The recent advancement in information technology has brought news, advertisements and rumors within the reach of all consumers of such information to the living rooms, bedrooms and even in the hands of the majority of the word’s population. In fact whatever information one needs is just a click away, thanks to the revolution in mobile telephony. The world has indeed emerged into one global village because of information technology.As we celebrate these achievements, we also note that it has come with some aspects that we cannot just embrace wholesome since the role of parenting and instilling of values has been subconsciously delegated to the media. The youth today perceive what the media feeds their minds with as trendy and fashionable and globally accepted standards of behavior and conduct.

Introduction

The media has every time and again been faulted for the diminishing moral standards in the way they portray the young women’s bodies. It has been noted that the way both the print and electronic media treat women’s bodies like sexual objects is a worrying trend the word over. Similarly the source revealed that most Television stations in the United States show their advertisements, programs and other bulletins with a sexual tilt to capture the attention of the viewers. This can be considered as an aspect of media intention to control the normal thought processes of the audience by tailoring their mind to what should be perceived as fashionable and trendy but this happens at the expense of the morality of the new generation.

The media and the girl image

According to Heubeck (2008), in America, girls do consider thinness as being model-like and aspiration and this begins at a very young age. They argue that the media’s focus on the appearance is swaying the girl’s self esteem and this begins as early as the age of five years. This is no wonder, since the television programs focus on the actresses and the so called supermodels who appear very happy and fashionable by the American standard, which many young girls view as role models. This tendency to appear like a super model is further reinforced by the real life role models who in most cases obsess about their own weight in front of the same girls they should grab from the media and mentor.

Other role models such as older brothers and dads also talk in favor of their same thinner women that they should guard the young girls against. On the other hand, Hobbs (1997), says the average girl child spends about 180 minutes of media air time in a day as opposed to 10 minutes with parents a day. This escalates to allowing the media to assume the role of parenting by indoctrinating the children with the so called fashion ideologies that later makes them slaves of such trends.

In a desperate attempt to imitate the numerous media footages and images the girls view, they usually take desperate measures to emulate the models in the media by trying out dangerous eating habits in order to raise their self-esteem so as to appear acceptable and modern (Elissa Gittes, 1995). The begging question over this is whether the parents should make the television cabinet a no go zone, hide all the magazines or disconnect the internet connection. This, as Hobb (1997) argues would cause the forbidden fruit phenomenon and curiosity. She further argues that co-viewing of the internet or television by both the parents and vulnerable girls enables the parents to talk about the patterns of body presentation and discuss the modest ways that are acceptable across the board. This will consequently allow the girls to think critically and distinguish the realistic and unrealistic ways in which the media portrays women and girls. The concept of media literacy should be part of upbringing the girl child immediately a parent notes the images of the girl’s role models displayed in their bedrooms, mobile phone wall papers and a computer screen savers.

This article shall therefore look into the way the media has influenced the perception of the girls in such a manner that most girls have been turned into slaves of fashions and trends, disregarding what their bodies require and consume what the media avails to them.The paper shall further provide analysis on how the girls suffer starvation in order to appear like models even if it entails starvation. In addition, the paper looks at the sexual appeals by presenting the women and young girls as sex objects by using a media framing technique of using the term Sexy. We can confidently insinuate that the governments in the world have not done enough to protect future generations of women from exploitation as sex objects and pornographic displays.

Literature Review

Several people have in fact ventured into researching whether the thin images of the so-called super models have influenced the perception of girls and whether there are any health risks associated with the attempt of young women to diet and resemble the thin super models. When a girl internalizes the ultra thin or the ultra-slender body images, it results into internal dissatisfaction of her own body as a result of not meeting the social expectations when they use the idealized images to compare themselves. And as (Stice, Ziemba, Margolis, & Flick, 1996), puts it, this dissatisfaction will act to alter the woman’s perceptions concerning her body’s dimension.

The consequence of the satisfaction has been thought of as a lead cause of bulimic symptoms as a result of elevated dieting habits. In addition, (Austin & Meili, 1994), hypothesized that exposure to ultra-thin images in the media leads to greater internalization, body dissatisfaction which will again lead to elevated dieting, bulimic symptoms and negative effects as a result of pressure from relatives and friend to appear trendy and modern.

On the other hand, sexual displays of women and sexual talks nowadays dominate the television programs and radios. According to the survey conducted between 1997 – 1998 by Depiction of Intercourse which was conducted in every 10 programs, sexual content had slightly exceeded the half of the total televised programs.(Kunkel, Cope-Farrar, Biely, Farinola, 2001).

