Media Takes on Teen Culture
Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.
As boys and girls move from childhood into adolescence, they begin to redefine themselves. This evolution is a complex process that includes creating a new self-image, adjusting to and developing an ethical and moral code, coping with sexuality, understanding gender expectations, and preparing for future lives as men, women, and workers. While girls and boys are exposed to multiple cultural influences during this process of change, the media now have unprecedented influence on their development. In fact, according to NBC News, American teenagers spend 31 hours per week watching TV, 3 hours watching movies, and at least 16.7 hours a week online (Weaver, 2013). While the numbers from the polling sources may vary, they all demonstrate that our teens are spending enormous chunks of their day juggling numerous forms of media at a time. Theirs is an ADHD world with multitasking at its core. Unless your teens are living under a rock or unconscious, media seep into every part of their lives.
Now that media have so many delivery systems, our children are inundated by relentless messages that vie for their attention with the intent of making them “good” consumers. These messages sell a narrow vision for social success. They make it clear that being beautiful and sexy are prized values for girls, and boys need to be powerful while seeming strong and in control.
Media and cosmetic corporations study teens carefully to understand how to push their buttons and get them to buy products. Marketing to teens is considered successful when it creates an unnecessary need that didn’t exist before. Media’s main goal is to sell products or services that solve the very problems they create. Unfortunately these messages do more than sell products; they sell judgments about body image, self-worth, social values, and behavior.
The goal of the advertising industry is to increase insecurity to sell more products. Consequently, advertisers prey on teens’ desire to conform. One remedy for this onslaught of manipulation is media knowledge, and both girls and boys can benefit from recognizing the extent to which they are being targeted as a consumer group. It’s all about creating need. One mother said, “My daughter, Devin, knows the names of designers and products I can’t afford to buy. She’s sixteen years old and is saving for a Prada purse. Give me a break! My daughter is considering spending hundreds, all her allowance and birthday money, on one purse because it makes her feel sophisticated. If she needs a label so badly, I should tattoo one on her wrist.”
Parents can provide the antidote to the media’s manipulation and negative messages by arming their teenagers with critical-thinking skills. Because the media target teens with “pink” and “blue” intent, let’s look at this through a gendered lens, beginning with a discussion of teenage girls.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
Appearance is one of the primary expressions of self in our culture. The definition of womanhood has varied over time and across cultures. Teenage pudginess was more accepted in the past. According to JoAnn Deak in Girls Will Be Girls, “When most of us were this age, prepubescent girls weren’t expected to look like glamour models” (2002). However, as in older times, beauty remains a prized attribute. Teenage girls struggle with the sometimes competing standards of beauty and capability. Currently, coming far behind, girls are supposed to be competent, but trust us, the drive to be thin has a staggering lead. Most girls and young women report being unhappy with their bodies. Because they don’t like their bodies, they are dissatisfied with themselves. In fact, 42 percent of first- to third-grade girls want to be thinner, while 81 percent of 10-year-olds are afraid of getting fat, and 80 percent of 10-year-old American girls say they have been on a diet (The Representation Project, 2014a).
This even happens as early as preschool! Sophie, a vivacious four-year-old, asked her mother, “Mommy, what’s that black line on your eyes?” Her mom told her it was makeup, and Sophie smiled and said, “I love makeup; makeup makes you beautiful.” Her mom answered, “Oh, Sophie, you’re already beautiful, and I’m beautiful, your brother Josh is beautiful, and daddy’s beautiful,” to which Sophie replied, “Yes, Mommy, we’re all beautiful unless you’re chubby!” When preschoolers are already focused on body image, it’s no surprise that the number one desire of young girls aged 11 to 17 is to be thinner (The Representation Project, 2014a).
In 2004, marketers for Unilever’s Dove brand did a study they called “The Real Truth About Beauty: Revisited,” on women’s relationship with beauty. The study revealed that only 4 percent of women around the world consider themselves beautiful and that the anxiety and preoccupation about looks begins at an early age. In a study of over 1,200 girls aged 10–17, a majority, 72 percent, said they felt tremendous pressure to be beautiful (Unilever, 2011). The study also found that 6 of 10 girls alter some activities because they feel bad about their appearance!
Girls and young women view the image of the ultrathin fashion model as exciting. This has the power to make them feel unworthy, no matter how normal their bodies may be. Failing to achieve physical perfection creates anxiety and insecurity, because most women compare themselves with the impossible standards we see in the media, and we inevitably fall short. Yet what we see in the media is a manipulated, curated image that is often not achievable in nature. In a TED Talk, Victoria’s Secret model Cameron Russell (2013) tells us that even most models feel their bodies fall short of the ideal. Russell faults the glamour industry when she says models are not in control of anything, even their own image. Their photos are retouched constructions by professionals who build the image they want. While the resulting photograph may be appealing, it is also very superficial and demonstrates that even some models feel they fall short of our unrealistic standards of beauty.
Hour after hour, American girls receive powerful signals to be thin, beautiful, and sexy. These “spectator sports” are among the most influential forces in the lives of girls. A 16-year-old sophomore, Stephanie, told us, “A girl can be anything … as long as she is thin and pretty.” No matter how much has changed for girls, this attitude is part of the idealized folklore of modern femininity. “Pretty” is the standard by which girls are judged, and the media promote this tyranny of beauty.
