The Effect of Social Media on Women and Their Appearance.
Abstract
Fear of negative Assessment refers to the fear of others’ Assessment, the distress caused by negative Assessment, and the expectation that others may give a negative Assessment to oneself. When an individual’s appearance is negatively evaluated in social interaction, it will produce worry, tension, and anxiety, which is social appearance anxiety. Studies indicate that social appearance anxiety is closely related to an individual’s physical and mental health. The use of social media platforms is a widespread daily activity in contemporary society. Taking and uploading selfies on social media platforms is one of the most popular activities. This is how individuals can show themselves more and get more attention in public. The study adopts textual and discourses analysis to scrutinize news articles using the Factiva database to identify articles headlines, reports, and social media comments between 2015 and 2021 that have captured headlines of “body shaming” or “negative influence of social media in body shaming of women”. The results indicate a significant influence by social media on women’s demand for their appearance in today’s society.
Keywords: Negative Assessment, social appearance anxiety, social media, body shaming
How does social media affect the demand of women for their appearance in today’s society?
Methodology
Questions:
i. How does social media affect women’s exposure to body shaming?
ii. Why do women have more and more demands and anxiety about their appearance?
I will utilize textual and discourse analysis to research and analyze data. For example, “How is social media increasing a person’s exposure to body shaming and body image ?” In object analysis, I will be discussing the numerous negative and harmful body-shaming comments targeting women on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
The study will be analyzing news articles using the Factiva database to identify articles headlines, reports, and social media comments between 2015 and 2021 that have captured headlines of “body shaming” or “negative influence of social media in body shaming of women”, which include, “How social media is increasing a person’s exposure to body shaming and body image” (Datar,2019). Datar decodes that although social media platforms were purposed to allow people to interact, share, communicate and connect with others. Instead, current trends dictate that the social apps have been utilized to body shame, posting negative comments and instilling pressure on women to attain unrealistic beauty standards set by modern society.
Furthermore, the article “Negative effects that Social Media causes on Body I maging” (Gaffney,2017) confirms that social media encourages and influences women to look in a particular, unrealistic manner.
Discourse Analysis
The study will adopt textual and discourse analysis because it is concerned with the qualitative nature of short messages, texts, online comments, and how the meaning of a text is produced through language. The study of cultural objects in the contexts of their production, distribution, and reception. Analyses how the meaning of cultural objects is produced by interpreting their material and the context in which they appear. Discourse analysis allows for a deeper, more substantive insight into those objects. Critical interpretation performed by the researcher is crucial to the analysis of the objects. Analyses how the meaning of cultural objects is produced by interpreting their material and the context in which they appear. Usually deals with a limited number of texts, in our case, the Instagram and Facebook comments. Allows for deeper, more substantive insight into those objects. Critical interpretation performed by the researcher is crucial to the analysis of the objects.
Textual Analysis
Textual Analysis is a method we can use to analyses messages (comments on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook) in the context of a system of representation that constructs meaning beyond or outside the content. That meaning can be social, political, ideological, and cultural. For example, body shaming falls under the social aspect concerned with our body appearance diversity. Textual analysis takes communication as a practice that relates to the context in which it occurs. First, identify the discursive resources (statements, themes, framing, what is said or not said) – drawing on your cultural knowledge, broader literature, close reading, and secondary sources. Then, consider the relationship between different discussions about that topic and the concerns, histories, sources, and ways of communicating that each discussion uses.
Critical Discourse Analysis
The approach combines textual analysis with critical social theory. This method produces a more thorough or systematic analysis of the negative impacts of social media comments in body-shaming women. Conducting a critical discourse analysis of the negative and harmful comments in social media apps on women body-shaming on social media and the pressure on women to change the aesthetic standards of their body shape in Assessment.
