Women Against the Media's Portrayal of Women
 
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A scan of recent research, polls, and surveys suggests that:

  • the average woman is 5'4", 140 to 145 lbs, and wears a size 11-14 dress
  • store mannequins are 6' tall and are approximately  34-23-24
  • the average model is 5'11" and 117 lbs
  • models are thinner than 98% of women
  • the average size of models has become thinner and has stabilized at 13-19% below physically expected weight
  • 25 years ago a model would typically would weight 8% less than the public, now it is typical for a model to weigh 23% less than an average woman
  • the modeling industry standards suggest women should have waists no larger than 25" and hips no larger than 35 1/2 inches, they also recommend measurements of 34-24-34
  • 50% of teenage girls think they should be dieting
  • 59% of 12 and 13 year old girls report low self esteem regarding their diets and their bodies
  • 80% of women are dissatisfied with their appearance
  • 45% of healthy weight women will describe themselves as overweight (only 23% of men do).
  • frequent dieting increases the chance of being depressed by 70%
  • 42% of first to third grade girls want to be thinner
  • 81% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat
  • 46% of 9 to 10 year olds are on diets sometimes or often and 51% feel better if they are on a diet
  • 80% of 10-year-old American girls diet. The number one wish for girls age 11-17 is to be thinner.
  • In one California study, by 4th grade 80% of girls were dieting
  • Eating disorders are the 3rd most common illness in female teens
  • Ninety percent of those afflicted with eating disorders are adolescent and young adult women.
  • 91% of college age females have dieted
  • By college age, 4.5-18% of women have a history of bulimia, 1 in 100 have anorexia, another 1 in 100 have binge eating, 15% have disordered eating of some type
  • There are currently 5 - 10 MILLION girls and women with eating disorders and conditions
  • 1,000 women die each year from eating related disorders
  • a direct relationship between media exposure and eating disorders has been shown in one study
  • Two-thirds of boys and girls in high school believed that being thinner would impact their lives but the majority of girls believed that this impact would be positive, and the majority of the boys believed that the impact would be negative.
  • when girls ages 14 to 18 were shown images of models (either thin or computer altered overweight models) the girls who saw the thin models evaluated themselves more negatively than those who saw the overweight models
  • anorexia nervosa rates increase among girls age 10 -19 as fashion and ideal body images promoting thinness change
  • our culture places a higher value on physical beauty in the evaluation of females than males
  • liposuction increased 389% over last decade 
  • Women's bodies are frequently used to sell products. A 1997 advertising study showed that white women in roughly 62% of ads were "scantily clad", in bikinis, underwear, etc, while the same was true for 53% of black women.
  • Between elementary and high school, the percentage of girls in the U.S. who are "happy with the way I am" drops from 60% to 29%.
  • Between 1996 and 1998, teenage cosmetic surgeries nearly doubled from 13,699 to 24,623, according to the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons
  • The average woman sees 400 to 600 advertisements per day, 4 and by the time she is 17 years old, she has received over 250,000 commercial messages through the media

Magazines

  • women's magazines have 10.5 times more ads and articles about weight loss then do men's magazines
  • 1 out of 11 ads has a message about beauty
  • in a study of 17 magazines, the largest percentage of articles were about appearance
  • 60% of white middle school girls read fashion magazines
  • magazines account for more than half the reading reported by teens
  • girls, more than boys are dissatisfied with their bodies and report magazines as their primary source of information
  • subjects exposed in a study to seeing thin models reported lower self esteem than those seeing regular or oversize models
  • 60%+ of college students feel worse after reading magazines
  • changes found in magazines between 1970 and 1990 include increase emphasis on fitness for attractiveness and a decrease in the model hip to waist ratio (becoming less curvy)

TV

  • 1 out of every 3.8 commercials sends a message about attractiveness
  • 1 out of 11 commercials has a DIRECT message about beauty
  • 69% of female TV characters are thin, only 5% are overweight
  • children and teens watch an average of 3 to 4 hours per day of TV- 22-28 hours per week
  • the average person sees between 400-600 ads per day
  • the average teen sees over 5,000 of these messages per year
  • girls and boys both report that the characters on TV are skinnier than women in real life
  • 7 of 10 girls say that they want to look like a character on TV
  • 16% of girls had dieted to look like a TV character
  • children associated worrying, crying, whining and weakness more often with female than male TV characters but male TV characters were reported to be associated with sports, being a leader and wanting to be kissed or have sex
  • Women 45 and older are only 15% of prime-time TV characters
  • Viewers are more than twice as likely to encounter a scene in which a male character predominates over a female

Media violence and video games

  • the top 10 selling games for Sega, Sony and Nintendo systems had exaggerated body forms for males and females, with female characters having excessively large breasts and small waists, women also were either fighting or took part in violence in 50% of the games
  • in 33 popular videogames, 41% had no female characters, and in 28% the female characters were portrayed as sex objects
  • almost 80% of the video games required violence or aggression as part of the strategy
  • 21% of the games depicted violence against women
  • the average American child/teen watches 10,000 murders, rapes and assaults per year on TV
  • by the end of elementary school the average child will have witnessed approximately 30,000 violent acts on TV
  • over 1,000 studies have shown that exposure to heavy doses of violence on TV leads to the likelihood of increased aggression- particularly in males
  • A study by Children Now examined the top ten selling games for each of the three most popular games console systems. The games sales for Sony PlayStation, Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo 64 were ranked by PC Data, a computer industry sales tracking company. Overall, 54% of the games surveyed contained female characters whereas 92% contained male characters. Almost half of top-selling console video games with female characters contain negative messages about girls. Those negative messages include violence, promoting unrealistic body images and stereotypical female characteristics, such as provocative sexuality, high-pitched voices and fainting.Of the games that contained female characters: 38% displayed those characters with significant body exposure: 23% exposed breasts or cleavage, 31% exposed thighs, 15% exposed behinds and 31% exposed stomachs or midriffs. In addition, 38% of female game characters had "large" breasts and 46% had "unusually small" waists. 54% involved those characters "fighting" or "being violent." Overall, 46% of games included violence. Female sexuality was often accentuated with highly revealing clothing. Female video game characters showed quite a bit of skin. Nearly one in five female characters (21%) had exposed breasts (7% fully exposed), 13% had exposed buttocks (8% fully exposed), and 20% had exposed midriffs. In addition, females were more than twice as likely as males to wear revealing clothing (20% of females and 8% of males).

Women's power in society

  • the income of women has risen 63% in the last 3 decades
  • women age 25-34 now make 83 cents for every male dollar (this has increased dramatically)
  • In 1999, 30% of women out-earned their husbands
  • women do the majority of the domestic spending, controlling their own money and often portions of their husband's earnings as well

 

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last updated 2010-06-02 13:02:29
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