[1] Researchers, such as Mary Martin and James Gentry, have found that teen advertising reduces teenagers' self-esteem by setting unrealistic expectations for them about their physical appearances through the use of idealized models.
[6][7] According to Medimark Research Inc., a marketing research company, teenagers are important to marketers because they "have significant discretionary income; spend family money, as well as influence their parents' spending on both large and small household purchases; establish and affect fashion, lifestyle, and overall trends; and provide a 'window' into our society – a view of how it is now and what it is likely to become.
Sociocultural standards of feminine beauty are presented in almost all forms of popular media that are bombarding women with these unrealistic images that portray what is considered to be the "ideal body" within this society.
Such standards of beauty are unattainable for most women; The majority of the models displayed on television and in advertisements are well below what is considered healthy body weight.
The mindset that a person can never be "too rich or too thin" is prevalent in society, and this makes it difficult for women and girls to achieve any level of contentment with their physical appearance.
There has been a plethora of research to indicate that women are negatively affected by constant exposure to models that fulfill the unrealistic media ideal of beauty.
These types of TV shows tend to teach women that it is okay to change their image to fit the "feminine ideal", instead of encouraging them to accept the body that they already have.
[13] The mass media portrays society's standard of beauty through female models that appear to be tall, physically attractive, and visibly thin.
Advertising will rarely portray women that deviate outside of these characteristics, and when it does, societal standards don't consider them to be the “typical” model seen in mainstream media.
[5] In a study published in the Journal of Advertising, Marketing professors Mary Martin and James Gentry noted that images of blonde, thin women are predominant in mass media and that these characteristics are often portrayed as being ideal.
[2] Early researchers in the area of sex roles in the mass media examined a large number of ads at a time in order to classify and count particular types of representation (Rakow 1986).
"[1] Academic researchers Philip Myers Jr. and Frank Biocca concluded, in their study published in the Journal of Communication, that a woman's self-perceived body image can change after watching a half-an-hour of television programming and advertising.
"[16] Likewise, a study by Stice et al. in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology concluded that there is a direct relationship between the amount of media exposure that a young woman has and the likelihood that she will develop eating disorder symptoms.
[18] A study conducted by Harrison and Cantor found that media use predicted disordered-eating symptomatology, drive for thinness, and body dissatisfaction.
Martin and Gentry also found that the mass media "creates and reinforces a preoccupation with physical attractiveness in young women", which can lead to bulimia, anorexia, and opting for cosmetic surgery.
She also concluded that, "exposure to ultra-thin models in advertisements and magazine pictures produced depression, stress, guilt, shame, insecurity, and body dissatisfaction in female college students".
Seventy-five percent of young women with low self-esteem report engaging in negative activities such as "cutting, bullying, smoking, or drinking when feeling bad about themselves".
A study published in JAMA Pediatrics in January shows concerns about physique and muscularity in particular, among young males are "relatively common".
One very thorough study, however, conducted by Alison Field, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a researcher at Boston Children's Hospital, revealed that approximately 18% of adolescent boys, aged 10–17, are concerned about their body and how much they weigh.
Furthermore, Frederick and Jamal Essay from the University of Hawaii at Manoa conducted national online surveys and gathered information from 116,000 men.
[3] Similarly, Marsha Richins, former president of the Association for Consumer Research, theorized that "by late adolescence... the sight of extremely attractive models is 'old news and unlikely to provide new information that might influence self-perception".