The messages girls get from the media are destructive. They sell the idea that girls should be beautiful. In the past 30 years, the idealized woman has shrunk from Marilyn Monroe’s size 12 to the insane size 0. Lisa, a mom who said she always thinks about her weight, got visibly angry when she said, “Size zero—just think about it—we are literally supposed to disappear! It’s insane, and I’m not immune, which is why I’m so frustrated and mad!”
In the film Miss Representation, gender expert Jackson Katz explains this phenomenon of the shrinking ideal. He believes that as women have been challenging men’s power in business, education, politics, and other areas of life, the images that have seeped into popular culture are of smaller women taking up less space. They are less threatening and highly sexualized, and Katz believes this is no coincidence. We see the image of physical power being taken away from women as they are challenging men in the larger world. The real danger of a narrow definition of beauty is how it erodes our daughters’ confidence and contributes to eating disorders, putting our children in real danger (The Representation Project, 2014b).
The restrictive standards for how girls should look and act (thin, blond, tall, big breasts, long legs, straight hair, trendy clothes, tanned and smooth skin), are communicated through popular culture, other girls, and parents. As girls develop into young women, many of them struggle to attain a body type that nature never intended them to have. In 2010, the Girl Scout Research Institute in New York studied body image among 1,000 girls aged 8 to 17. While they found that about 63 percent of the girls surveyed think the models they see are too skinny and unrealistic, nearly half wish and strive to be as skinny as the models they critiqued. “The girls have a cognitive dissonance,” explains Kimberlee Salmond, a senior research strategist at the Girl Scout Research Institute. “They know it’s wrong for them and yet they continue to aspire to it” (Yadagaren, 2013). The problems associated with this cognitive dissonance and lack of self-esteem can lead to disordered thinking and destructive behaviors around body image, weight, and diet.
At the Essence Seventh Annual Black Women in Hollywood event, actress Lupita Nyong’o brilliantly articulated the power of seeing realistic images of yourself reflected in the media:
I remember a time when I too felt unbeautiful. I put on the TV and only saw pale skin. I got teased and taunted about my night-shaded skin. … And when I was a teenager my self-hate grew worse, as you can imagine happens with adolescence … then Alek Wek came on the international scene. A celebrated model, she was dark as night, she was on all of the runways and in every magazine and everyone was talking about how beautiful she was. … When I saw Alek I inadvertently saw a reflection of myself that I could not deny. Now, I had a spring in my step because I felt more seen, more appreciated by the faraway gatekeepers of beauty. But around me the preference for light skin prevailed. (NewsOne, 2014)
Because the predominant media images didn’t reflect back her beauty, Nyong’o still felt unbeautiful. However, she found strength in the words of her mother, who said, “You can’t eat beauty. It doesn’t feed you,” which Nyong’o heard as meaning beauty isn’t enough to sustain you. She ended her talk with the hope that all teenagers can “feel the validation of your external beauty but also get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside. There is no shade to that beauty.” Nyong’o’s comments demonstrate that it’s very hard to be satisfied with what you don’t see.
Parents should ask themselves how they can protect their daughters from this onslaught of unrealistic body images and loss of self-esteem. What can you do to expand a girl’s definition of beauty? There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with girls trying to look the best they can. The problem is when girls damage their physical or psychological health in the pursuit of an unattainable marketed ideal of perfection.
Preoccupation with physical appearance is usually about fitting in. Teenage girls believe looking a certain way provides them access to the right clique and acceptance by boys. This preoccupation and dependence on external feedback is only a temporary fix; it doesn’t sustain self-confidence. Nevertheless, the “appearance” of what good looks and an attractive body offers is so powerful for girls that it can undermine their individuality and competence.
The media’s manipulated and perfected examples of beauty have created impossible standards. Even African American girls, who generally are more likely to be satisfied with their bodies, want to be thinner (Ross, 2014). This leaves millions of girls feeling inadequate, often causing eating disorders and other psychological challenges. Food is one of the few things they can control. Adrianne, a 15-year-old freshman, explained, “When I went into a new high school, I wanted desperately to be part of things. Everyone looked thin to me, so I thought if I had a better body, people would like and accept me.”
When we sat at a kitchen table next to a male college student who was poring over his sister’s latest issue of Bazaar magazine, the absurdity of an ideal appearance was obvious. Unprompted by us, he was stunned by the images he saw and told his sister,
The women in this magazine look like they stepped off a doll assembly line. They are perfectly molded and sculptured pieces of art—not people. Art without the merit of creation or eye candy! Is this what women want to be? High heels—those can’t be comfortable! Are they sexy? Yeah, but that’s not what makes it for me. Why the overkill? These magazines create the illusion that this exaggeration [five-inch stiletto heels] is necessary. This is garbage. Your uniqueness is what is necessary. You need to set yourself apart, because you’re never going to meet up to these standards.
What is so powerful about this unsolicited description is how surprised this young man was at the pressure girls feel to look a certain way—an impossible goal. It’s no wonder generations of women seek irrational means (from starvation to surgery) to look a certain way. Trying to meet this ideal is impossible without Photoshop, airbrushing, and filters that make emaciated bodies look “better.” The result leaves girls and women feeling bad about themselves, no matter how healthy, thin, disciplined, or fit they are.
