Velasquez 1

Brenda Velasquez
Professor Ditch
English 113A 8am
7 December 2014
The Impact of Western Societys Media
Broadcasting media has a great influence on western society through television
advertisements. The media is making people believe that our genders have certain expectations
that need to be met. People who are being influenced behave accordingly to their biological
differences of internal and external sex organs, meaning their sex, not their gender. Society,
including the media, has set different roles for each sex expecting males to be masculine and
females to be feminine. While doing research, I found an advertisement on Axes official
webpage of a body spray for men, it is from a brand of male grooming products that was
introduced in 1983, and noticed that the man and two women advertising the product were
playing their expected gender roles. The man had his shirt unbuttoned, showing his masculine
body and the two women had short, tight, black dresses showing off their curvy figures. Our
western societys expectations of the ideal male and female appearance is a huge issue because it
is leading to eating disorders amongst both sexes that lower their self-esteem and even cause
them health issues.

Western society has a way of making people commit to their gender roles at a very young
age through the media. Current statistics done by NEDA says that 80% of Americans watch
television daily. Children are being exposed more than ever to television, computers, and video

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games due to the availability of the internet. Theyre being influenced by the people/characters
that they see because they emphasize the importance of being attractive. For example, an article
in Composing Gender called Becoming a Member of Society: The Social Meaning of Gender
(1989), by Aaron Devor, claims that our childhood plays a key role in shaping our gender and
explains that by the age of five children become convinced that they are permanent members of
their gender grouping (37) and learn to recognize their gender as a change in clothing, hair
style, or activity (37). This is a direct result of what the media has done to children as they are
growing up and becoming young adults. They grow up with the mentality of the ideal male and
female image which causes them to want to have that same unrealistic appearance that they
believe is real.
When they take action to try to achieve this ideal look, they develop eating disorders such as
Anorexia and Bulimia. These are the two main eating disorders caused by the media in attempt to
have their viewers look like the photo shopped people that they portray.

The advertisement image that I found online by Axe is shows the male and two females
with traditionally ideal features. Axe is one of the most popular mens fragrance in the U.S,
which means that it is being consumed by the majority population of men in this country. In this
image, Axe is using sex appeal by showing the man with his muscular body and the two women
that look desperate for him. The media has many stereotypes for men, whether its having to be
muscular, good looking, hardworking, and strong etc to not liking pink and not letting females
pay for dinner. And its true, majority of men fit into this category that western society has put on
them. Looking at his six-pack, the muscles are very noticeable and by the looks of it he attracts
women because there are two women around him. The physical appearance of the man in this

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advertisement could possibly affect a mans self-esteem causing them to develop some kind of
eating disorder. If men who see these advertisements feel like they dont meet the ideal mans
structure, they start trying to change themselves to fit in. The National Eating Disorder
Association (NEDA) of 2001, stated that the pressure that comes from the media that is directed
to men having a muscular body is related to their dissatisfaction.
On the other hand, the two women that are in the advertisement are playing their feminine
roles. They are the definition of what the ideal woman looks like. They are both slim, light
skinned, and are showing a lot of their model-looking bodies to promote the product. Women
who are exposed to this type of advertisements think that this is the appearance they want to have
and may therefore become unsatisfied with the way they look. They might begin to feel insecure
about themselves and get brought down due to the mass media and their advertisements that only
include the perfect looking people and exclude the people who have small defects, like Axe
does. In general, the information that Axe promotes isnt real. If youre a man that buys this
product and sprays it on yourself, women are not going to jump out of nowhere and throw
themselves onto you. This means that Axe is emotionally persuading men to buy their product to
make them feel sexier and more desirable for women.
Some people may argue that not everyone who is exposed to the media develops an
eating disorder. Although they may be right, statistics show research that was done on eating
disorders and the increasing number of people developing them during time. In 1995, 36 of 100
men who were surveyed had binge eating disorder and in 2005, 77 of the 100 men had that same
eating disorder. In 1995, 60 females developed either purging or strict dieting compared to 85 of
100 women in 2005 that developed this same eating disorders. This contributes to the influence
that media is having on both men and women. At this rate, if this continues, the majority of the

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population could have one of the many eating disorders associated with the exposure of the
media on what they believe the ideal person looks like.
Daniel Agliata and Stacey Tantleff-Dunn, authors of The Impact of Media Exposure on
Males Body Image, from the University of Central Florida, found research that 95% of
collegeage men expressed dissatisfaction with some part of their body. This means that the
media, is affecting men in a negative way, increasing their insecurity and self-esteem. Many men
in the media appear exactly like the man in the Axe advertisement. They are toned, goodlooking, and have a perfect physique. According to the scholarly article, The Mass Marketing of
Disordered Eating and Eating Disorders: The Social Psychology of Women, Thinness and
Culture, American culture sends a powerful signal to women-that only the beautiful, and the
thin are valued and loved... (Hesse-Biber 2007). In American culture being thin represents
health and success. To reach the ideal level of thinness, women begin to change their diets and
are vulnerable to the eating disorders that come as a result of those changes in their foods.
Around 85% of women in the US develop anorexia (starvation dieting) and bulimia (Eating a lot
and later forcing yourself to vomit). Eating disorders tend to occur ten times more frequently in
women than men (Hesse-Beiber, 1996). This is because majority of women tend to care more
about what others think and say about them, therefore, they are most likely never satisfied with
the way they look. A womans sense of self-esteem is dependent upon her perceived
attractiveness to the opposite sex, and body weight plays an increasing importance in whether she
is considered physically attractive. (Hesse-Biber 1996).
I found a second scholarly article that talks about the media and how the images they
show are unrealistic because they go through a lot of editing and refining with computer software
(Richins, 1991; Thompson & Heinber, 1999). An experiment was done where researchers

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exposed women without idealized bodies in advertisements and found that participants
experienced less body shame. However, after exposure to the advertisements containing
idealized bodies (nonbody-related and body-related product advertisements), their body shame
was greater (Monro 2005). This proves that the media does indeed have a great impact on the
eating disorders that people establish when trying to reach the perfect body.
Overall, western society secretly encourages males to act in a masculine way and females
in a feminine way. Both sexes learn the roles they have to play in society because that is what
they have been learning through the media. They tend to acquire unique characteristics because
they want to meet their gender role expectations. In attempt to meet these expectations, the
majority of people develop an eating disorder because they never reach the unrealistic physical
appearance that society makes them believe exists. They also develop health issues that lower
their self-esteem causing them to devalue themselves.

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WORK CITED
Derenne JL, and EV Berersin. Body Image, Media, and Eating Disorders. Academic
Psychiatry, 30.3 (2006)
Sharlene Hesse-Biber, Patrica Leavy, Courtney E. Quinn, and Julia Zoino. The Mass Marketing
of Disordered Eating and Eating Disorders: The Social Psychology of Women, Thinness and
Culture. Science Direct, (April 2006)
Devor, Aaron. Becoming a Member of Society: The Social Meanings of Gender. Blending:
Confronting the Limits of Duality. 1989: 34-43. Print