Beauty and Body Standards: The Media’s Detrimental Effects on Teenage Girls

Image Courtesy: Brig Newspaper

30% of 13-year-old girls in America view their bodies negatively and wish for them to look more similar to the body types they see in mainstream media. At the age of 17, this number jumps to 80%. 

As advertising has developed into nearly continuous exposure through social media platforms, young girls are witnessing the idealization of body types and beauty standards that are unrealistic and unattainable. Since teenage girls are constantly surrounded by the images and lives of strangers, as well as ads promoting the latest trends, these ideals become internalized and have detrimental effects on their perceptions of themselves. 

While advertisements are fabricated and designed to glorify products, the effects are materialized through real and constant pressure that young girls feel to meet these standards of what is considered beautiful and desirable by mainstream culture. Immense harm results from many of their attempts to “fix” aspects of themselves that they feel do not match these standards, which can manifest into unhealthy habits and damaged self-image. 

Traditional Media

Historically, when creating magazines and print advertisements, advertisers tried to appeal to women’s insecurities in order to entice them to buy a product that would “fix them” and allow them to look and feel like the models in the advertisements. There is a culture and a social system that is created through the heightening of insecurities and the use of one specific body type to sell products. The advertising industry does not merely conform to these standards but creates them by defining femininity and beauty. 

These harmful practices develop even further since the majority of advertisements sexualize women or use certain parts of their bodies to express the desirability of the product, which turns women into an object used for profitability. This perpetuates the ideas on who women should be, and how they should act and look. For young girls who can be extremely impressionable, this affects how they see themselves and their place in society. Growing up in a digital age, they are even more susceptible to viewing and internalizing these messages. 

Social Media Platforms

Social media influencers are another source of extending and maintaining these ideals, and because young girls have unlimited access to these forms of media, there is constant pressure pushed onto them. Studies show that teenagers spend an average of 52 minutes on TikTok and 30.1 minutes on Instagram daily. 

Because young girls are viewing pictures of influencers alongside pictures of their friends, these influencers begin to feel more like real people and less like idealized individuals on a screen. It can be difficult for girls to separate themselves from these ideas since the influencer content is being viewed in a space that seems to be more authentic. But, influencers constantly use Photoshop, different poses, and filters to express themselves in a way that fits society’s beauty standards to avoid negative backlash they may receive for their appearance. While there is this heavy degree of fabrication, viewers cannot easily separate the real from the fake. 

Influencers also endorse certain ways of living by posting videos on platforms such as TikTok that show what they eat in a day or their workout routine. Many times they showcase unhealthy habits or do not fully show the extent of what they do and eat. These videos create a false idea that this is the way teenage girls have to live to achieve the standards of beauty. 

What Can We Do?

While the standards of beauty are ingrained in society, there are considerable steps being taken by brands and individuals as the knowledge of these detrimental effects continues to grow. Some brands are developing their mission or campaigns to create a space to celebrate the uniqueness and beauty of all individuals through more representation of different body types. While this is on the right track for diminishing these harmful effects, there are still many influencers perpetuating these ideas and there is a level of internalization that cannot be easily reversed. 

Young girls need to see people that look like them in all forms of media and be taught the difference between what is real and what is fabricated, so they both understand that these standards are unattainable by everyone, as well as that they present a narrow-minded idea of what is beautiful. Influencers and brands need to speak up and use their platforms to express the harmful effects of these ideas and celebrate all body types and people. Overall, there must be more emphasis on celebrating all types of beauty in the media.

Ella Sanderson