Some environments, like gymnastics and ballet, are particularly punishing when it comes to body image. Barbara, the mother of 13-year-old Sydney, said,
I really couldn’t believe it when she came home from ballet and said, “Mom, Amy and I are the only girls who sweat, and my teacher told us to lose a little weight.” This was horrifying to hear, especially because Sydney had always been pretty slender, and Amy was average size. I was outraged. I try hard to counter the images on TV and magazines by telling my daughter how unrealistic they are. And now her ballet teacher, who she really likes and wants to please, is undermining it all. My first impulse was to call the school and give them a piece of my mind, but Sydney begged me not to call. I’m very torn. What about all the girls who don’t tell their mothers when they are told to lose weight by teachers and coaches they respect? Do they then internalize the rigid ideals of these misguided mentors? The challenge of counteracting our culture is really more complicated than I thought.
Pretty Poison: Eating Disorders
American culture is preoccupied with body image and weight. Our advertisements are filled with images of beautiful young women used as backdrops and ornaments to sell cars, cake mixes, and cell phone service. In the United States, advertisers spent over $142 billion in 2010 (http://www.statisticbrain.com/ad-spending-statistics/). To understand the enormous size of this amount of money, imagine that 80 percent of the countries in the world have a gross national project lower than that (The Representation Project, 2014a).
An excessive struggle for perfection can result in a girl starving herself to attain a dangerous ideal, and just about every girl and mother we spoke with had stories to tell about eating disorders. As a consequence, some girls lead secretive and isolated lives, disconnected from family, friends, and themselves. Carly, diagnosed with bulimia, offers this blog post about her struggle:
It isn’t easy to start being bulimic. It’s gross and stupid and extreme … but it’s not easy. I remember with perfect clarity the first time I made myself throw up. I binged and binged so that I could get myself to the point where I didn’t feel good, and then it took me about an hour to get it to come back up again. I don’t write this out to be gross. I’m writing this out because there’s a level of commitment to bulimia that is overlooked. It’s not enough to just dismiss it as a behavior that can be discouraged with an after-school special. By the time you get to the point of actually crouching for an hour while you struggle with your gag reflex, you’re beyond after-school specials. You need a solution. (Morgan, 2010)
The obsession with weight affects more girls than boys; as a result, girls struggle more with eating disorders. One former anorexic who now counsels teenage anorexics tells us that, in the 1990s, she worked with girls as young as 13, and now she’s working with girls as young as 11. Obsession with weight is particularly painful for girls during puberty, when they tend to gain weight. Many girls don’t understand that weight gained during puberty is not permanent. This is quite a stressful and emotional time, resulting in girls’ being depressed twice as often as boys (The Representation Project, 2014a).
The diet of distorted images fed to girls is “disturbing and powerful” in the words of one focus-group teen. Seventeen-year-old Brook bent her head, looked up timidly, and said,
I have to be honest, and I can’t say that I haven’t thought about how easy it would be to stick my fingers down my throat and get rid of the massive dinner that I had just eaten. But I can tell you for sure that I have never gone through with the temptation. I’ll never forget being sick with the flu and vomiting in the bathroom. I must have been about 15, and while I was throwing up and my mother was holding my head over the toilet bowl, I told her that my teeth felt awful. My mother, who rarely misses any opportunity to pound some life lesson into my brain, regardless of her tactless timing, said, “I know, honey, this must be what they say a bulimic feels. They always say their teeth feel awful.” The image is so gross and powerful that it is permanently burned into my brain.
Eating disorders are one subject where knowledge may not be a protective factor, because many anorexics hide their disordered eating and go underground. In the past, girls would exchange information about vomiting techniques in the school bathroom or at a sleepover; now they can find each other on the Internet, 24/7. Websites that surface under many names geared to girls who look for “thinspiration” include photographs of emaciated women that can entice a wavering anorexic back into a destructive eating pattern. Anorexics who would never have communicated with each other before can now find a community of like minds on the Internet. The Daily Mail quotes a teenager who states, “‘I used to love trawling the pro-ana websites for tips and looking at pictures of the girls with their bones jutting out. I thought they were beautiful, and I started up my own blog, where I posted pictures of me, for other people to judge. They’d say I was too fat and I just wanted to please them by losing more weight” (MailOnline, 2013).
Anorexics view eating as weak and are proud of their willpower and control because they are able to endure starvation. The danger in this “outlaw” community is that the aberrant behavior is reinforced. The support girls give each other helps them deny that starvation is dangerous, a denial that ultimately can be deadly. Knowledge about the prevalence of eating disorders will not protect your daughters. However, by helping them to deemphasize the importance of physical appearance, you can mitigate the messages to be excessively thin.
Unlike with some issues, mothers and daughters must be in this struggle together. As one mother of a 17-year-old girl said, “I have been losing and gaining the same ten pounds since I was fifteen years old. Will I ever relax and just accept the size my body really wants to be?” Another mother said, “When I went to a dinner party with a new family, I couldn’t stop looking at their fourteen-year-old daughter. Her face was so beautiful, but she was about twenty pounds overweight. I felt bad for her because her mother was so thin and small. I’m so obsessed with my own body size that I find myself ruminating over anybody else’s weight.” If we express this obsession about weight, our daughters will follow in our footsteps.