Analysis Findings
Social media is applied to designate the interaction between individuals or groups of personalities. Social media is found to fashion, distribute, and exchange diverse ideas through images, writings, and recorded videos via an internet platform. Information from the social media platform can be accessed through computer-generated gadgets. The current generation is raising their young ones and exposing them to networking devices, which later introduce them to online interactive social sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok (Pavlova & Berkers, 2020). The social network conveys the behavioral conducts in which young people re-count with others while using technology’s ever-enhancing technological advances. Presently, the universe is experiencing a burden of progressively snowballing rates of mental syndromes. Mental illness is among the globe’s leading causes of psychological challenges. At the same time, the worldwide budgets and mental health policies are hesitant to address the general burden after overwhelming, challenging mental encounters that are deteriorating the stigma of being emotionally challenged. As social media platforms are significantly increasing as a common information source, increasing threat to mental health discourse is increasing. The significant effects of social media are perceived from different perspectives, for instance, body shaming. Body shaming is embarrassing, with habitually painful, long-lasting consequences. Social media is thus characterized by an aspect of negativities, such as body-shaming, which consequently stigmatizes and mocks individuals, tearing down their self-respect and further perpetuating a harmful ideology that their unique physical appearance ought to be contrasted to air-brushed concepts of ‘perfect.’
What is significant is the societal and individual character and civilization. While body humiliating, in itself, cannot be deemed as a crime, there are situations in which invading a person’s privacy to achieve it can be. The young generation is predominantly glued on a social media platform and is triggered to copy the varied behaviors of unlike personalities. Social media can be viewed as an element that fashions and passes on diverging ideologies on how people see things, reflect, and profile a culture. Media thus can be viewed as a means of acquainting one more about a precise cultural value and norm. Concerning an individual’s physical appearance, one can question whether their current physical appearance replicates what is demonstrated explicitly by specific iconic personalities represents what the current society culture likes, appreciates, or what currently stands out is novel from an outdated tradition is significantly surprising (Stephen & Edmonds, 2020). There is a massive menace arising from young individuals collaborating more indirectly, which suggestively results in them becoming cruel. Individuals engage in sharing all sorts of meaningful information that can take a century considering and revealing face-to-face circumstances. Being glued to social media results in the comparison between ‘pleasant and non-pleasing physical appearance. Ladies, in particular, are affected by the frequent use of social media. For example, ladies who are consequently victims of body shaming in the long run result in low self-esteem or mental challenges. Individuals are consequently suffering from a range of mental disorders that include depression, psychotic syndromes, or other severe mental challenges resulting from different comparable degrees from the ‘appealing general populace.’
Social media details that people learn how to behave by modeling the different behaviors of other individuals, such as friends and parents. For instance, females are deemed negatively mentally affected by social media since the platform tends to embrace a specific body-shaped personality or physical appearance while at the same time conveying negativity to those that tend to be different. For example, engagement with social media platforms has fashioned a stereotypical notion that denotes “thin is conventionally pretty,” making women physically huge to feel less valued and less appreciated by society (Pavlova & Berkers, 2020). How the social media platform brings out different physical appearances of women concerning their body size and shape brings about aspects of body shaming.
The social media platform further stereotypes different skin complexions as being more appreciated and appealing than others. For instance, being dark is stereotyped as less attractive. The study found that people who post their pictures on social media receive diverse likes according to their skin look. For instance, if a dark-skinned personality posts their photographs on Facebook or Instagram, they are likely to have fewer likes and comments than their light-skinned counterparts. The social postings can go to the extent of negatively describing those that are characterized by dark complexion, which is significantly a body-shaming ideology and which negatively affects one’s psychological status or well-being. Statistics depict the increased diagnosis of body dysmorphic disorders (BDD) of seven percent and fifteen percent in patients (Datar,2021). Women strive to achieve a light-skinned, spotless well-curved facial through plastic surgery. The female gender goes to the extent of using skin-lightening products to impress the followers. The element of satisfaction creates a personality of a positive attitude in one’s life and places their life in jeopardy following the negative impacts of the chemicals they utilized to make themselves prettier and appealing. In regards, if an individual is gratified and all their pleasures met, it results in the development of trust among people around them, negating away negative attitudes while at the same time making them always seek for a solution in every challenge they meet along the way.
Discussion
Body shaming is shunning and criticizing a person’s object or animal based on the physical body part’s appearance. Body shaming on social media is instigated through Comments on social media influencing women to attain a perfect body while shunning those perceived to have gained weight. For instance, an anonymous Instagram post annotates, “up to the mark, so delighted am out of the elephant body” (Datar,2020). The text is among many on social media platforms that tend to shun women who have gained body. The society standard for a perfect body tends to be a well curved petite-sized body like clothing mannequins.
