How Can We Change the Media?

I have found that personally, my self esteem issues started in school, and I think this is perhaps due to the newness of it. Gok Wan has recently created a documentary series trying to raise awareness of how we can improve body confidence, through things such as school lessons on it. After doing research for my project, and based on my own experiences, I feel this would be hugely beneficial in helping young people, through things such as showing them how photographs are edited in post-production. I have decided to include a paragraph in my essay report which talks about this.
 Here is a link to watch the documentaries:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/goks-teens-the-naked-truth/articles/goks-lesson

Here are two general websites I used whilst writing my essay, in order to get quick facts or images:

http://www.imgspark.com/image/view/all/1069534/

http://www.fourandsix.com/photo-tampering-history/

Body Image Questionnaire

The last bit of research I did was to gather real peoples opinions on the effect of media on body image. To do this I created a questionnaire, asking various things about both the way people viewed themselves and how they felt the media affected them. I spread this questionnaire through 2 ways, a blog, and on facebook. Overall, I found that people did tend to be affected in some way by the media, with only a small minority claiming that they were not affected at all.
Here is the link to the questionnaire blog:
http://alexhayterextendedproject.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2012-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2013-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=9

Influencing and Conditoning Body Image views

For my essay, I thought I would look into how things such as Barbie dolls start affecting children at a young age, creating body ideals that stick with them throughout life (the idea that attractive is to have blonde hair, blue eyes, and a small but curvy figure). Here are the websites I used whilst looking into this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7920962.stm
http://www.teen-beauty-tips.com/barbie-body-image.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1158948/Things-don-8217-t-know---Barbie.html

I also used my AQA A2 psychology textbook to look into the way things such as television influence peoples perceptions. Through this, as well as what we learned about advertising in class, I found that television typically portrays women as younger than they actually are supposed to be, and so this can lead to an unrealstic ideal of what a women in her 40's for example should look like.

Body Image and Plastic Surgery

Plastic surgery is a common occurance now, with many women having some form of it, whether its botox or liposuction, each day in the neverending quest to look perfect. I decided it would be interesitng to look into how the media may play a role in this, and here are the websites I used to do so:

http://www.emaxhealth.com/57/20389.html
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/women_beauty.cfm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17572581

Unsurprisingly I found that the media DOES play a role in plastic surgery, with women who heavily watch plastic surgery documentaries being more likely to have it themselves.

History of Women in Media

I also decided to look at the history of women in media. It's a well known fact that attractive women used to be a lot curvier, and so I wanted to see where this all changed. Here are some links to websites I used to gather information.
http://sites.google.com/site/mediasportrayalonwomen/Home/the-perfect-woman--1950-vs--today
http://youngwomenbodyimage.webs.com/negativeeffects.htm
http://archive.blisstree.com/feel/a-short-history-of-the-ideal-female-body/
http://www.d.umn.edu/~jvaleri/dissatisfaction%20with%20bodies.htm
I found it fascinating how curviness has gone in and out of fashion over history. From my art lessons I have learned that in past centuries being curvy was seen as a sign of wealth and healthiness, as only rich people could afford to eat enough to be fat and healthy, and I think it is truly bizarre that it is the complete opposite now, with the ideal look now being skinny and emancipated.

The Effects of Airbrushing

Over the past few months I have looked at a variety of online articles relating to my extended project. After my inital research into body dysmorphic disorder, which unrealistic media depictions of beauty do not help, I looked into airbrushing and the way it is used in the media. I was amazed and disgusted by what I found, as I had not realised the extent of airbrushing. I had always thought it was used to just touch up pictures, but what I found online was startling:

  http://10steps.sg/inspirations/artworks/40-cool-before-and-after-photo-retouching-photos/ This one in particular was suprising, as the airbrushed image on the left did not look false until it was compared to the orignial, and I'm not sure if this is because its natural looking or because it's what we see everywhere.

http://www.digitalphotoshopretouching.com/retouching-gallery/natalia-taffarel-retouching-gallery / http://www.digitalphotoshopretouching.com/retouching-gallery/vitaly-druchinin-retouching-gallery This website featured 2 seperate re-touching galleries, and had a rollover feature to see the differences in the before and after images. These ones focused more on subtle differences, as well as the obvious lightening of the skin tone they also changed the shape of the forehead and eyebrows, and in one case completely changed the ear to make it smaller and more attractive

http://internationallife.tv/Feature-Airbrushing-Facts This article, created by someone who had been on a high profile photoshoot, talked about how "the photographer would go over the pictures with a critical eye, pointing out what would need airbrushing to make the pictures "usable"", and showed an image of a celebrity on the cover of a magzine who had clearly been airbrushed to be skinnier (see above) despite them already being tiny.

http://www.elistmania.com/still/20_female_celebrities_before_after_photoshop/ This website featured before and after airbrushed images of celebrities. Despite the celebrities being beautiful initally they have still been airbrushed, and it is only after viewing images like this that you discover how unnatural airbrushed pictures look.

Other similar websites included:

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/photoshopped-and-airbrushed-celebrities-for-magazines-before-and-after-pict

http://thegloss.com/fashion/photoshop-me-before-after-celebrity-pictures/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2067474/Back-reality-Computer-program-shows-EXACTLY-images-magazine-photoshopped.html This article was interesting because it talked about a computer program that claims to show where the images have been airbrushed

There was also a huge number of videos on YouTube which showed the processes involved during the photoshoot (applying make up etc) and after (airbrushing). My favourite was the 'Dove Evolution' one, by cosmetics company Dove. This video showed an already slim, beautiful model having their make up and hair done, and then being airbrushed after to look even more flawless (link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U). Another similar video showed how you could completely transform the models face shape and apply make up in PhotoShop (link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qm1kPurZds&feature=related).

I then looked at the effect this airbrushing had on body image. I tried to look at articles that both supported airbrushing and were against airbrushing, in order to get two sides of the story. However, I did not find any articles about the positives, only about the negative effects of airbrushing (such as the distorted view of body image). This suggets to me that the only people who actually support airbrushing are the celebrities involved and the photographers.

After looking at these articles I was suprised to find I actually felt better about the way I look, as before, I didn't realise just how altered the images we see in magazines are.

Here is another page I used when looking at airbrushing:
http://ts-si.org/guest-columns/24799-body-image-airbrushing-reality