"The Truth About Teen Girls"

This article caught my attention because it concerned teenage girls and the media, with special mention of Gossip Girl, America's Next Top Model, 90210, and the O.C. -- all of which are familiar to me... and probably to you as well! The article talks about how teenage behavior is now is heavily influenced by what we watch on TV, and may have detrimental long term consequences, such as the inability to maintain healthy relationships. This is worrisome because of the speed at which values are changing in today's generation. The media is presented not as the bad guy, but instead as a force that inevitably catalyzes a change in how young girls think. TV characters seem to define attractiveness in such a "narrow fashion" -- both literally and figuratively! The characters in the aforementioned TV shows all have a certain beauty in common, which teenagers desire to emulate. The article presents an interesting study about the effect of introducing TV in Western Fiji, which found that girls tried to lose weight in attempts to look more like the characters they were seeing on TV. This brought up an interesting point: perhaps the girls are not trying to take on the roles of the characters, but rather, to just look like them. Still, we get the sense that the media is telling us that "hotness is the only identity worth trying on."