Abby Hager
British Literature and composition
Ms. Tibbetts
13 November 2018
Body Image
“Body Image and Mental Health.” Womenshealth.gov, 17 May 2018, www.womenshealth.gov/mental-health/body-image-and-mental-health.
This very short article just explains how women all over the USA have body image issues that lead to other things such as eating disorders. The thing that made this source useful to my topic wasn't the article itself but the website that has all the information you need to better your body image as well as your mental health.
“Body Image and Self-Esteem.” Edited by D'Arcy Lyness, KidsHealth, The Nemours Foundation, Aug. 2018, kidshealth.org/en/teens/body-image.html.
This article goes through the thought process we go through when thinking about yourself and our body image. Then it goes through how to better the way we look at yourself as well as how to create a healthy mind mentally. The author also goes through and explains how we might find some things we like about ourselves even if it's difficult. Overall this article is useful while researching how to change your mindsets and overall how to improve your body image.
Braun, Aviva. “5 Ways to Prevent Body Image Issues.” Parents, Parents, www.parents.com/kids/eating-disorders/prevent-body-image-issues/.
This article is titled five ways to prevent body image issues, and it gives us five different ways to improve how we perceive ourselves. It tells us ways we can prevent developing eating disorders and where eating disorders come from. Although this article is biased to mothers and explains what mothers need to do to prevent this in their daughter and when they need to start displaying healthy habits, this article is still very useful towards my topic. The author thoroughly answers my questions about where the problems come from and how early they start.
Ehmke, Rachel. “Social Media and Self-Esteem | Impact of Social Media on Youth.” Child Mind Institute, Child Mind Institute, 23 Oct. 2018, childmind.org/article/social-media-and-self-doubt.
This article is saying that a lot of where self-esteem and body image issues come from is the pressure of social media. Even for longtime magazines and advertisements have shown unrealistic standards of perfection. Models are photoshopped and enhanced to be perfect.
Now not only is the pressure coming from models and celebrities, but it is also coming from classmates and friends. The biggest issue with teenagers is their constant need for validation from peers and others and the constant need for perfection. Seeing others on social media is hard enough but when its people you know it makes the comparison between how you look vs how your peers look even greater. This article is very useful when I am talking about the effects social media has on people's self-esteem and body image and on the unrealistic expectations models and fitness people presume. The questions I am left with is, if everyone knows essentially what you see isn't what you get, meaning that if everyone knows pictures on Instagram and pictures in magazines are enhanced, photoshopped, touched up, and taken from the perfect angle in perfect lighting, why do we still compare ourselves to something that is made to be “perfect”?
“Family Life.” FamilyEducation, www.familyeducation.com/family-life/body-image.
This article is five ways to increase your body positivity, this article gives you five different ways to change the way you perceive yourself. It gives us ways to change our ideas, such as losing weight, the point this source addresses that stood out the most to me was “If you want to lose weight do it in a healthy way” and gives us tips on how to do that. Some other helpful advice the author gives us is to never give up, and surround ourselves with positivity. This article is not very fact-based however it is still very helpful to us when we need to know how to increase how we perceive ourselves. It also does a very good job in answering mine as well as every young woman's questions about how we increase positivity towards ourselves.
“Home.” ….Effects on Physical and Mental Health, www.mirror-mirror.org/body-image-of-women.htm.
This article titled “Body image of women” explains just that, it explains how negative body image is “the hot topic” today in society, almost like it's the trend. The author also talks about the controversial idea of how a woman's body should look based on how social media perceives women to look. Another topic the author addresses is the concept of “thin-ideal media” explaining that this concept refers to the media portraying thin females in social media or thin beautiful women as the lead roll in movies. This article is very helpful because it explains that concept that many including myself didn't realize is a thing. This article is overall very fact-based and very useful while researching my particular topic.
Posted under Health Guides. Updated 18 August 2016. +Related Content. “Self-Esteem and Body Image.” Center for Young Womens Health, 18 Aug. 2016, youngwomenshealth.org/2012/05/30/self-esteem/.
This article explains the difference between body image and self-esteem. It describes body image as “our thoughts and feelings about the way your body looks.” body image can be healthy or unhealthy. A poor body image is created due to negative thoughts and feelings towards your appearance whereas a healthy body image is a complete opposite. A healthy body image is created when you think positively about your appearance you have a better body image. The article also says that poor body image is directly related to self-esteem. This article defines self-esteem as how you view yourself. Self-esteem, whether it be good or bad self-esteem is going to be based on not only how you view yourself but also how you think others view you. The source goes pretty in depth talking about the relationship between body image and self-esteem and the creation of each due to positive, or negative thoughts. This article overall is very useful, it explains how to improve body image as well as self-esteem, and this article is very objective and gives us a lot of useful information throughout this article. This article answered the questions I had of “what ways can improve our thoughts about ourselves?” and this article does a very good job of pretty thoroughly answering that question.
Largent, Tammie Rachell. “Thrive Global.” Thrive Global, Thrive Global, www.thriveglobal.com/stories/media-impact-on-young-girls-body-image/.
This article is explaining the effects that media has on young women. The thing in this article that stood out the most to me is the image they put in this article of a young girl, maybe just three years old looking down at the scale, and its titled “don't let her think this way” and to go along with that the author talks about the “thin-ideal” social media and magazines show. It states that there is a direct correlation between media, and social media and the way we view ourselves. This article also explains that young women tend to listen to what their peers have to say and view that as a more credible source, versus the adults in their lives. This article is very objective and gives a lot of facts based on how to encourage positive thoughts among young women.
“The Relationship Between Body Image and Self-Esteem.” NeuroImage, Academic Press, 8 Oct. 2015, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924933815320290.
This article is directly related to self-concept and relates body image and how it is connected to self-esteem issues. People who have low self-esteem often have low self-esteem due to the perspective of themselves and how they look. The article states “Major differences between the perceived and ideal body images predicted a lower level of self-esteem” meaning that how you perceive yourself isn't the ideal way that you want yourself to look, therefore creating lower self-esteem issues within yourself. This article objectively explains the relation of how we perceive ourselves and how high or low our self-esteem is. However, I wish they could have gone more in detail of the relation between the two because although it gave us useful facts it wasn't very long and I feel that it could have gone more into depth and given us a few more useful facts.
“Tips To Encourage A Positive Body Image In Young Girls.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/once-upon-child/201509/tips-encourage-positive-body-image-in-young-girls?amp.
This article is explaining where body image comes from, this article is very useful to me because one of the major questions I have based on this topic is “Where does negative body image come from?” because as most of us know and how this article explains body image whether it being negative or positive is learned, no one is born feeling a certain way about themselves. So my question is if we aren't born with it where does it come from and is it avoidable. This article is very fact and statistical based, giving us facts about preschool girls and how the way they feel about themselves are different from how second grade girls feel about themselves so what happened in those four years that went from young girls who love themselves and how they look versus other young girls four years later that already at such a young age already hate how the look appear to everyone around them.