Providing a strong cultural and personal role model may be more important than attempting to socially engineer the messages teens and all citizens receive. The lesser susceptibility of certain ethnic groups to media pressures to live up to an ideal of thinness or physical perfection highlights the complex interplay between cultural, social, and psychological factors that produce self-esteem and what might be called body image. The interplay of these factors is more important in creating a 'body image' than what constitutes an individual's media exposure.
This is an important topic of research because it highlights the fact that censorship of media has limited value in engineering positive social results. While it would be tempting and easy to suggest that developing minds and bodies should be shielded from toxic media influence as though it were the plague, this type of isolation would have a limited effect. It would not screen out the cultural and personal influences that impact an individual's susceptibility to the media, and certainly would do little to impact the biological and genetic hard-wiring within some brains that predispose them to develop eating disorders...
Part of growing up is becoming a critical consumer of the media, and one possible reason the fact that individuals who consume 'more' media sources seem less apt to have negative body images is that they are more critical viewers of the various images and messages they find themselves bombarded with on a daily basis.
Works Cited
Girls get anorexia 'because their brains are wired differently' (17 Dec 2007). The Daily Mail. Retrieved 26 Oct 2008 at ttp:/ / www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-502705/Girls-anorexia-brains-wired-differently.html
Holmstrom, Amanda J. (2004). The effects of the media on body image: A meta-analysis.
Entrepreneur. Retrieved 26 Oct 2008 at http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/118953907_5.html
Media's effect on girls: Body image and gender identity. (2008). National Institute on Media and the Family. Retrieved 26 Oct 2008 at http://www.mediafamily.org/facts/facts_mediaeffect.shtml
Witmer, Denise. (2008). Teens say parents influence more. About.com. Retrieved 26 Oct 2008 at http://parentingteens.about.com/od/teensexuality/a/teen_sex7.htm