Nothing we are saying is news to most people who will read this book. However, you can make a difference in your daughter’s acceptance of her body, and it has to begin with a mother’s acceptance of herself. You must believe that you are “more than just a pretty face” and be intentional about what messages are sent to your daughters. In the film Miss Representation, Gloria Steinem says, “If every time you pass a mirror and downgrade your looks, remember a girl may be watching you, and that’s what she is learning” (The Representation Project, 2014b).
In the midst of a teen climate of eating disorders, some teens do thrive. Seventeen-year-old Robyn said,
My parents always made me feel beautiful. They loved the way I looked. I’m certainly not thin, but I’m not going to allow ten or fifteen pounds to stop me from feeling good about myself. I row crew for my high school, and in the boat, my strength and size really matters. Being on the crew team helps me believe that I am much more than my body shape, and if other people have a problem with it, it’s their problem, not mine. Look at Lena Dunham—she’s not thin, and she sure struts her stuff.
Although female film roles have become more varied, the images, as a whole, remain daunting. With the exception of Lena Dunham in Girls, most actors fit the thin body image mold. The actors playing the roles of police officers are strong and powerful but still beautiful and thin; actors playing the roles of lawyers are smart and articulate but still beautiful and thin; and doctors are skilled and compassionate but also beautiful and thin. We continue to give girls a mixed message; as Stephanie said earlier, “A girl can be anything … as long as she’s thin and pretty.” The power of the media is enormous, making too many of our daughters feel fat, invisible, or unacceptable. Media’s impact is primary because it is ubiquitous, and children begin absorbing its imagery before they are toddlers.
Advertisements and Magazines: Shop Till You Drop
Absorbing all these idealized images contributes to many women’s evaluation of their bodies. Amber, a 17-year-old, said,
I remember looking at the underwear ads and comparing myself to the bodies in the advertisements. The camera angle gave the models a dramatic elongated look. I’m five feet four inches, and most of my height is from my waist up. I think that I am really supposed to be five feet two inches. The models in the ads were stripped of their clothes, and their bodies were so sleek, even the men. Not like my legs. I wax, I shave, and I still have bumps. I used to look in the mirror and obsess over my short legs.
It’s important for parents to be knowledgeable about what advertisers are trying to sell kids, how products are packaged, and how advertisers manipulate consumers by using idealized physiques. These Photoshop-enhanced images have a profound power that your children internalize, which can only be balanced by becoming media savvy.
Ashley, a 17-year-old, said, “It’s a little crazy making; these teen magazines try to educate girls about things like birth control and healthy girlfriend-boyfriend relationships, and then they show us looking like tramps in stilettos. I wish they’d make up their minds: Are we adults or kids?” While some of the articles are informative, magazines depend on selling advertisements. One mother said, “If most girls felt good about themselves, if they didn’t smoke, drink, or wear makeup, advertisers would really suffer.” Therefore, most teen magazines have resorted to the same ads as women’s magazines, featuring rail-thin models and articles about dieting. In “Trash Magazines with Training Wheels,” Janelle Brown reports that the teenage market represents $158 billion in spending power, and girls spend 75 percent of this money on clothing. Magazines and online sites are perfect vehicles for getting a portion of the teens’ or parents’ wallet and heavily influence what teenage girls buy (2001).
Impact of Negative Body Image
Another reason why it is so important to be aware of the messages you give your daughter about her appearance and capabilities is that depression in girls is often connected to negative feelings about their physical features and abilities. One exasperated mother said, “The other day, my daughter, Caitlin, said to me, ‘Mom, I’m having fits. I’m so fat.’ And I didn’t say anything. I didn’t come back and say, ‘Oh, no, you’re not, honey.’ I just said, ‘Well, if you want, I’ll go walking with you later this afternoon when you come home,’ and Caitlin’s response to me was, ‘Well, thanks a lot for not being there.’” Lydia, the mother of 17-year-old Samantha, says,
It was pure heartache when I took my daughter, Samantha, to get a prom dress for the junior prom. She cried and said that every dress made her look fat. After looking at the pile of crumpled gowns on the dressing room floor, I felt so disappointed, frustrated, and sad that her image was so distorted. I finally said to her, “Samantha, how could you look fat in a size eight?” I haven’t been a size eight since I was in seventh grade. Get real—don’t ruin a potentially wonderful time with an inaccurate self-perception!
A teenage girl’s constant worry about how the outside world views her is distracting to her well-being. These worries drain a girl’s energy, enthusiasm, and focus on other attributes, including competence. While much of the pressure to be thin comes from the media, the earliest and most influential messages regarding our bodies do come from family. Your unintended comments can demonstrate how daughters (and perhaps sons) can resist this pressure. The easiest way for you to encourage your daughter’s healthier body image is to refrain from commenting about your own weight, being fat, or constantly judging your own looks and others’. It’s perfectly normal, for example, for adolescent girls to have body fat. Most young girls put on weight before they enter puberty and grow; this is nature’s way of getting women ready for reproductive development.
