Research shows that women are negatively impacted by the media’s presentation of unattainable yet desirable portrayals of women’s bodies because it causes women to be discontented with their own bodies-often leading to body dysmorphic disorder, women focus on their perceptions of themselves comparatively to what they are exposed to through media instead of simply living healthfully as they try to copy what they see as desirable in the media and are therefore losing their individuality.

Annotated Bibliography:
Alexandra Ossala (2010). The Media's Effect on Women's Body Imade. New York: Hamilton College.
In this article, Arielle Cutler, explores the emphasis that woman have on how they view themselves, beauty standards set by society, how body image is impacted by the media and the impacts of all of this on young women. It goes on to explain how she spent a summer exploring the efficacy of media literacy programs to use as a solution to the cycle of media affecting women and their body image. Arielle Cutler's findings are that the cultural standards in American society believes that the beauty standard is to be thin. Cutler explains that there is great concern for this as being thin is accepted over being average and that the norm of being thin is obsessive and unhealthy in American society. A study of girls, whom are European American and African American that are ages 7-12 years, when the media exposure is greater, such as television, they are more likely to have an eating disorder one year later and have a standard body image of being thin instead of average. The main people affected by higher exposure to media about body image are adolescent girls. As people are more aware of the effect that the media has on beauty standards and body image literacy programs have been started by women to raise awareness to other women and adolescent girls. These programs help show women and young girls how to understand the effect that the media has on body image and the current beauty standards. Cutler points out that most of the literacy programs to bring about awareness aim towards women in their 20's and 30's. She believes that through her research that the literacy programs need to aim more towards adolescents as well as have a racial and socioeconomic background.
Alexandra Ossala is a science writer based in New York who writes on many science related topics. She has had several articles published in Popular Science, Newsweek and EARTH magazine along with several other publications.
This article is relevant to the argument that women focus on the comparison of their body image perception to what they media displays.