youth group stuff

Media in Youth Ministry - Part 6

by Erin Smith
posted on 2006-10-02

Media also promotes what a youth should be, by the very images it employs to portray teen life. For girls, there are cultural pressures to be thin enough and pretty enough; for boys there are cultural pressures to be “men” and to display their macho-ness at all times. Mary Pipher writes in her eye-opening book describing the lives of adolescent females,

Dieting and dissatisfaction with bodies have become normal reactions to puberty. Girls developed eating disorders when our culture developed a standard of beauty that they couldn’t obtain by being healthy.

The most common role for women in media is the sex-object. Women’s bodies are used to sell products; not just any bodies, but the thin and pretty ones, the ones who wear make-up and wear expensive clothing (or no clothing!). What kind of message are we sending to youth if we do not make comment on the unrealistic and unfair gender marketing techniques employed to sell products? Ask your group of girls how many of them have flipped through a Seventeen magazine and felt unattractive and unworthy in one way or another. My guess is that all of them will raise their hand.

Tags: media youth+ministry