As a relatively young girl, scanning through the channels on television today will likely bring upon endless feelings of dissatisfaction. A commercial for Victoria's Secret featuring Alessandra Ambrosio and Doutzen Kroes will undoubtedly make you reconsider your own perceptions of your body to really take a hard glance at what is wrong with you and what you should be working to change. The thin ideal is defined as "the concept of the idyllically slim female body," however, we are investigating this common mentality in terms of how media plays a role in affecting the mindsets of both men and women rather than just in a general sense. .
In a study completed by Aubrey (2006), there were findings that exposure to sexually objectifying television eventually led to increased trait sexual objectification for women and men and also an increase in body surveillance for men. Society normally views men as not being nearly as concerned with their appearances as women are, but there are obviously means by which they are affected through different sorts of media. For instance, an overweight character on a television show is more than likely seen as humorous based solely on their appearance. With so much of this body objectification concurrently so present in our society, it's understandable why so many individuals are plagued with body discontent.
Growing up, I had the mentality that I could always be thinner. Being thin was almost seen as a challenge of sorts. It always seemed as though there was a sense of disgust associated with being overweight and that was exactly the response I was hoping to avoid. "Body dissatisfaction in women is focused on weight. Increasingly slender images in the media contrast with the rising prevalence of overweight (Sypeck et al., 2006). This discrepancy contributes to body dissatisfaction as women compare themselves to the ideal" (Ahern et al.
