Body Image Effects of Media on Adolescent Girls

Media images are known to bring social and cultural change in our society. To create consumerism, post globalization has shaped a very unhealthy society for women. Our society encourages women to be slim and trim more than fit and strong; thinness is emphasized more over health. Media images make women feel dissatisfied and discontent with their bodies. If a woman will feel dissatisfied with her body, only then will she strive hard to get a perfect body as women are primary consumers of beauty, fashion, jewellery, clothing, food industry, and health and fitness industry. So in order to increase consumerism, media sets an unrealistic standard of “ideal body” for a woman which is a hard target to achieve. Hence, adolescent girls aspire to have bodies like that of clinically malnourished celebrities and end up developing a poor body image themselves. There has been constant emphasis of Body Image Effects of Media on Adolescent Girls in various body image literatures, yet not much research has been done on it in India and none in Gujarat. Hence, this research study investigates the impact of media in body image dissatisfaction among teenage and young adult girls in Vadodara District.