Don't believe the hype! how do you tell teen gyrls that watch television to not believe the hype on how your "suppose" to look! It's really sad. Reason being that, many young gyrls have very very low self esteem due to the fact that the media "sells an image" it's the "Image Based" media.

It sells the way a girl is suppose to look, feel, and behave according to "societies" standards.

Unfortunately many young women are choosing to go way above and beyond to look a certain way. The way the media portrays young women, particularly teen girls, in my opinion degrades their self esteem and self worth! many times young women don't feel that they are pretty enough, sexy enough, or "enough" period because they don't look like rail thin models! Please read the article below for more info.

Love, Hugs, Kisses, Kimberlina! SweetGyrl Founder/CEO

model: Media turns women into objects Dan Berrett Pocono Record Writer March 02, 2007 EAST STROUDSBURG

In the 1970s, Ann Simonton was a piece of eye candy. As a model, she made the cover of the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated and the pages of Glamour, Cosmopolitan and Vogue, among others.But even then, she sensed that this world was unreal; eating disorder sand insecurity plagued the beautiful crowd to which she belonged."

I was part of a system that was turning real people into things and objects," Simonton told an audience at East Stroudsburg University on Wednesday night. "It's much easier to hurt a thing." She found that out first-hand. In the same month that she made the cover of Seventeen magazine, Simonton was gang-raped at knife-point in broad daylight, she said.

The experience radicalized her, and cemented the connection she saw between how women are portrayed in the media and how they are treated in the real world. Simonton founded Media Watch, a watchdog group that teaches media literacy and challenges exploitative images. She has long protested advertisers whose images she calls hurtful and degrading, particularly to women and minorities.

She has picketed Miss America contests and dressed herself as a slab of meat during demonstrations. Her efforts have landed her in jail 11 times. On Wednesday, Simonton came to ESU at the invitation of the Department of Counseling and Psychological Services. Her talk focused on how media images distort women's notions of their bodies and men's ideas of women ‹ and of themselves.

"Our main goal is to become more critical viewers of the media," she said, as she projected examples of advertisements to ESU's half-filled Keystone Room. "We are duped into thinking that, because we have 500channels, we have a choice." Simonton scrolled through a gallery of ads, noting what she saw as the worst offenders ‹ mostly the fashion industry, alcohol companies and products pitched at teenage boys, such as skateboards and video games. The style of these images ranged from muted to explicit, and from artsy to cheeky. But in nearly all of them, women were depicted flat on their back or stomach, their legs parted come-hither style.

"Seldom do they stand on their own two feet," Simonton said."It's ubiquitous. The ads become banal," she said. "It changes how we think about ourselves."Media's role in creating unhealthy views of women has long been staple of feminist criticism. Fifteen years ago, Naomi Wolf's bestseller "The Beauty Myth" showed how marketers exploit women's vulnerabilities ‹ particularly those related to their bodies ‹ to sell products. It's fertile soil because the gap between media image and reality is so stark. The average American woman stands 5-feet-3-inches tall and weighs 163 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Women with these dimensions rarely appear in the media. "The image you're trying to emulate is something that is impossible," Simonton said.But many women still try.

Symptoms of eating disorders are presenting about 10 percent of late adolescent and adult women, according to the Academy of Eating Disorders.And it is the gap between aspiration and reality that marketers seize upon, Simonton said. "They want you to feel dis empowered so that you will fill it with consumption," she said.The notion that media manipulates people's insecurities for pure financial gain is being echoed by voices from across the political spectrum, from a self-described radical feminist like Simonton to the conservative Christian group, Focus on the Family, though it's a safe bet neither would see themselves as being in league with one another.

On Wednesday, Simonton showed other images, many of which showcased discrete parts of women's anatomy to the exclusion of all else. "Women are turned into one body part," she said, showing advertisements of women's mouths, legs, hair and rear end rendered in super close-up. Or others flashing their breasts."The question is not, 'Did she choose to do this?'" Simonton said referring to the models posing in the ads, or to the young women baring all in "Girls Gone Wild" videos. "It's 'How does this affect us?'"

To many, the effect has been a coarsened, violent and hyper sexualized culture, one that has seen young children clad in form-fitting "adult"clothing and pornography entering the mainstream.One of the true victims of this situation, in Simonton's eyes, is men.In ways that range from the subtle, overt or ironic, she argued that men are told that domination and violence of each other are the chief ways to be a man.An ad for an ultimate fighting video game came up on the screen behind her. "

Tired of talking about your feelings?" the ad asked, in front of an image of a fist pummeling someone in the face."Who's being hurt by male violence?" she asked. "Men are." In 2005,men were victimized by violent crime at 1.5 times the rate that women were, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Simonton said that media images also affect men in subtler ways, by framing their ideas about women and their expectations for relationships.

She showed ads of men sitting dressed while women sat near them scantily clad, or in bondage."The unspoken rule is that men cannot be with their equal," she said."Men should be upset about this."