images are also accepted and preferred by most men and other women. This study focuses on how men and women are attracted to one another based on weight, soon after they are exposed to images of models. Research has shown that facial adiposity (or the perception of weight in the face) serves as a good proxy for both attractiveness and health. Body mass index and waist to hip ratio are also important factors in determining a woman's attractiveness. A group of Chinese men and women, ranging in weight, participated in this study and were asked to wear tight-fitting clothing. Then, photographers took their pictures. Both men and women were asked to look at pictures of models and pictures of the Chinese participants. Both the men and the women indicated that the models with the lower body mass index were more attractive, than healthy appearance of the Chinese participants (Stephen and Perera 3). This experiment shows that after being exposed to thin models in media, men and women both had weight expectations of women that were unrealistic. Assuming most people want to be seen as attractive in the eyes of others and especially the opposite sex, the opinions of men and the expectations they have of women play a large role in a woman's self evaluation. Although this may not be true for all men, as each person has their own preference, this study proves that a sizable group of men do take a woman's weight into account when considering their attractiveness. Women are definitely aware of this, which only contributes to the harsh way in which they judge themselves. 

Not only does mass media have a large impact on young women and adolescents, but social media does as well.  In "Social Media Effects on Young Women's Body Image Concerns: Theoretical Perspectives and an Agenda for Research," Richard Perloff discusses how certain aspects of social media such as a strong peer presence, the exchange of many types of pictures, and social comparisons among one another have detrimental effects on body image among young women. Body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, and thin body ideals are the primary negative effects.  Perloff points out that whereas the majority of the research on media and body dissatisfaction focuses on mass media such as magazines, TV and advertisements, the majority of young people use the Internet and social media as their primary source of media. According to Perloff, social media is more responsible for the body image issues among young girls because of its interactive element. The interactivity and personal element that comes with social media makes it much easier to become attached to society's ideal version of thinness and beauty.  (Perloff 364). Social media is also a problem because it is being used by increasingly younger generations each year. As someone who open a Facebook account in the sixth grade, I experienced social comparison first hand. Since I was eleven years old, girls posted pictures of themselves constantly, always trying to show how pretty they were and how much fun they were having. Not only did people post pictures, but also everyone was involved in commenting their opinions on each other's pictures. Young girls and boys have the tendency to be extremely honest and even mean when it comes to criticizing and commenting on others. The harsh climate of a young social media atmosphere, made that way by young boys and girls themselves, can be damaging to a young girl's self esteem and self-worth. My first hand experience of living among a judgmental group of adolescents shows how a damaged self perception can start at a very young age.

The emotional equation of girls has been reduced to their external looks and how they compare to others.  Of course, a contributing factor in all of this influence is the number of times social media comparisons happen on a daily basis. We saw from other mass media studies that the self-esteem and self-worth of a girl or woman can be adversely affected with just one viewing of a commercial or ad. Social media has such an exaggerated effect on girls and women because the comparison of photos and posts happens constantly day in and day out. We are saturated and there is no escaping it, unless you remove yourself from social media entirely. 

Although most people are aware of the negative effects media can have on women, it is shocking to discover that these feelings of body dissatisfaction occur in girls who haven't even made it to middle school. Evidence shows that girls as young as nine years old have reported that they felt too fat and were dissatisfied with their body shape. Obviously, these are feelings that can lead to depression and to negative self perception. In "Body Dissatisfaction: Can A Short Media Literacy Message Reduce Negative Media Exposure Effects Amongst Adolescent Girls?" Emma Halliwell, Alice Easun, and Diana Harcourt designed an experiment in which they tested whether or not watching a video revealing the artificial nature of media images prevents girls from feeling body dissatisfaction when exposed to media with the thin-ideal. A sample of one hundred twenty-seven girls between ten and thirteen years old participated in the study.  One group of girls saw Dove's "Evolution" video, which reveals the Photoshop editing process of a beautiful model. The video clearly reveals the before and after pictures, and makes the point that not even naturally beautiful models look like they do in photographs. Even they need a lot of help from Photoshop before they are media ready.  Later, the girls saw magazine advertisements with two young girls in bikinis and high heels.  The girls who didn't see the Dove video expressed lowered levels body satisfaction and self esteem, whereas the girls who did see the video had none of those negative responses (Halliwell, Easun and Harcourt 397). These results demonstrate that simply being exposed to one photo can have a huge effect on a young girl. Time and time again we understand that teaching young, impressionable girls that their primary goal in life is to look thin and beautiful can be dangerous because it can lead to depression, low self-esteem, and eating disorders. If videos  like Dove's "Evolution" were more commonly and widely produced and distributed, young women would definitely suffer from less body dissatisfaction which might allow them to focus on more important things in life. 

In the past few decades, with the influence of mass and social media, women have been led to believe that what they weigh and how they look determines their worth. There have been numerous studies that prove that this is a serious problem in countries all over the world, affecting young girls and adult women. Although there are more plus sized models today than there were ten years ago, the unattainable beauty ideals that are the standard in movies, television, advertisements, and photographs are still very prominent.  The effect that the media has on men and women can create severely unrealistic expectations, which in turn, can cause women to objectify themselves. Overall, mass and social media is harmful to the body image of women and helps confirm stereotypical gender roles that we thought we had left behind. 

