According to recent research, Karen is just one of the silent majority of teenage girls who suffer from a distorted body image caused by unrealistic stereotypes of women in the media and the resulting high expectations for the feminine appearance. According to About-Face, an online media literacy Web site, a study of 36,000 students in Minnesota found that Caucasian middle school females were three times more likely than their male peers to say that they were critical about their bodies and were more likely to believe that others perceive them negatively. Similarly, a recent informal Silver Chips poll of 100 Blair females revealed that 84 percent of those surveyed have felt insecure around male peers because of their negative perceptions of their own appearances. Ninety-four percent of those surveyed also said that they would alter at least one aspect of their physique if given the opportunity. The power of pop culture In its many different forms, the idealized and often unattainable standard of female beauty and appropriate feminine behavior is constantly present in the media and is reinforced through the similar insecurities of friends and peers.
Many girls scorn their true bodies for a false body.
Karen admits that she feels pressure from the media to conform to the standard female body type. If you look at a magazine and see these girls with perfect bodies, you want to look like them too. Junior Joanna Canizales, who says she resists the media's influence on the way she feels about herself, believes that the ideal body type belies the realities of the female form. Those women look sickly and I don't see a lot of people who really look like that. While some females refuse to acknowledge the idealized image of women as a legitimate goal, women who feel pressured to conform to the feminine standard of beauty because of the way males may perceive them may not always be unjustified in feeling insecure.