The purpose of this website is to share my work for my final project in my SPCM 2360 class.
The assignment was to pick some topic we discussed in class from this semester and research what others had to say on the matter. For my project, the topic is "How Current Advertising Affects Adolescent Females". This focuses on how recent trends in advertising and television programing depict an unrealistic and unattainable image of a "thin-beauty". As a result, the young girls who consume these messages develop a lower self-concept of attractiveness and self-esteem for themselves.
The first part of the project is the creative portion. I decided to record a couple interviews with normal girls on how they react to these messages of inadequacy that are pushed into our faces not only every day; but ever since we were little. The following is an fun interactive presentation on my findings from my paper as well as my interviews.
To View the Presentation Below:
-DO NOT PRESS AUTOPLAY!!! If you do, it will skip over the videos I have edited together and you will not be able to see or hear the responses to the interview questions.
-Click the "More" link on the bottom right and select full-screen so you will be able to see all the graphics and texts.
-Then just hit the arrow button when you are done reading or watching one section, to move on to the next!! Simple as that!
(Going in to this project, I never realized how much work editing video really is, even just little pieces!! As well as creating simple graphics and designs for the layout. I now know that even the simplest design, can take a great deal of time and effort to create! Who knew that what I thought would be simple transitions could be so hard. Same for just trying to draw or create a fun background design. I hope you enjoy my presentation because I really did try to put my all into it so that it would be far from a boring question and answer session! And I apologize if my designs are not Picasso, but drawing on a computer is waaaay harder than with a pen and paper! At least after this project, I have a few new computer skills to list on my resume I never thought I would have!)
The second part of my site is dedicated to my research paper. The research I read and the studies I looked at were actually really fascinating! I strongly encourage you to read this because the authors that I summarized truly do have some interesting findings. Many will probably shock you as they did me. Enjoy!
How Current Advertising Affects Adolescent Females
Studies show that Americans are exposed to an average of three thousand advertisements per day. Such a phenomenon makes it impossible to go throughout one’s day and not be bombarded by ads implying one’s lack of possessions or a lack of personal or professional status. This barrage of advertising is even worse for adolescent girls. Middle and high school age females are already going through a precarious phase in life; being assailed by ads telling them they aren't skinny enough or pretty enough may have serious, detrimental effects. Ads like this can cause low self-esteem, which in turn can lead to physical harm of one’s own body. Consequently, many scholars have researched how these ads affect young women and to what extent. The following is an in depth look at the results and conclusions from such research.
The first article, by Philip N. Myers and Frank A. Biocca, is titled “The Elastic Body Image: The Effect of Television Advertising and Programming on Body Image Distortions in Young Women”. This study shows how a female's body image is “elastic” and can fluctuate according to exposure to media concentrated on the ideal body shape. The article focuses on how media tells women they need to be thin which causes women to overestimate their own weight. The authors point out that this is extremely true for women with eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia because their overestimation is significantly greater and therefore more severe.
Myers and Biocca's study evaluated food and exercise advertisements between media sources geared towards females and media sources geared toward males. Silverstein, a researcher cited by Myers and Biocca, made a shocking discovery when examining the total number of ads for diets in a variety of magazines. To do so, four women’s and four men’s magazine were used. The results were extremely one-sided; sixty-three ads were placed in the female magazines whereas only one ad was placed in the male magazines. In addition, another researcher referenced was L. Kaufman. This researcher studied the weight and proportions of contestants in the Miss America Pageants and models in the Playboy Magazine over the weight and proportions of the general public. He collected data from 1959-1978 and took the averages and compared their findings. His results showed that not only were the average weights from Miss America contestants and Playboy models significantly lower than those from the general public, over the almost twenty year span the average pageant and centerfold weight continued to drop while the average weight of the general public increased. To take that even further, his findings showed that after the 1970 year, the pageant winners all weighed significantly less than the other girls they competed against in the pageants.
Later in the study conducted by Myers and Biocca they examined eating habits displayed on various programs and commercials on television. Forty-eight percent of the 537 characters recorded were depicted as thin or average and teenagers were never seen as obese with the exception of seven percent to be “overweight”. Their findings revealed that ninety-five percent of the characters were in some sort of situation that had to do with food. And when these “thin” characters were eating, the majority of the time it was something unhealthy; they never gave any thought to what they were eating and they ate for any given reason and not just for sustenance. Kaufman, who studied prime-time nutrition, said “television presents viewers with two sets of conflicting messages. One suggests that we can eat in ways almost guaranteed to make us fat; the other suggests that we strive to remain slim”. The problem they found with this was that it gives the viewer the idea that one can eat anything one wants and still look thin.
Taking all the statistics of what is being impressed among viewers, Myers and Biocca looked into a study involving high school students. The study used about 1000 students in one grade and documented them from ninth grade to twelfth grade. They found fifty percent of the girls did not like their bodies when in actuality only about twenty-five percent could even be seen as overweight or obese. It also showed that as the girls become older, more and more became unhappy with their bodies. Their research led them to conclude that female's self-concepts became synonymous with their attitudes on their physical attractiveness. One of the formidable negatives that reflect the media's perception of the “ideal body” is that it drives a large segment of the female population to become obsessive. The authors describe eating disorders as a result of a “relentless pursuit of thinness”.