Public discussion, which shapes social norms and ideas about the world, is dominated by “symbolic elites” – people who hold power and privileged access to the media (fashion trendsetters, media influencers, politicians, celebrities). Those people control narratives through public discourse that primarily Helps them in maintaining their power. Thus, understanding discourse matters because it is a way that power and social norms are produced, reproduced, and maintained. Moreover, it affects how everyone can live in the world, how they understand themselves and the people around them, which has relatively mundane effects for some and authentic and immediate effects on the safety of others.
Additionally, women’s facial expression is another controversial topic in social media where body-shaming is rampant. The pressure by women to attain likes, comments, and followers in Instagram posts and fit in the perceived social media status of being regarded as beautiful. Statistics depict the increased diagnosis of body dysmorphic disorders (BDD) of 7 percent and 15 percent in patients (Datar,2021). Women strive to achieve a light-skinned, spotless well-curved facial through plastic surgery. Studies portray that some women go to the extent of using skin-lightening products and camera filters to impress their followers. Also, increased demand of twelve percent for cosmetic surgery by society members to change body shaming.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, fear of negative Assessment refers to the fear of others’ Assessment, the distress caused by negative Assessment, and the expectation that others may give a negative Assessment to oneself. When an individual’s appearance is negatively evaluated in social interaction, it will produce worry, tension, and anxiety, which is social appearance anxiety. The underlying issue of social media use, which motivates digital activity in body image, has led to people who are unhappy with their appearance creating and managing their best online self-presentation. The study findings show that social media is a technological idea worth scrutinization as it is demonstrated as a component that engages progress and technology while at the same time exposing social media as a technological idea that adversely impacts people’s psychological status. The saturation of communicative posts pigeon-holes the current society conveyed through social media platforms, a dogma that denotes a meaningful strategy to construct a specific stereotypical personality. The social media culture leans towards demonstrating the modern-day significance of informative technology that resents a particular tradition’s complex concepts. Various social platforms such as Facebook, Tiktok, and Instagram are significant demonstrations of an ideology that explains pleasant living and wishful fulfillment. Social networking has a significant effect on the current generation, particularly young females.
The social media platform has given birth to a developmental strategy through which people, particularly ladies, lean towards seeking satisfaction and pleasure. Consequently, if one is satisfied at this particular social media age, they are deeply indebted to trusting those around them, particularly on media platforms, since technology has made it possible for people to interact through social media and at the same time consume the information they find on these platforms. On the other hand, social media has been brought out to affect the female gender adversely. It makes them compare themselves with others that the social media generation deems as pretty or beautiful characters. The stereotypical inclination of social media results in body shaming of diverse persons deprived of ‘wanted physical appearances,’ such as being slender or light-skinned.
Social media acts as a behavioral source, which elucidates human behavior and enables one to appreciate other people and their different behaviors. By comprehending diverse individuals’ personalities, one can connect with the natural world by observing how different people behave under different circumstances and understand that their behavior and responses to different circumstances are fostered by either innate, biological, or environmental experiences. The study ascertains that human behavior results from relations among different components of human minds to bring about a person’s ego, id, and superego character, whose personality tends to develop in harmony with patterns of evolving psychosexual phases. Furthermore, social media platform makes women seek pleasant appearance to boost their psychological wellness and psychosexual energies.
References
Datar, V. (2019). How social media is increasing a person’s exposure to body shaming and body image [Blog]. Retrieved from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/the-maven-style/how-social-media-is-increasing-a-persons-exposure-to-body-shaming-and-body-image/
Gaffney, K. J. (2017). Negative effects that Social Media causes on Body Imaging.
Pavlova, A & Berkers, P. (2020). Mental health discourse and social media: Which mechanisms of cultural power drive discourse on Twitter? Social science and medicine. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795362030469X
Stephen, R & Edmonds, R. (2020). Social media and young people and mental health. Briefing 53. https://www.consaludmental.org/publicaciones/Social-media-young-people-mental-health.pdf
