Eradicate sexist ideals in the media

Mexico DF. (CIMAC) .- Adolescent women, who undergo restrictive diets, have 18 times more risk of suffering from bulimia or anorexia, eating disorders that are related to the identification of advertising models that promote the "worship of hyper thinness ", reveal research from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

In a press release, the feminist Olga Bustos Romero, from the School of Psychology, reported that in an investigation carried out to know the impact and contribution of advertising in the dissatisfaction with body image, in adolescent women who are in the upper secondary level, it was found that there is an important correlation.

This turns the adolescents into a vulnerable population, or at risk, to incur eating disorders (TCA), since they steadily appropriate their identities and subjectivities turning them into a "must be". "It is terrible to observe how body image becomes a social mandate, with repercussions on self-esteem and women's health. "

The specialist in gender and media, reported that the research involved 1,400 female adolescents, of whom 70 percent showed dissatisfaction with their body image. "While this is a multifactorial problem, a convincing explanation can be found in the perspective of gender, considering that from the birth, that sociocultural construction is established ".

One of the fundamental pillars of the female stereotype indicates that they will be valued (especially by men) for body and beauty, a situation that exploits advertising to sell more products, presenting models based on the cult of thinness as an idea, leaving the million-dollar profits companies , because it has become a consumer industry, emphasized the UNAM specialist.

 

Built stereotype

 

Advertising has "assigned a stereotype of a transnational woman, that does not correspond to the ethnic characteristics of Mexican women. Our bodies are different from that image they try to impose. "

Bustos Romero, considered that there should be a co-responsibility of the media of communication, established in articles 38, 41 and 42 of the General Law on Women's Access to a Life Free of Violence, to eradicate sexist ideals.

In addition to designing and implementing programs aimed at forming critical audiences, with a gender focus, so that citizens also have a leading role in these changes.

Research conducted at the School of Psychology, indicate that 10 percent of those who suffer from bulimia and anorexia, are at risk of dying, and 30% of suffer kidney problems , liver or digestive tract.


Video Medicine: The data behind Hollywood's sexism | Stacy Smith (March 2024).