Everyday female teenagers, including myself, are encountered with images of exceptionally thin and airbrushed models and celebrities on media such as movies, TV shows, magazines, newspapers, and ads. It is estimated that a person views 400-600 advertisements everyday (Nottingham Post, 2012, para. 1). When teenage girls such as me see images of thin and airbrushed models and celebrities, the first instinct is to compare own body image with the other side of the screen. This negatively affects teenage girls body images. It gives them a false sense of beauty and necessity. In fact, three of the most significant negative impacts on teenage girls body images are comparing oneself to others, media, and celebrities (Holland, 2012, 3). Girls are set to believe that whatever celebrities represent is a norm as their images are constantly displayed throughout media known as an effective and influential marketing technique. .
The images of perfect women as described by society have a much stronger effect because teenage is a stage when priorities are development of sense and personal identity. I myself am a teenage girl and I have compared myself to all the images of these perfect models and celebrities and it did nothing good to my self-esteem, in fact it made me feel worse about my own body. The connection between my personal experience and the societal issue is known as sociological imagination. The term sociological imagination defined and coined by C. Wright Mills in 1959 is the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society (Mills, 1959). .
According to Erikson's Eight Stages of Psychosocial Personality Development, from ages twelve to eighteen, the basic conflict that exists in teenagers is identity versus role confusion (McLeod, 2013, Para. 1). For teenagers, the most obvious way to find their place is by comparing themselves to their peers, and noticing qualities that make them socially successful.