The Media Keeps Us Hung Up On Body Image By Shari Graydon
1183 Words5 Pages
Nowadays, many people in Western society are concerned about their body image since the media attracts people’s mind. In fact, in daily life, people can see the advertisement for the fashion industry everywhere, and they start comparing their body with the ideal body image. In this way, the author of “ How The Media Keeps Us Hung Up on Body Image”, Shari Graydon argues that the media is only to blame for having negative body image in each one’s mind. However, Graydon’s argument is not persuasive to readers because her example evidence is limited in the scope of its target, and her research data does not explicitly support her points. To improve her weak points, she needs to use a larger variety of sources. In her article, Graydon…show more content… As mentioned above, she points out that nowadays, because of the influences of the media, many young women are addicted to dieting, and some of them have died as a side-effect of taking pills and being underweight. To support her points, she uses examples of models to show the relationship between dieting and death. For instance, Luisel Ramos died because of heart failure, and Ana Caroline Restone died because of anorexia (18). However, these people are models, and one of their jobs is keeping their body shape skinny and beautiful. Therefore, their lifestyle is different from how normal people spend their life. In addition to the lifestyle difference, Graydon does not seem to consider other factors like cultural and social factors, which also have an active power for developing negative body image. During childhood, these other factors lead people to develop negative body image rather than the influences of the media. This idea is supported by Roberta Honigman and David J Castle, who are the authors of “The Looks Heritage”. According to their research, “ it seems that other factors also affect the likelihood of our developing a negative body image, and include factors that are genetic; some due to early environmental issues, and some due to ongoing family and social factors” (7). In fact, the physical appearance of…show more content… To prove her point, she provides the Canadian Medical Association Journal research examples to support her argument in her article. This research evidence reports that “ one in three preadolescent girls is trying to lose weight and one in 10 shows symptoms of an eating disorder” (19). This report illustrates that dieting is very popular among girls, and it leads to suffering and disease, but it does not point out the relationship between media and negative body image. In fact, Marika Tiggemann, in her article “ Media Influences on Body Image Development”, observes that even though there are many types of research, supporting the influences of the media on body image, the effect seems to depend on the person (94). In fact, while the media encourages some women to exercise, other women do not do anything. For this reason, it cannot be determined that the media has a tremendous impact on developing negative body image to everyone. Due to the lack of supporting evidence, Graydon’s argument, which is that the media control people to develop negative body image, is