Monday, September 17, 2012

Media's effect on teens

Today I was thinking about teenage girls and the way they worry about their appearance, what they think makes them beautiful and how they define what beauty is. I realized that the media not only effects the way they think but also shapes the adolescents.


The media does not only share information but it also shapes society and changes the way the society thinks .When adolescents see people in their age category in the media they notice that the most attractive, popular teens are mostly the ones with a skinny body type, perfect face, teeth and smile. While the unpopular, weird ones are usually the ones who have a little more weight and imperfections. Of course the adolescents are going to want to be the one every one loves. When they compare themselves to the teens in the media they feel as if they are not as perfect as what the media show. Some teens are going to want to change to be similar to what the perfect teens in the media appear to be.

 Make-up is one of the first thing girls use to make their appearance more like what the media shows, because it the easiest thing to get your hands on and work with. Every girl in the media in the adolescent age group has some sort of make-up from nail polish, lip gloss to mascara and eye shadow. Rarely ever do they have an adolescent that doesn't wear some sort of make-up. They wear it to school and everywhere they go. So wearing make-up becomes something a normal teens do to look more beautiful and attractive. But not only do teens wear simple make-up. They also do their make-up to look like a celebrity. They try to imitate.

Eventually some girls even get to the point where it’s just too much and it’s not pretty anymore. Others after getting use to wearing make-up have to be wearing it in order to go out because without it they don’t feel comfortable they just don’t like being seen natural anymore. After girls start wearing make-up receiving comment from others saying “oh you looks so pretty with makeup!” and feeling confident about themselves and it’s hard to go back to natural beauty.

As we all know no one is perfect, but we can make adjustment to our body. If the adolescent has a little more weight than the average person that the media shows, we can fix that by exercising, eating healthy and losing weight. Same goes with the teeth and smile, add braces, straighten the teeth and you have nice teeth to smile with. But not everything has an acceptable solution. For instance, every one develops their body at a different pace; some girls develop sooner than others and it’s too soon to do something about that so they will have to wait. The more and more the adolescent want to be perfect more imperfections that will come up because every one is a different individual.

Altogether, adolescents gets the idea of how they should look because the media has teens in their age group look a certain way and use certain things that accentuates their beauty.