MEDIA CONSUMPTION AND BEAUTY

In today's society, media seems to be a factor in everyone's everyday lives, and media seems to influence people in many different ways. A good example is media in the lives of teenagers and the influence it has on their outlook on lives - especially beauty and body images. Media seems to have an effect on teens because today media is something that is used in everyone's everyday lives and media is always around us whether we're paying attention or not. It seems teens of today have been engulfed by this media trend whether using cellphones to tvs. The effect media has on these teens is quite controverisal - in ways it could provide good morals and ethics and ideas for teens and their images but, it appears that media seems to potray more negative aspects on teen beauty over the good.

For one, the television seems to be a main source of where teens find "beauty tips or advice" that influence themselves. Teens are able to watch different types of television shows. These shows potray different types of people, and show's the different ways people may want to express themselves. In shows, directors seem to potray characters in their best moments and teens may begin to beleive that this is the way they should begin to act or look. For example, the show The OC - potrays all their characters looking bright, charismatic and they're only really happy when they look beautiful with their hair and make up done. Although shown subtly, teens take in all this information in their heads because the beauty of these people begin to influence their personal images. Characters on TV show that only beauty on the outside will get you somewhere in life, and shows teens that looking, and acting like these people will make them get somewhere in life and make them feel better about themselves.

Not only does the television influence the beauty of teens - but also even the use of supermodels and advertising. Models appear to only look beautiful and feel good when they are wearing minimal clothing, and a lot of make up. Victoria Secret models for one, are always wearing makeup, the least amount of clothing and are always positioned in inappropriate ways - which again makes teens beleive that looking like these models are the only way they can look their best.Teens are sucked into buying different products or lingerie in this case - in order to make themselves look like these superficial models. Along with the use of models, different advertisements on television can also cause a negative impact on teens. Different commercials of make up and different products for the body influence teens beauty negatively - it makes the youth beleive that they aren't good enough until they purchase these certain products to enhance their natural body. Commercials such as the Nivea Bodycream that claims will make you lose inches - gives false hope for people and makes teens think that beauty is all in looking skinnier and beauty is only on the outside.

It's amazing to see how the consumption of media has such a huge impact on the beauty of today's teens. Whether is teens walking around with their faces caked with makeup attempting to mimic faces they see from TV such as Jersey Shore or Degrassi to teens walking around trying to show their bodies in order to make themselves look beautiful. The media age keeps growing and is in everyday's lives - there's no real way your going to be able to shield your kids from this growing age. It seems that the true beauty in everyone is being covered by teens that absorb all this false information from TV and base their beauty on what they see on television.