Women’s fashion and style magazines are harmful to female teens.

Women’s fashion and style magazines are harmful to female teens

Fashion means an extensive choice or one can also say a set of custom that mark an era or a specific place, especially if it is related to decorate or dress. Is mass taste that has been adopted or imposed against anything either clothing, colors, music; usually anything that is related to beautifying oneself. We all have different tastes in everything, for example when dressing. Some use more reserved clothing while others do not, there are people who use more cheerful clothes while others prefer to go more elegant, but everything goes through times and according to fashion and style that put will vary the type of clothing that is always used in accordance to taste. Fashion expresses the current, modern, which takes in a given period, but the current trend is not eternal and is changing quickly.

This is a very current issue, since we are in a world of superficiality and advertising blitz, such as fashion and style magazines, I want to argue that women’s fashion and style magazines are harmful, it show the “perfect” and “successful” woman, so teenagers that have not yet defined their identity get confused and follow the wrong models.

Today fashion and style affect us in different ways in the personality of each person, especially in female teens because they aren’t all clear in their ideas as an adult and their personality is not completely defined, anything can influence in one way or another. The general consequence of fashion and style is important factor in people that is “self-esteem”.

For many people to feel good is value themselves, but there are thoughts wrong by the bad influence or bad reception fashion and style concept are factors that influence the behavior of these people as: feeling like you are physically well for other people, which may eventually lead to more serious problems such as anorexia and bulimia problems. Women’s fashion and style magazines are harmful to female teens because magazines don’t transmit good things.

First reason, it transmit a false prototype of beauty, it influence the way of thinking in the society about how you have to look like and what type of fashion and style will be accepted by the society, if you are not skinny, you aren’t beautiful . So those magazines are changing the mind of female teens from being herself to being a person that society wants. Girls stop eating, that case are the bulimia and the anorexia, because they want to be tiny like the models, or because the society said that they aren’t in fashion, that they look bad or ugly, influenced maybe by the magazines.

(Teen Magazines…) Bodies are priority for teenagers. It wasn't always thus. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of "The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls," says: "The body has become the central personal project of American girls. This priority makes girls today vastly different from their Victorian counterparts. Although girls in the past and present display many common developmental characteristics--such as self-consciousness, sensitivity to peers and an interest in establishing an independent identity--before the 20th century, girls simply did not organize their thinking about themselves around their bodies. Today, many young girls worry about the contours of their bodies--especially shape, size and muscle tone--because they believe the body is the ultimate expression of the self."

The second reason is the anorexia and bulimia are very serious diseases that are taking place years ago to the present. One of the main causes of these disorders is the fashion. Some people have wrong concept of fashion, which influences people. These concepts argue that to be fashionable one must have a suitable weight, and be seen “good” by society. Which affects the behavior of people and the desire to “feel good” and “look good” for others and not for themselves or what is actually look good, which causes psychological confusion that causes mental disorder food.  (Pearson) According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, nearly 70 percent of girls in grades five through 12 said magazine images influence their ideals of a perfect body. In so-called “pro-anorexia” forums, posters write about watching fashion shows and combing magazines for “thinspiration.”

Another reason is the economic factor which is observed as people even though they do not have the resources to maintain their basics needs prefer to use that little economic solvency to be fashionable and “dressing all right”.

Living in society of consumerism that is part of the daily routine, many people suffer from what is called compulsive shopping. It can seriously affect economic life and at the same time, social. Shopaholic as it somehow appears because the consumer is surrounded by a cornucopia of advertising that makes her want to have it all, this psychological disorder occurs in young people who want to be fashionable thus becoming compulsive buyers who wants to buy everything they see in fashion to feel a satisfied way with what they buy and thus raise their status.

Opponents say that women’s fashion and style magazines aren’t harmful to female teens because magazines are just entertainment, and they show girls that beauty is good and help them to understand their women’s beauty. Magazines shows ideas of style and each person is able to choose their own style; the magazines just provide fashion updates and news about trends and styles, but it doesn’t mean that girl have to follow that ideas, because everyone is free to choose their own style. (Positive effects) Because it is a way of expressing oneself, a teenage girl that has the confidence to dress in her own personal style shows signs that she is comfortable with who she is and is becoming. As a teenage girl learns to develop her own style and sense of fashion, she is also learning that it is not always in her best interests to follow the ways of others, especially the masses. Additionally, she will learn how to be creative and use others’ ideas to help develop her own ideas, as she learns how to borrow from others’ clothing styles to form her own style. Ultimately, teenage girls like this will grow to be strong, confident, and independent, while also respecting the potential value of other ideas and ways of doing things. 

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