Toys and Electronics - Essay Example

How children’s body image is influenced by images Today, children are surrounded by images and messages from the media, which portrays romanticized body types. These images make children worry about how they look and they are always looking for ways to make their bodies be ideal. Many websites, magazines, movies, shows and other media shows ideal male and female bodies that are usually cosmetically altered and they are unattainable for the majority of the population. Research indicates that media exposure can affect the way children perceive their body looks and these perceptions can have an effect on their emotional, physical and mental health.

In most cases, children may feel that their bodies do not meet the perfection of the society image. There is some evidence that plastic toys are muscle-bound and young men are abusing anabolic steroids to have such bodies. Advertising is one of the most powerful medium, which is portraying unrealistic body types. Marketers attract attention for their goods by using muscular men and thin women. With the improved techniques of renovating images, models’ bodies are improved by computers, providing the viewers with unrealistic sense of how natural body should look like.

The internet also offers young people an opportunity to find information about how to improve their bodies. One of the recent developments is the pro-bulimia and pro-anorexia, which encourages children to use unhealthy behaviors to increase their muscularity and lower their weight (Angier). This paper discusses how children body image is influenced by images such as toys, pictures, movies, video and game.Young girls always believe that Barbie has a perfect body and that is how a woman should look like.

Their perception is that a woman should have no fat anywhere and should have big breasts. Young girls always wish that they could have bodies that resemble that of Barbie. Girls who have lots of fats in their bodies and small breast have a low self-esteem. Female characters in cartoons are frequently shown revealing girls in skimpy clothes. Sixty percent of middle and high school girls say that images in publications such as Sassy, Jet, Seventeen and Glamour affect their idea of the perfect body, and almost all of the girls are dissatisfied with their weights.

Most of them say that they worry too much about getting fat and as result they starting dieting when still young. At a young age, girls start having eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia as doctors are treating who are as young as five years old (Angier). . Young men have an impression that men should have muscles all over their bodies. They admire their plastic toys such as GI Joe Extreme. If GI Joe Extreme were a real person, he would have a twenty- seven-inch bicep and fifty-five-inch chest.

This means that his bicep is almost big as his waist, and bigger compared to the competitive body builders. The desire to have such bodies has moved young men in taking steroids to look big as supermen. The omnipresent images of muscularity have made young people use muscle-enhancing substances. There are dangers that are associated with taking muscle-building drugs. Persistent use of anabolic steroids minimizes the quantity of protective high-density lipoproteins, increases the risk of heart attack, repress sperm production and causes liver diseases and stroke (Angier, np).

Work CitedAngier, Natalie. Drugs, Sports, Body Image And G.I. Joe. 22 December 1998. http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/22/science/drugs-sports-body-image-and-gi-joe.html