The Negative Influence of Inaccurate Media Portrayals
of Adolescent Girls,
Lynne Plumb
Popular culture helps to establish a social
awareness as well as social boundaries for people within a society.
These aspects of a society’s pop culture can help to empower an
individual by promoting social change and giving meaning and value to a
group’s way of life. Popular culture helps people express themselves
and often times will define parameters of what is acceptable. Within
our society today, certain parameters have become inaccurate and
misleading, specifically the female images portrayed by the media
targeting exclusively adolescent females. Various venues of the media,
from television, magazines, T.V. and Internet, prevalent in our culture
today present an inaccurate and unrealistic body image that results in
a negative influence on young adolescent female self-esteem and provide
a misrepresentation of female identity.
“Hot or Not? The Pressure to be Sexy”, “Feeling
Fat?” , “Rev up Your Romance!” (Seventeen, 2009) are the headlines that
scream from teen magazines today. Young girls are bombarded from many
different angles with guidelines as to what is needed to create an
outer appearance that will expand their social life and make them feel
part of the trend. The media creates an image that is ‘the look’ and
portrays this image as what ‘everyone else’ has which only intensifies
a young girl’s struggle to conform to this identity. Sadly, often
times this image devalues a young girl by selling short her untapped
inner potential. This presents a conflicting ideology at a time in an
adolescent’s life when comparisons and acceptance from their peer group
becomes first and foremost.
Blake Lloyd, psychology professor from University of
South Carolina, wrote “A Conceptual Framework for Examining Adolescent
Identity, Media Influence, and social Development” which identifies
typical developmental behaviors within a individual’s cognitive
development as “the ‘conformist stage’ of ego development, when he or
she would view interpersonal interactions in terms of social acceptance
and belonging, cognitively associating behaviors with identifying with
the group” (p. 86). Lloyd continues by stating “because of the
adolescent’s need for information about the self from others,
consideration of media formats with respect to peer relationships is
critical in understanding adolescent identity formation” (p. 86). Lloyd
clearly stated the reality educator s experience firsthand within a
classroom.
The measuring of
oneself to a peer group is the reality adolescents face daily. As a
classroom teacher, the awareness and sensitivity to this issue can help
to open lines of communication with students and bring about positive
dialogue that can help young girls navigate through the false media
perception. Providing optional examples of how to look at oneself,
either through literature or honest dialogue, a teacher can link the
importance of this self-awareness to a lifetime of success (Bean &
Moni, 2003). Two young adult novels that provide strong female
characters that possess positive self-awareness are Hunger Games by
Suzanne Collins and Dairy Queen by Catherine Murdock. I feel young
girls would relate to the character’s ability to overcome obstacles and
believe in their strengths.
Yet, in all fairness, the generalization in blaming
the media exclusively needs to be made cautiously. Young women have
other significant influences within their lives, specifically parents,
family and clergy. These influences help to balance the conflicting
representations as well as discount the message sent by the media
blitz. As a teacher, one can help guide young girls in their
understanding they do not need to be passive recipients and can even
reject the messages portrayed in the media. It seems if these girls
compare the message from the media to their own life, especially the
messages of family and parents, they will see the contradictions.
However, understanding this and standing up to the persuasiveness of
the message is very difficult at best. Adolescents evaluate themselves
according to how they believe other (per group) perceive them even more
so than important adults in their lives. Their judgments become based
upon the social comparisons of oneself in relation to the mainstream
group. (Milkie 1991). A girl may ridicule the newest fashion style, but
if everyone in her homeroom class begins to wear it, conforming to this
social norm becomes paramount regardless of parental opinions.
How does a classroom teacher address these concerns?
Trying to change the message promoted by the mass media is a daunting
task at the very least. A more effective measure would be to empower
young girls and provide further resources to explore a variety of
self-concepts, either in the form of literature or classroom
discussion, which can become a critical component for change.
Empowerment can increase communication as well as establishing consumer
awareness that demands female images accurately reflect the
authenticity of young girls today. Communicating this awareness to
adolescent girls sanctions them to question what they are exposed
to. Teachers need to continually reinforce to girls that they are
in control of their choices and to not be afraid to questions what the
media proposes. Schools can reinforce this empowerment by providing
opportunities for adolescent girls to take an active role in
establishing their own voice. Adolescents are nothing else if not
opinionated! Learning to value their own voice and not blindly
accept another’s interpretation of themselves will encourage and
promote healthy self-awareness and identity. This communication and
empowerment can only increase a young girl’s self-worth and image.
Therefore, the prevalent negative image the mass
media uses to portray young adolescent girls in our society today has
become a misrepresentation of a young female’s identity. These images,
although imbedded in our social consciousness, constitute a detrimental
self-awareness for young women. We as educators can empower young girls
through honest communication which will provide these girls the tools
needed to make appropriate decisions about who they are and how they
would like the outside world to identify their potential.
References
Bean, T. W. and K. Moni. (2003). Developing students’ critical
literacy: exploring identity construction in young adult fiction. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 48.8 638-648. Retrieved from June 17, 2010, from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/v35n2/pdf/bleeker.pdf
Lloyd, T. (2002). A Conceptual framework for examining adolescent
identity, media influence, and social development. [Electronic version]
Review of General Psychology, 86, Retrieved June 17, 2010 from, GALE. Information and Library Services.
McMahon, M. (2009).Sexuality and the media. Retrieved June 13, 2010,
from http://galenet.galegroup.com.ezproxy.search.ebscohost.com