The second journal article is by Mary C. Martin and James W. Gentry titled “Stuck in the Model Trap: The Effects Beautiful Models in Ads on Female Pre-Adolescents and Adolescents”. The main theme of their article is that advertising has an unintended effect that leads young girls to compare their own physical attractiveness to highly attractive models. They use the social comparison theory as a basis for their study. According to Kendra Cherry, the social comparison theory is a “process through which people come to know themselves by evaluating their own attitudes, abilities, and beliefs in comparison with others.” Through this the authors say that the self-perceptions of attractiveness and self-esteem can be affected. They explain that girls become engrossed with trying to become beautiful by today's standards. They use a quote by Nancy J. Perry to try to explain the frame of mind many of these girls hold, “today's specifications call for blonde and thin– no easy task, since most girls get bigger during adolescence. Many become anorexics or bulimics; a few rich ones get liposuction. We make their focus pleasing other people and physical beauty.” The authors look into the “sense of inadequacy” some think advertisers give off that frame and influence young girls self-perceptions and/or their self-esteem.
Martin and Gentry point out that television commercials and magazines project a “body-as-object” idea for females while males view their bodies as a “process”. This idea of a girl's body leads her to pay more attention to and to nit-pick individual body parts instead of as a whole picture. They go on to show that a study done by Stice and Shaw in 1994 found that when young girls are exposed to super thin models; the pictures and advertisements “produced depression, stress, guilt, shame, insecurity, and body dissatisfaction in female college students”. The main point to their article is that while they acknowledge the research others have done, they believe the one big thing that many have left out is: motive.
The two authors break it down to three motives that can be singular or used in a combination of ways. They are self-evaluation, self-improvement, and self-enhancement. Martin and Gentry believe these motives may explain some of the inconsistencies in other research. To understand, they first define and explain each of the motives. First, self-evaluation is the judgment of value, worth, or appropriateness of one's abilities, opinions, and personal traits. To apply that, we agree advertising models are seen as the predominant “ideal beauty” to which girls place value. Then by comparing these models to themselves, young girls lower their self-perception and self-esteem. Second is self-improvement which is an individual's attempt to learn how to improve or to be inspired to improve a particular attribute. This motive can be either positive or negative depending on the context. For the sake of advertising, they find there tends to be a more positive effect. When young girls are exposed to an advertisement that could help improve some aspect of their body, many times girls can temporarily imagine themselves attaining that goal because the character in the advertisement has. Since this motive gives the viewer an inspiring feeling, studies show it is more likely to boost their physical attractiveness and feelings of self-esteem. Third is self-enhancement. It is defined as an individual's biased attempt to maintain positive views of him/herself to protect or enhance self-esteem. This self-enhancement motive has two sides as well. The authors explain that the majority of the time it is used for a downward comparison, like when one is comparing oneself to another who is inferior on the trait that is being compared. This allows one to feel better about one’s outward appearance. An upward comparison is when one person compares themselves with someone who is similar to the person comparing. The authors explain that upward comparisons by young girls with advertisement models are not likely because they find it hard to discover similarities or relate to the models. The one rare exception is when the viewer realizes the unrealistic nature of the model and avoids the comparison all together. So in relationship with advertisements, the authors say self-enhancement motive is either a downward comparison or an avoidance comparison.
Martin and Gentry's conclusion was that motives do indeed play a part in studying the changes of self-perception of physical attractiveness, body image, and self-esteem. They concluded that the self-evaluation motive definitely showed the lowest in self-perception and self-esteem. However both the self-improving and the self-enhancing by downward comparison motives showed that there is not always a negative effect. Self-perception and self-esteem were both raised in these two motives. This separates Martin and Gentry's study from majority of the other research done on the subject. Other studies looked like there were just random inconsistencies on whether self-perception and self-esteem were lowered or not. This study now gives an answer to why that is. Martin and Gentry took a broad view of the study and broke it down further into the distinction of motives which was the key to understanding these inconsistencies. However, they both agree the research should not end here. Not all the results of comparisons across each individual motive is consistent so they can one day be broken down even further.
The third article is a little different, it is focused mainly on young girls ages three to six. It is titled “Am I too Fat to be a Princess? Examining the Effects of Popular children's Media on Young Girls' Body Image” by Sharon Hayes and Stacey Tantleff-Dunn. According to one of their sources Abramovita & Birch, children as young as five are already concerned with their weight and dieting. As well as problem eating is becoming very common in nine year olds. Their hypothesis for this article is to examine the effects of popular animated children's characters as they relate to body image. Their study used preschoolers and elementary school students and exposed them to different forms of animated entertainment. So were shown clips that were appearance related like Disney princesses while the others were shown neutral animated clips. This was the first study to test animated characters on young girls and their body image. However, the results did not show any difference between the two control groups. After the experiment they decided to interview some of the young girls. It turns out that most were happy with their appearance and they also still believe that they could indeed become a princess one day. Hayes and Dunn do agree with my previous authors that attention still needs to be given to what is being portrayed in the media. The fact that this study shows it may not effect the preschool age right now is not a free pass, because that is not congruent with girls just a little bit older. Not to mention these preschoolers will be in their shoes in no time at all.
