AIS-R A5bar
AIS-R Newspaper
The “Perfect” Image.
By: Sara Fathala.
Edited by: Abbi Jeffers.
During this time, many girls, the majority of AIS-R students included, are heavily influenced and affected by the portrayal of beauty and the ideal body image in the media. Many girls might look up to Ariana Grande or Miley Cyrus and many of them might also grow upset with their image because they do not reflect that so called expectation of beauty.
Eman Fathala, a tenth grade student at AIS-R, says: “Boys included, might also grow distressed because they don't share the same physique of their favorite soccer player, for example.”
With the high media and celebrity influence at AIS-R, a survey was conducted to see if celebrities really did have an influence on how students at AIS-R thought of their body shape. According to the AIS-R survey taken by the majority of eighth grade students, only 26 of 69 girls agree/strongly agree that they were satisfied with their body image.The other 43 girls however disagreed, claiming that they weren’t pleased with their body image, adding up to about 63 percent of girls unsatisfied with their body figure.
Heba Fathala, a ninth grade student at AIS-R, says: “The media targets females as the main essential image of beauty. Due to the unrealistic beauty expectations women will do everything in there power to reach the expectation. That soon causes eating disorders and self-esteem problems.”
As stated by PsychCentral, women historically have been looking up to famous icons such as Marilyn Monroe. Who was not a size two nor did she fit into the mainstream picture of an ideal woman, but then again even as early as the 1800’s women were forcing themselves into corsets and other painful and health impairing practices to reach the ideal body.
To gain perspective from the opposite gender, Omar Al-Khadra, an eighth grade student at AIS-R was kind enough to voice his opinion on the matter stating, “Yeah, I think girls are more pressured by the media than boys.”
Mrs. Gardner, a middle school health and fitness teacher said, “First, let me say that if we were to stereotype and generalize about the entire world, YES, it does seem like teen girls struggle more with diet/weight choices than males.”
From the same AIS-R survey, 28 out of 49 boys agreed that they’re satisfied with their body image. The 21 other boys, however stated they aren’t satisfied with their body image, resulting in about 42.9 percent of the boys unsatisfied with their body image. Results from the survey also reported that an average amount of boys fear reaching the state of obesity. Statistics like these might surprise many people, despite much research that presents that boys also have issues with their body image, most of it leaning on the ideology that they must have a certain body to be branded as attractive, similarly to girls.
After receiving these results, AIS-R decided to give the same survey to the sixth and seventh graders. According to sixth and seventh grade girls, 59 out of 92 agree that they need to lose weight, the rest of the 33 girls disagree and don't feel like they need to lose weight.
Based off of The Glamour magazine, females on a daily basis have 13 negative body thoughts daily. Females with an incredibly strong dissatisfaction with their body tend to act and not think first. For example, they tend on cutting down or even skipping their daily meals in attempt to their shape and gain no more weight, in fear they’ll be ridiculed.
Farah Al-Takrouri, an eighth grader, suggested a solution, contributing that : “If they are unsatisfied, and they really want to lose/gain weight, they should actually set goals for themselves and do it. If they aren't really in the mood for seriously changing their body shape, they should just convince themselves that their shape is okay.”
Ziyad Al-Zaim, a eighth grade student who used to suffer from an unhealthy eating habit was kind enough to share with me the pain he endured: “Of course. Yes, I was unsatisfied with my body because I was fat and people would call me cows and because of that, I was motivated to lose weight.[sic]”
Later on in the interview, the interviewee was asked if the media pressured him in any way, to which he responded: “Maybe a little bit, I wanted to look like them more, I wanted that sexy body, not really by the way, I wanted to look good for myself,” proving that the media, even if it’s not the main reason, does affect body image one way or another.
According to the No Bullying website, our own body image determines how confident we feel within our own skin. Having a negative body image can lower one’s self-esteem and cause that person to have a poor or distorted look on life.
Personally, I have never been influenced by the media to the point that I have tried to change my body in order to fit into society. I think that females are being pressured to do this because of social circles in and out of schools and workplaces.
Mrs. Gardner’s words of wisdom on the topic are, “Truly, I hope that girls are not pressured to look a certain way - and that their parents, teachers and peers do whatever they can to accept ‘them’ the way they are.”
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