How Influencers on Instagram are Ruining Your Self Esteem

If you scrolled across Instagram you have probably seen Kylie Jenner posing on her yacht in a bikini seemingly having the perfect body or models like Bella Hadid's perfect selfies. These things are ruining your self esteem. You may not know it but subconsciously you are comparing your life to girls with lots of money who can afford face enhancers, plastic surgery, photo editors, and much more to improve their appearance. It was proven on many occasions that Kylie Jenner who is one of the most influential towards the teenage girl demographic, was finding ways to look better artificially. Some examples include her altering her images to make her body look appealing, getting plastic surgery, and her most famous yet most controversial lip fillers. This is giving young girls the wrong message. They know think that you're supposed to look flawless and have a body that isn't actually possible to get without surgical procedures. I believe that this needs to change by celeberties being open to retouching or just cutting this false beauty trend by being transparent about their procedures.

Reflection

Keeping this blog and learning about media literacy has not only made me a more aware consumer but it has done great things to me such as boost my self esteem. Before keeping this blog, I never knew how much the amount of media you consume a day affected your mental health. The more media you encounter the chances increase of you buying something that wasn't needed or even judging yourself since you don't look like that "perfect"model you see on Instagram. This soon becomes a problem when you constantly buy into trends since everyone has it or compare yourself to high standards you cannot reach without lots of money. Being aware with media consumption helps with avoiding these things. It makes you realize the technique advertisers use to make you feel inferior causing you to long to get your hands on a product. For example, I longed to get a new iPhone but I quickly realized that the updates were very minor and that Apple wanted you to feel like you needed a wide frame camera. During Black Friday I also resisted the urge to go shopping only because I knew that time pressure was a tactic that advertisers use to get consumers to spend. By knowing the implicit messages of a product I do consider myself to be more media literate.
My media consumption habits changed a lot this semester since I now limit the time I spend on social media to avoid the subliminal messages that are meant to harm people by telling them that they are inferior without the product. Overall, I believe that it is very important to have media literacy since lots of money will be spent without it. Like I said being an educated consumer is very important to avoid feeling inferior and to feel like you need a certain product in order to fit in or be accepted. In the end I got many things out of this blog. Some things that I got out of this blog are media literacy, the implicit messages that Instagram influencers use, and many more. Some other thoughts I have on media is that I think it's extremely evil to those that cannot afford an iPhone or the new trendy shoes. These things can be pretty pricey and the people who are well off can face some pretty difficult personal battles with pricey trendy products that everyone has.

Missrepresentation: The Struggle of Being a Women

On Monday I watched the documentary "Misrepresentation" that focused on how women are pressured to look and act a certain way. I found that most of these conflicts that were discussed in the documentary are still problems that occur today. For example in the documentary female politicians were sexualized which still happens in 2020. An example of a female politician getting sexualized is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, according to Huff Post men are fascinated by her due to her young age and attractive appearance while being involved in politics which is quite rare. Another struggle that women face is underrepresentation in the media. In entertainment women are rarely not involved with romance. In plots there is always some love story in movies with a female lead. Most likely you cannot recall a single movie or TV show where a woman is the protagionist without a love life. This is ongoing unfortunately. Women in leadership is a concept that isn't widespread in America since it's reported that only 23% of the House of Representatives are women. This is proof that society makes it so that women have a difficulty leading. Lack of women in politics can have negative effects on girls since they have nobody to get inspired by causing a dearth of women in power. This can then cause males to have a step above women which many do not favor.











https://www.huffpost.com/entry/conservatives-afraid-alexandria-ocasio-cortez_n_5c38cb74e4b05cb31c421cc3

How Marketers Cater to Teens

In the Frontline episode "Merchants of Cool" they explain what makes teens want to buy something or watch a certain movie. The narrator explains that in a 90s tv show "Cruel Intentions" there are lots of sexual innuendos an lots of teens making out. The tv show's producer explains that teens would not be satisfied without these scenes since they like seeing scenes with sexual undertones. The marketing director explains that teens want sex therefore they have to cater to teens. MTV caught on to this sexual trend and created this tv show called "Spring Break" which follows wild partying teens around during Spring Break. Spring Break displays teens as young as 13 years old grinding and sexually dancing. Another thing that is deemed cool is rebellion and listening to rock and roll. It's explained that there is a growing subculture that does not care about consequences and parties to rock and roll music. The co-chairman of Interscope Records explains that there is no way to stop the growing rebellious teen epidemic since the rebellious teen stereotype appeals to a lot of teens. In conclusion, teens will follow things with sexual undertones and rebellious music bands since it's deemed "cool."

What is a Midriff and a Mook?

Recently I watched the "Merchants of Cool" by Frontline and I have to say that it opened my eyes on what sells and makes a something well known and cool. The documentary covered the topic of sexualizing premature girls to make things sell. An example is Britney Spears, she was considered a midriff or a young teen girl that is sexualized. This earned her record label an abundance of money due to the majority of teens enjoying what they see when she performs. Midriffs definitely influenced young girls to be more mature. Young girls not only watched celebrities with lots of sex appeal, they aspired to replicate their style and habits as described by the episode. The midriffs helped girls gain confidence and empower them as well as encourage them to flaunt their sexual side. The male version of this is a mook. A mook is a crude young boy portrayed in the media to capture the attention of teens to market shows to ads. Although not sexualized, a mook sells to the majority of teen boys. After MTV displayed mooks and midriffs in their shows, their ratings and viewership went to an all-time high.

Anti Vape Ads

Have you ever seen an anti vape ad? Chances are you have. You probably have seen the one with puppets saying that vaping kills. I came to question how are these ads effective? In my opinion, I would believe that most teens would probably ignore these ads due to the cringiness of the puppets. A puppet with an annoying voice telling you to stay away from vaping doesn't seem like an effective approach to tackling teen vaping. Since teens don't like being told what to do, imagine how uneffective a puppet telling them that what to avoid is a good idea. I personally think that showing anti vape ads are good for spreading awareness but not for ending teen vaping. Although these puppets do look creepy, they catch attention which brings attention to the anti vape movement. The attention may not always be positive though.

December 15, 2019

The Fall of Instagram?

Recently Instagram announced that they will be removing likes from the platform completely. Since Instagram is a social media platform that is heavily focused on likes, I predict that people will eventually lose interest in posting. Think about it like this, if someone gets lots of recognition from an audience they will do a lot to get more recognition. In this case, recognition is likes.  The more likes a post gets the more successful it is perceived.  This feeling of success is highly addictive which is why people who become successful on Instagram have over 200 posts. You don't have to be successful in order to feel this feeling of success. Even if you are an average person getting 30 likes on a post, the day you get 200 likes on a post you will be encouraged to post more and make your content better. This is a strategy that Instagram favors in their algorithm. I believe that this is why Instagram is so widespread. Removing this feeling of validation will make people's purpose in posting fade. Because of this, I believe that this will be Instagram's downfall.

https://www.businessinsider.com/instagram-removing-likes-what-it-will-look-like-2019-11

December 15, 2019