How Media Positively Influences Body Image

Student Name Course Instructor Date How Media Positively Influences Body Image Technological breakthroughs and developments have brought both positive and negative effects in the society. It has opened up the world into one global village where information on everything and everyone is easily accessible through the internet and most specifically through the social media platforms such as Facebook and twitter. These platforms have been able to reconnect people and families who had become strangers because of the amount of time they had not seen each other. Also it has shortened distances as people in different continents are able to connect through video calls and even exchange photos real time. However, these media platforms have destroyed people’s perception of life in general as the internet is the one stop knowledge area where all reach out before deciding on serious life choices. It has also helped shift individual perception on their physical self and the feelings and thoughts that arise from the perceptions, otherwise known as body image. Their thoughts and behaviors have completely been turned upside down with the notion that the internet and media have all the answers. The society nowadays is the complete opposite of what Henry David Thoreau, the protagonist in the novel Walden advocated for when he chose to cut himself from civilization for two good years and seclude himself deep in the forest and recollect about his life. The essay intends to analyze the positive and negative impacts of media on body image through various sources that have been written over time including the significance of the book Walden and the story of Thoreau. The traditional world of Thoreau is very peaceful as compared to the modern times characterized by the dynamic global changes brought about by the spread of the media. In the narrative Walden, Thoreau is shown as a free spirit who decided to experiment by living out in the wilderness for two years all alone and cut off from all aspects of civilization. He chooses to live a simplified lifestyle as opposed to the struggles of the city where people are up and running all the time trying to work and finance their exorbitant lifestyles. The author notes: “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a simpler and meager life than the poor. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art” (Thoreau 57). His idea of a simple life is seen through the structure he built proudly by himself that had hardly any material belongings and his farming escapades of foodstuffs outside his homestead. He compares his house to that of the Gods at Mount Olympus and he felt free despite the stark reality that he was all alone in the forest with nothing. He notes “Olympus is but the outside of the Earth everywhere” (Thoreau 93). He perceives himself free from all shackles of civilization and equates his moving in to his wooden house to the attainment of independenc...