Beauty doesn’t guarantee self-esteem. Physical appearance is only one element; it may get you in the door, but it doesn’t keep you there. But even though we may say, “Beauty’s only skin deep,” few believe it! Sometimes we can learn these lessons from our daughters. Alison, an 18-year-old high school senior, told us about her mother’s body fixation:
Ever since I can remember, my mother warned me about getting fat. I was never fat, but could always stand to lose about 5 to 10 pounds. I know that this doesn’t sound like much, but all of it sits on my hips and rear, and I can go down a whole pants size if I lose the weight. My closet has two pants sizes, chubby Alison and thin Alison. I am not as tortured by this as my mom. Even when I feel fine about myself, I sense her eyes settling on my rear. She offers me unwanted advice on how to dress defensively and looks pretty outraged when I don’t try to mask my figure faults. When I ask her why she just won’t give it up, she tells me that it’s for my own good.
Alison continued, “Thank God for sports. It’s been like an antidote to my mom’s pressure for me to be thin. I think I have a healthier view of my body because I’m athletic and play varsity field hockey. These legs work fine. My hips and rear don’t interfere with my performance on the field, and most guys don’t seem to mind either.”
Alison’s story demonstrates how providing other spheres of interest can increase a positive self-concept and serve as a protective factor. Girls who are athletic present themselves with confidence for many reasons. They are fit, tend to have higher self-esteem, and are focused on their performance, not just their appearance. They also create deep bonds of friendship with teammates, giving them a solid framework of friends.
Slutty Dressing: Sexualized and Provocative Images
Today’s fashions are more physically revealing than ever before, and parents are battling with their daughters about what is too sexual. Many girls want to fit in, and they confuse being “sexy” with being cool. One middle-school teacher said, “The issue of provocative dressing and body image is such a tough one. I can remember being sent home from school when my skirt was still covering my kneecap. Now girls show skin and underwear routinely. Underwear is now outerwear. I would’ve died if either my bra strap or slip showed when I was a girl.” Furthermore, the practice of girls dressing more provocatively is happening at younger ages.
“Slutty” dressing can be viewed in two contradictory ways. On the one hand, you could see provocative dressing as a statement of independence and freedom. On the other, it is surrendering to the sexualized culture to gain attention. When we asked younger teenage boys what they thought about sexy dressing, they usually smiled and said, “What do you think? We’re boys; we like it.” But boys a few years older had very different reactions, especially to the younger, middle-school girls who dress like Miley Cyrus. Noah, an 18-year-old, said, “When girls begin dressing in a sexually stimulating way, at even younger ages, we pigeonhole them into sexual objects with less power than guys.”
Parents are uncomfortable, too. The mother of 13-year-old Lucy said,
I’m mortified to admit that last week I told Lucy she looked like a slut. I know that calling your child names is found in the “don’t ever do that” section of any childrearing manual, but I finally lost it. She layers two tank tops with her bra straps hanging out. I wonder what corporate head decided to manufacture mini adult items like shoes with high platforms for tweens and dresses that fit like tube tops? Certainly one without a young daughter! I’m at a loss. All her friends, some of them really good students, dress incredibly provocatively, so I’m confused about how much to rein her in. I don’t think she understands what message she is sending to boys and men. I’m worried that someone will take advantage of her.
When we talked with young men aged 22 to 30, we found that they, too, were uncomfortable with this in-your-face sexuality of young girls. Many were concerned because they could no longer distinguish between girls they should ask out and “jailbait.”
Too often, parents are reluctant to step in by refusing to buy suggestive items or making their daughters change clothes, because they want to be liked and they want their daughters to “fit in.” You need to make sure that your daughter, in the name of self-expression, is not projecting an unintended (or even intended) sexual message.
Makeup and the Dream of Beauty
In today’s culture, makeup serves a variety of purposes for girls throughout their development. Young girls are first introduced to makeup through play. Many parents worry about their daughters’ early interest in makeup and conclude that a girl’s attraction to it forecasts obedience to popular culture; others see it differently. The mother of 14-year-old Annie shared her concerns:
I’ll tell you what I found out with these kids, with my own anyway. They loved makeup. They bought it a lot, not unlike boys collecting baseball cards or like when I collected stickers. My daughter, Annie, collected makeup and treated it as a cross between a grown-up product and a toy. For Annie and her friends, makeup helped them to straddle child and adult worlds.
Now I view Annie’s interest in makeup with a whole different mind set. I realize that the significance I attached to makeup is loaded, and that it may have a completely different meaning to many pre-adolescents. I worry that Annie’s overly attached to the idea that she has to be a slave to beauty, but I may be overreacting.
Indeed, with some girls, it is helpful to steer them to an interest that isn’t associated with society’s mandate to be beautiful. Makeup, in and of itself, is another transitional object, one that can take on a greater or lesser importance. Whether or not you condone your teenage daughter’s buying and wearing makeup clearly depends on what she is expressing.
The Sky Is Not Falling: Healthier Messages
A parent’s best instrument to combat the bombardment of simplistic messages and marketing products is literacy. Look at your daughter’s magazines and read them with her. Ask her whether it makes sense that they feature healthy eating while picturing waif-like anorexics selling products. Ask her if the article about college majors makes sense next to the ad showing the back of a half-naked woman sitting spread-eagle in a very suggestive position. Explain to your daughter that the photos of the beautiful models are not real, and remind her that those images are the result of the magic of enhanced imagery; with computer software, filters, and touch-ups, we would all look different.