The last article is by Michael P. Levine and Sarah K. Muren called “Everybody Knows that Mass Media are/are not [pick one] a Cause of eating Disorders: A Critical Review of Evidence for a Causal Link Between Media. Negative Body Image, and Disordered Eating in Females”. This article is not simply studying what effects media has on young girls body image like the others; it states that everyone is agreeable that it can certainly cause negative body image which leads to serious eating disorders. It is critiquing other research that is looking into mass media as a “casual risk factor”. Levine and Muren describe seven criteria to see whether mass media is indeed a causal risk factor.
Their results show there are five principal gaps. The first three are concerned with predicting the influences of media, deciding which outlet of media gives off the most negative effects, and a need for prevention which includes teachings of media literacy so young girls can be prepared to deal with these images. The fourth gap takes into account other causal risk factors, like family and friends, of social norms. The final gap separates younger adolescents from the middle to older adolescents. They found the younger group to have more “concrete behavior” which accounts for the changes in body image with certain events or actions. For example, like starting to date or being teased by someone at school because of their weight. The middle and older group is more psychological, like having a completely different view when looking in the mirror to what the body actually looks like.
All the articles agree that advertisements do influence adolescent females. Although some are indeed a positive influence, many have serious and dangerous effects on the self-perception of physical attractiveness and the self-esteem young girls hold for themselves. Myers and Biocca point out the harmful inconsistency of eating whatever and whenever you want while remaining excessively thin. The danger of this notion is that majority of the young adolescents watching are not able to make the distinction that eating poorly will cause the opposite effect of the outcome they are being shown. The result is that young girls are left with poor self-perception and self-esteem because the images and actions they are emulating from advertisements and are not yielding the same results in their own lives. Martin and Gentry actually use Myers and Biocca's study as a building block for their own. They agree with what Myers and Biocca find in their study, but take it a step further to break down the different motives viewers use when viewing advertisements. Whether viewers use the self-evaluation, the self-improving, or the self-enhancing motive; the characters in advertisements play some sort of role in the formation and continuing adjustment to young girls’ self-perception and self-esteem. Hayes and Dunn take research in this field into the area of animation. They discovered that as long as the young girls still believed in their dreams of one day being a princess, many had the ability to still have a positive body image. However their research points out that there is no room for celebration because there is still the fact that there are many girls around the age five and six that are already worrying about their weight. Is there a way to stop it? Is there a way to teach kids to ignore it? There are many other studies, and all the articles agree, there is a need for much more to be learned and discovered on the subject.
Works Cited
Myers, Philip N., and Frank A. Biocca. "The Elastic Body Image: The Effect of Television Advertising and Programming on Body Image Distortions in Young Women." Journal of Communication 42.3 (1992): 108-33. Print.
Silverstein, B., Perdue, L., Peterson, B., & Kelly, E. (1986). The role of mass media in promoting a thin standard of bodily attractiveness for women. Sex Roles, 14(9/10), 519-532.
Kaufman, L. (1980). Prime-time nutrition. Journal of Communication, 30(3), 37-46
Martin, Mary C., and James W. Gentry. "Stuck in the Model Trap: The Effects Beautiful Models in Ads on Female Pre-Adolescents and Adolescents." The Journal of Advertising XXVI.2 (1997): 19-33. Print.
Perry, Nancy, J. (1992). “Why It's So Tough To Be A Girl,” Fortune (August 10), 82-84
Stice, Eric and Heather E. Shaw (1994), “Adverse Effects of the Media Portrayed Thin-Ideal on Women and Linkages to Bulimic Symptomatology,” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 13 (3), 288-308
Cherry, Kendra. "Social Comparison Process - What Is the Social Comparison Process." Psychology - Complete Guide to Psychology for Students, Educators & Enthusiasts. Web. 28 Apr. 2011. <http://psychology.about.com/od/sindex/g/Socialcomp.htm>.
Hayes, Sharon, and Stacey Tantleff-Dunn. "Am I Too Fat to Be a Princess? Examining the Effects of Popular Children's Media on Young Girls' Body Image." British Journal of Developmental Psychology 28 (2010): 413-26. Print.
Abramovita, B. A., & Birch, I.. I.. (2000). Five-year-old girls' ideas about dieting are predicted by mother's dieting. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 100(10), 1157-1163
Michael, Levine P., and Sarah K. Muren. "Everybody Knows That Mass Media Are/are Not [pick One] a Cause of Eating Disorders: A Critical Review of Evidence for a Causal Link Between Media. Negative Body Image, and Disordered Eating in Females." Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 28.1 (2009): 9-42. Print.