Media Is a Mirror--or Is It... A Comment on the "Midriff"

It's hard to determine which comes first, the chicken or the egg?  The media portrayal or what actually happens?  The answer is much more complex than simply a binary response.  In my opinion, what happense is that the media instills within girls from a young age the desire to grow up, and then proceeds to feed off of that by exaggerating and dramatizing the image of "grown-up" females. 

Independence is something that most kids look forward to.  Why?  Because the media sugarcoats the idea of being older, and surpassing adolescence.  Shows and movies such as Gossip Girl, 90210, The O.C., Pretty Little Liars, Mean Girls, and others that target teenage girls glorify growing up.  This establishes the desire to look and act older within young girls.  So, media then exploits this desire that they themselves have created, and construct more advertsing, products, movies, etc., that feeds off of the pre-established idea of wanting to grow up.  This media now shows the specifics that girls buy into--in other words, the "Midriff" image.  This girl already has independence, even if she's a minor.  In the eyes of the audience, who is primarily teenage girls, she is physically perfect.  Every material item that she has, all the teenage girls aspire to have.  This component additionally perpetuates the capitalistic nature of media messaging, as teenage girls will then go buy the products that the Midriffs are shown to have. 

The most prominent characteristic of Midriffs is the sexualization of the characters.  This effect on teenage girls is obvious: upon seeing this, they will want to be perceived similarly by peers, and thus will emulate the qualities of the Midriff.  This is instilling the message in young girls that sexualization is ok.  I'm not saying this is bad, but I do think that the motives are.  A lot of  young girls aren't dressing like Midriffs because they themselves want to, they are doing it to look "cool" or to keep up with the trends.  They're doing it to attain popularity and receive attention.  In my opinion, this is where the Midriff's impact becomes clearly degenerate.  Making girls change who they are, or at least how they exhibit themselves, in order to make a profit is something I strongly disagree with.  This is manipulation at its finest, and its taking advantage of the naivety of young girls who aren't independent in their own thinking yet.  However, it's difficult to change this on such a large-scale.  Young girls, along with the majority of the rest of the population, will be impacted in some kind of way by media manipulation.