In spite of all the changes in the last several decades, author and doctor Nancy Snyderman believes, girls still wrestle with the dichotomy between the old messages of femininity and the new messages of be all you want to be (2002). This conflict is confirmed by women’s obsession with physical perfection. They still are driven by their desire to be appealing, especially to men. We have to teach our daughters that their bodies are not the “ultimate” or only expression of self, despite the countless seductive messages society concocts to sell products.
You should teach your children to be critical consumers by becoming aware of what teenage girls read, listen to, and see on every screen. Teenagers need to understand that advertisers target them to sell products by playing on their insecurities. Assist them to be cynical and insightful about consumerism, including what they read and see. Teens learn that by becoming knowledgeable, they can help themselves, and they can make a difference to others when they become more critical consumers.
Want to see how scary it is out there? Websites such as www.pro-thinspo.com and others offer “thinspiration” tips for limiting eating, along with advice on hiding an eating disorder. The content features a photo gallery of emaciated girls and women. It advocates for treacherous behavior, like the “50-day anorexic diet,” eating 500 calories or less. (See Fact Sheet 4, “Warning Signs of an Eating Disorder,” at the back of the book).
The Internet is no different from any marketplace where you can find good along with bad. Recently, the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (Unilever, 2004) is broadening our view of women’s beauty. And when Spain banned extremely thin models from fashion runways, Dove responded by producing a wonderful video showing one model before and after a makeup application. The video, which depicts the makeover of a real woman into a model, powerfully demonstrates how unrealistic perceptions of beauty are created (Unilever, 2006). Antidotes to the inundation of false images exist, many on the Internet, but we have to look for them. Unfortunately, they are less accessible than the enormous onslaught of perfection fed to both girls and boys. That’s where parents must help. We can find them and be deliberate about searching and sharing them with our families. Positive changes come as a result of raising consumer consciousness and speaking out.
The best advice to parents is to seek out powerful and positive images for your daughter. The film Real Women Have Curves (2002) features America Ferrara advocating for her right to be respected for her larger body. In one of the most inspiring scenes, she undresses and instructs the women working with her to see themselves for the beauties they are, cellulite and all. Another film, America the Beautiful (2007), is about our nation’s obsession with beauty. It’s an account of a 12-year-old model growing up in the fashion industry, but it also touches on plastic surgery, celebrity worship, airbrushed advertising photographs, and human insecurities. Beauty Mark (2008) studies how our disquieting perceptions of beauty are shaped, shown through the eyes of a former triathlete and psychotherapist. We are encouraged by these examples that challenge the status quo and expand the notion of what is acceptable.
Since the 1972 education amendment, Title IX, which mandated equal funding to women’s athletic programs, we have seen an explosion of strong, competent female athletes. Parents can use this attitude shift to reinforce the idea that being fit and healthy is beautiful. “Self-Esteem and Young Women” reports that the African American and Latina influence on the broader culture helps to redefine the notion of beauty (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, n.d.). Mariela, an 18-year-old Latina in a focus group, said, “I don’t need to see my ribs or feel my bones. In fact, when I’m thin, my face looks sick. Size twelve (on a good day) and size fourteen are fine for me. Hey, I’m just a big girl who likes to feel powerful.” Mariela speaks for many “low-income Anglo and African American young women [who] did not experience the same pressure to conform to society’s standards of femininity as middle and upper class Anglo young women.”
Television is beginning to offer girls honest, intelligent, and highly capable role models. Pick almost any prime-time drama, and you now find women portrayed as competent professionals and equal to men. They now total close to 40 percent of prime-time characters (The Representation Project, 2014a). Women in these programs, while still pretty and thin, play confident and independent characters. They are no longer damsels in distress waiting for the hero to save them.
Be aware of healthy images in the media, and point them out to your daughter when you see them. Draw on these examples to build resiliency in your girls. If you teach your daughters to be critical observers and consumers, they will learn for themselves the differences between what feels right to them and what doesn’t. They will develop more confidence in their own opinions, rather than allowing themselves to be overly influenced by what others may think.
Your efforts will enable them to have a broader sense of what is attractive and to put that more accurate vision into perspective. There also appear to be more choices for girls in terms of careers, skills, and relationships. We can use media as resources to get positive messages across. If you have certain values about what is important—achievement, kindness, self-sufficiency, “being sturdy”—you can fight alongside your daughters to resist the barrage of media messages claiming that there is only one standard of beauty.
Pumping Iron and Bigger Is Better
Dissatisfaction with bodies is no longer exclusively a girl thing. Like their sisters and their female cousins and friends, boys are paying more attention to their bodies and a new idealized version of the “buff” guy. Boys are influenced by media stereotypes of ideal six-pack physiques on movie stars and in videos and magazines. And while girls are more dissatisfied with their bodies than boys are, boys are not immune to this pressure. The defining difference between the genders is that boys don’t want to get smaller; they want to gain size and bulk up.
Emily Fox-Kales, author of Body Shots: Hollywood and the Culture of Eating Disorders and clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard University, says, “Just what it means to be a real man in the world today is changing—and that’s part of what’s making muscles a growth industry in Hollywood” (Keegan, 2011). She sees this as the result of men losing economic power: “As men have lost more economic power, more social power, they’ve wanted to look more pumped up. … The recent recession … disproportionately hit male-dominated jobs like construction and manufacturing. Muscles have become an accessory, like pickup trucks.” This thought was echoed in an article about body image in the Harvard Gazette: “Women now command spaceships and serve as CEOs of large corporations. … To compensate some Western men are fixating on muscularity as ‘the last bastion of masculinity’” (Cromie, 2005).