According to another research conducted by Kaiser Family Foundation (1999), the average child spends about 6 hours in a day interacting with various media such as television, internet, video games, and other various media. This makes the media a shadow parent who spends more time than the actual parents thereby justifying the care the parents need to take in order to remain relevant in their roles.

This article focuses on the effect of the media on the girls’ image since the girl child is most vulnerable of the two sexes because studies have indicated that they care much about what the people think about them than the boys. They also care more about fashions and trends than the boys.

Yankelovich Partners(1993), puts it that when study was conducted to establish where the young adolescents learned about sex, majority of adolescents in America ranked media fourth behind parents, school mates and older siblings. In a National Survey, conducted in 1997, the students confessed having learned about contraception from the media (Sutton, Brown, & Klein, 2002).

Blum (2007), says the problem of media replacing the parents is compounded by the busy parents who work hard to provide but do not have time to discuss the problems affecting them and how they view the media contents on women

Effect on Media on image Perceptions

In the present day America, Skinny models weigh averagely 21 % less than the average woman. This has been brought about by the media glamorizing such personalities through advertisements on bill boards as well as teen magazines. An example of this is seen in the United states where an average American Views approximately 2500, magazine advertisements, billboard and even televisions daily, gets distorted image about a young woman’s body being depicted as skinny and trendy. While the media practitioners encourage this starving in the name of making money, some future generation is undergoing health risk in the name of modeling in order to gain acceptance and raise her self esteem.

These concerns about media celebrities that are shown on movies, video games and magazines and posters who are portrayed to be thin and super models may influence the and pressurize the girls they role model to be skinny and slender in order to fit in the description of being informed and aspires to be a future star.

Effect of the media on Sexualization of Girls

It has been observed that females are the most misused sex everywhere. Their images are seen everywhere, women pictures have been used to advertise wares such as male condoms, sleek cars, most cosmetics, drinking water mattresses, and all other goods that one can think of. The most disturbing thing is the manner in which their bodies are exposed in order to add a sexual appeal to the clients or customers. This practice of sexualizing girls and young women reverses the supposed thought that women and young girls are precious little gifts. In his writing concerning the Lollita effect, Durham ( 2009 ) tries to find ways of understanding women sexuality as a normal and important part of a young woman’s development in terms of health. In the process of doing this, s explains that the media usually distorts the representation of the girls’ sexuality for commercial gain.

Kilbourne (2007), takes the media head-on concerning the growing number of young women’s images that are used in advertisements to attract men to buy, and also depict women as objects that are prone to being subjects of male dominion and violence. She is one of the critiques of the Barbie-like models and the most recent voices that criticize indecent exposure of female privacy.

Consequently, Durham argues that sexuality is not something that can be termed as either bad or evil since there are underlying cultural and social matters dealing with sexual issues. This idea led her to write a book for girls and other interest groups to stand and gang up against the mainstream media’s unwarranted portrayal of women as sex objects.

It is argued that sex plays a pivotal role in the life of human beings and growing up appreciating the sanctity of sex and a woman’s body should be the effort of every moral human.

Recommendations

This work recommends that since the press begins with the children at a tender age, it would be difficult to undo the programming that the media has done to the girl at teenage. This calls for early guidance by the parents through co-viewing of these advertisements to guide the young minds on the sanctity of a woman’s body and sexuality in general.

The society in general should stop admiring the nude images and statutes of women that the press exposes with impunity. One should embrace the notion of sanctity of sex and imagine what if the image being shown was my mother, wife or daughter? Would I be happy with it because she is just a woman? The feminists should also in a quick rejoinder help save the image of the girl child.

In addition, dieting should not be entirely left to the control of the media. In case this happens, it would encourage risky eating habits and starving in future girls and this may not balance with the daily body energy requirements.

Finally, campaign against mainstream media should be taken a notch higher when they encourage risky eating habits in their talk shows if the contents are not consistent with the body’s health requirements.

Conclusion

The body image is usually psychological and depends solely on a person’s self esteem and self worth and the same self worth returns to influence a person’s self esteem. This calls for the parents and early-age caregivers to mentor a strong self esteem in the Children especially girls when it comes to image formation and self worth, since the girl child is most vulnerable in this scenario. They need help as two issues seem to be conflicting; one’s perception of physical body and feeling and how others perceive it.

Article name: The Recent Advancement In Information Technology Media essay, research paper, dissertation

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