Today boys and men are working harder and engaging in risky behavior to alleviate their dissatisfaction with their bodies. The parents of 14-year-old Nick told us their story:
Nick is a pretty driven kid. When he gets his mind set on a goal, he dives in headfirst. So at first we were happy to see him focused on what he was eating and getting exercise. But that morphed into something more obsessive. He spends an hour and a half lifting weights in his bedroom and asked us to let him add creatine (to promote weight gain) to his diet. He is more focused on his body than we anticipated, and the battles over protein shakes and food additives are endless. In response to our resistance to these additives, he shows us an article or infomercial online to get us to agree to something we’re against.
The Internet has also influenced 16-year-old Justin, who is frustrated and tired of being the “chubby best friend” to all the girls he hangs out with. In his words, “I finally decided to stop hiding behind these extra pounds and, on a dare from my mom, cut out sugar, soda, and fried food. To my surprise, I lost fifteen pounds of stomach fat. I also use some YouTube videos to guide me through a conditioning routine.” With America’s ongoing obesity epidemic, media can be used to access valuable tools for encouraging a better relationship with food, resulting in healthier men and women. However, we always need to strike a balance between trying to be healthier and muscle dysmorphia, where one obsesses over muscularity and never feels muscular enough. When boys focus on losing body fat and building muscles at any cost, they risk having a disordered body image (Wilmore, 2012).
Unfortunately, taking risks means that more boys than ever are willing to experiment with illegal steroids or other dangerous supplements to achieve an idealized body. The Journal of Pediatrics recently reported that over 40 percent of boys in middle and high school exercised in order to increase the size of their muscles, 38 percent reported using protein supplements, and about 6 percent have used steroids (Quenqua, 2012). There is additional risk for middle-school boys, who are still growing and developing. Wise parents and pediatricians are starting to warn boys against hazardous methods that promise to achieve washboard abs. One father, who is a long-distance runner and was preparing for a marathon, recalled walking into a natural-food store for some carbohydrate powder. All he could find was protein, protein, and more protein. He noted that the marketing emphasis was focused on built-up or “cut” muscles. A mother in one of our groups joked that her childhood image of masculinity did not imagine muscles. “Now the body ideal my sons see is only possible by using dangerous supplements. They want to be lean and mean—all muscle, no body fat. I worry about them just I as do my daughter.”
Now boys, too, must conform to a standard of beauty that exaggerates their sexual identity—in this case, maleness. To attain this aesthetic ideal, many are using drugs, dietary additives, and extreme forms of exercise. We find ourselves asking what happens to boys who, like their sisters, can’t attain society’s standard of body perfection. Nicholas, a high-school senior, shared his story:
I was always chubby and didn’t care about it until I hit middle school. Then I became the butt of name-calling and bullying. Boys called me lard-ass, and I pretended to not care. I did care and felt ashamed and sad. I loved to act but never tried out for a school play for fear I’d be jeered at. I was saved by a late growth spurt in eleventh grade, when I grew four inches and slimmed down. Thankfully, I can start over again in college. But I still see a fat boy in the mirror.
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Brian Cuban, the brother of Mark Cuban, said his body repulsed him every time he looked in the mirror. “Men can also be affected by the Internet-driven, hot bod image explosion that tells us we simply don’t measure up to these perfect, airbrushed images.” When he talks about his experience with a 30-year eating disorder, he says, “I had no idea the words bulimia or anorexia existed. They were simply behaviors I engaged in to survive day-to-day to take control of a body that repulsed me every time I looked in the mirror” (Cuban, 2014).
Boys, like girls, exhibit self-image disturbances. These include bulimia, “bigorexia” (the obsessive desire to bulk up), and steroid use. Donna, a high-school nurse for more than 20 years, observed a change in the students who came into her office to use the scale. She said, “At first, it was nearly all girls and only boy wrestlers who wanted to weigh less. Then about fifteen years ago, it quickly became mostly boys who wanted to bulk up. The pressure on girls to be thin has long been strong, but over the past fifteen years, boys have gained muscle mass and lost body fat.”
The pressure on boys has been overt: supervised, encouraged, and according to many parents, required at times by their athletic coaches. One coach said as much:
I see some boys who are under five feet, eight inches weighing over two hundred fifty pounds with less than 3 percent body fat. I don’t think you can get that body without using supplements! Yet I know other coaches are putting pressure on their boys to start weight lifting earlier than some parents think is wise and the culture pressures the boys to bulk up any way possible. This doesn’t surprise me. When I was a young wrestler, I would take laxatives for days before my weigh-in to qualify for a lower weight class. Now the pressure to be a certain size is widespread, involving more sports and affecting more boys than before.
Where else are our boys getting these ideas? Just like girls, boys are an important consumer group, and companies use male bodies to attract viewers and sell products. The pressure to become muscular begins earlier and earlier, as evidenced by the extreme bulking up of male action figures. GI Joe and other superheroes have become far more muscular. Even some Halloween costumes for young boys are padded to make youngsters look like they have six-packs. Everywhere our boys look, they are besieged by Photoshop-enhanced, airbrushed, pumped-up, idealized, and chiseled bodies, especially in athletics. Just as for girls, the images they see are not attainable naturally, but when they’re young, boys don’t have the knowledge to understand the difference (Poncelet, 2014).
The Internet complicates matters. In a New York Times article, Douglas Quenqua reports, “On Tumblr and Facebook, teenagers post images of ripped athletes under the headings ‘fitspo’ or ‘fitspiraton,’ which are short for ‘fitness inspiration.’ The tags are spin-offs of ‘thinspo’ and ‘thinspiration’ pictures and videos, which have been banned from many sites for promoting anorexia” (2012). Not unlike girls’ “thinspiration” sites, where unhealthy information is blasted, there are bodybuilding forums for young boys, where they judge each other’s body fat percentages. As these sites proliferate, boys are at risk when they turn to supplements or steroids to pump up. The goal for all teens should be fitness and health. If that includes being strong, great, but not at the expense of their health.
Man Up: The Strong, Silent Type
The media promote the ideal male as tough, confident, and without doubt, which often hides a much more vulnerable teen. Boys are required to hide their true selves behind a mask. This mask of toughness, so celebrated and promoted by the media, can lead to isolation. Rob, a high-school freshman, ran into that problem:
This year was really hard. Not only am I a ninth-grader in my first year of high school, I’m young for my age. My old friends from middle school have become girl crazy and go to parties where there’s smoking and drinking. They stopped calling after I made up so many lame excuses. It was too hard to tell them I felt scared and uncomfortable, because they were all having a great time. Yes, I’m lonely. I spend most of my weekends by myself in my bedroom playing Minecraft.
The most popular male characters on television, in film, and in sports are those with great physical strength who exhibit aggression and unequaled bravery; they include “gangsta” rap stars, action-movie heroes, wrestlers, and characters in video games. Violent behavior for men, including its rewards (money, power, and notoriety), is encoded into our consciousness through mainstream advertising that uses common themes such as “acting out exhibits bravery,” “strength is power,” and “attitude is everything.” The message is that cool is defined as being tough and rebellious, traits seen as desirable.
In their Boston Globe article, “The National Conversation in the Wake of Littleton Is Missing the Mark,” masculinity researchers Jackson Katz and Sut Jhally say, “The issue is not just violence in the media but the construction of violent masculinity as a cultural norm. From rock and rap music and videos, Hollywood action films, professional and college sports, the culture produces a stream of images of violent, abusive men and promotes characteristics such as dominance, power, and control as means of establishing or maintaining manhood” (1999).
If it’s difficult for boys to acknowledge weakness to themselves, you can imagine how hard it is for them to admit they’re overwhelmed or in trouble and to seek help. In general, they are encouraged to act like a man and suck it up. In this environment, it’s hard for parents to detect when their son is struggling with body shame, fear, depression, and anger. After Columbine, William Pollack, the author of Real Boys, was often heard to say, “When boys can’t cry tears, they cry bullets” (Pollack, 1998).
Teenage boys could benefit from seeing more media stories with emotionally complex themes, endearing human connections, and important feelings. New avenues for personal connection are on the Internet with apps and sites that promote communication—for example, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. Websites like TellingSecrets.org invite anyone to post a shameful secret anonymously. Danny, 15 years-old recounted how this kind of site helped him:
My piano tutor touched me when I was in eighth grade, and I’ve never told anyone about it. I begged my parents to quit piano, but they thought it was because I was too lazy to practice. I didn’t want him near me and couldn’t convince them to let me quit. I took lessons in his house and was too scared to push him away. One day, I read the postcard on Postsecret.com about a teen who was touched as a kid, too. It was the first time in two years I didn’t feel alone. While I personally couldn’t speak up, I showed this other boy’s secret to my parents, and they finally asked enough questions and figured it out.
More than 658 million people have read PostSecret, an online community.
The way to keep our sons safe is through open communication, but we understand this is easier said than done. Stay informed about the realities of today’s boys. That’s the first step in starting meaningful conversations with our sons about the tough issues they face.
Words of Wisdom
One of the unintended results of dismantling gender stereotypes is that boys and girls have adopted some of each other’s worst behaviors. In addition to the age-old challenges facing teens, both girls and boys binge drink, smoke earlier, use offensive language, and have indiscriminate sex.
Be up-to-date and savvy about your teens’ world by learning from other parents. Don’t dismiss your teens’ concerns with their physical self-image by thinking they can separate themselves from all of the flawless and false images they see around them. It’s unrealistic for girls to expect boys to have six-pack abs with sculpted muscles and for boys to expect girls to be supermodels, gorgeous and with legs that don’t quit. Talk to your teens about the impact of media, and acknowledge how hard it is to develop a good self-image while being fed a diet of perfection and perfect muscle tone.
It’s important for boys and girls to avoid the pervasive messages driven by commerce. Teenagers are an economic force and could be empowered to use their influence and dollars to benefit others. By the way, for all of your telling them what to do to be media literate, adolescents won’t always give you the satisfaction of letting you know they’ve heard you. Be like the media. Be persistent and share personal stories with flash and drama (if you can). Finally, don’t let media coerce you into being victim of their perfection myth or an unsophisticated consumer of their advertisers’ products.