social media enables you to stay in touch with family and friends and
network with new contacts but with the right itself is another term described
as taking a self picture view usually with your cell phone and then
posting it online it can lead to devastating results
doctor susan was born as an author in psychology professor at you math
Amherst and she recently wrote a great article about this called your body on
display social media and yourself image
and now she's here to explain what she means by all that
doctor with brenneke so much for talking to us about this so
start-up where did the idea for this article come about
I actually read are article in NYTimes last Sunday
that talked about women in porn and how women
unkind expose being exposed to suggestive movies
are not affected in their self-concept
by seeing women objectified and I thought there was something
may be more to it than that and so I did a little digging and I found
an article about how women do self objectify more
when they're exposed to images have women looking
the city s and provocative tested matter or does it differ
according to their age is just a defect one age demographic more than another or
is it just kinda all across the board
the study that you're referring to that I wrote about was on women who were 18
to 25 who
I think are most vulnerable to this effective
self objectification which is defining yourself
as an object usually a sexual object
not as a person with emotions and feelings and thoughts
so I think that age group when you're developing your identity week on
emerging adulthood is particularly vulnerable
but I think it can affect older women perhaps even more
because their past their quote-unquote sell by date
and thought it was less attractive because they're older talk about the
impact that this is having on social media especially with the rise upsell
peace where you take a picture of yourself and you put it online
sometimes that's okay sometimes maybe
a little provocative and especially the younger girls are doing this more often
how does that play a role in all this
I think it plays a huge role we call that Facebook exhibitionism
where women parties for and it typically is women more than men
put its provocative images of that cells on Facebook in you wonder
how what are they thinking when they do that don't they realize he come back to
haunt them
but what happens is I think in the culture that we live in
it's not seen is bad and and young women especially
can't really play out all the consequences up their behavior on their
future opportunities
songs like they're trying to gain acceptance from their friends or from
maybe the people they don't even know if they're putting it on a public social
networking site
they feel that need for acceptance and that no plays a role
or could play a detrimental role in their mental health especially at such a
young
H yes that's right and I'm we can go onto the
kinda crazy pictures people post up themselves in
and the kinda peer pressure and I think it's cool but then
if you get back down to your question how does it make you feel about yourself
understudy that I i had looked at had women
talk about themselves and it was really fairly open ended
describe yourself I am in his statement 20 statements
I am playing or Who Am I and then the answer that question so if they'd been
in a condition
where they thought they were describing themselves
to and online audience and
they had just been and shown more provocative pictures a women
though self statements worth a emphasize beauty
use in cosmetics and and tryna look attractive
and that's that self object objectification
which we know is detrimental to mental health because
you're looking at yourself now as an object to be consumed by Others
rather than somebody who satisfied with yourself in your own mind
and that we were talking off-camera and now we're gonna talk about it now
at study just came out in with the new york yet the New York Film Academy
did a study gender equality and film and you're talking almost 30 percent
winning worse actually revealing attire on film or
partial or partially naked oppose to seven or nine percent
other mad and there is such a discrepancy
in Mac do you think that plays a part in
the female generation our population looking at that same a live feed on film
it must be okay I need a
be as cool as these film actor says that I see on TV
taking a place apart in it absolutely does it creates art
a kind of mindset that this isn't not only how I
could look but how I ought to look and and then there's a kind of a loss a
reality out the world out there where if you dress like one of these hola
Hollywood stars and start showing cleavage in
other other bodily parts you are not going to be taken as seriously by the
man
or women in your environment politically your work environment
so there's a kind ever its it's just ironic that women get driven to
look at to show themselves in these ways that that and up
hurting them in terms of ratings have their competence
as workers as as people in general
and it the study also showed that annie is almost twenty
32 percent I'll on teenage
female nudity has increased over thirty-two percent
from 2007 to 2012 so this is even just
female actors are characters in general this is
teenagers themselves it's almost like it's reaching eighty
a.m. a different demographic even beyond even below
18-year-old a younger generation agrawal's are growing up feeling at that
that they need to
show off their body instead of their brain and that of course like you
mentioned earlier faxer
mental health talk about were summitted
deep probing questions that need to be asked
when people read this article what is some what are questions I need to ask
themselves
I think you could ask yourself this very thing questions that they asked the
participants in the study
Who Am I and start to describe yourself
and see what bubbles up to the top omitting really great
you know we call projective test were you kind of take a very
they hours sentenced to start with and see where that leads you as you start to
see how many have your statements reef referred to
not your your competence or your
emotional qualities but your parents your outward appearance especially in
and then even further here trying to look sexually appealing
you started than see where in your own set of priorities
you fall it's definitely a
topic that needs to be discussed especially the writers social
networking in the past couple years kinda pinga focus on
how we lookin how we portray ourselves to the outside world
now sometimes even on social networking sites he also mentioned eighteen website
as well where
the focus is more on how you look as opposed to what qualities
you bring to the table do you think that
they will ever come a time where this work I write itself out or do you feel
she's the progression is going to get worse and worse well that's an
interesting question it's almost like
are what's driving the bus the bus it's not that people want to portray
themselves more provocatively so hollywood
and our culture large response it's what's driving
things is hollywood's depiction optically a women in movies and on
television
but about the online dating sites it's true I mean you when you have a picture
you have something to judge somebody by and a visual image
is extremely impactful on on the
out you as much as you try to read it you've already formed an impression the
second you look at an image
and that's what raises people's self-consciousness about and then it
eventually theirself objectification definitely a very
top broker article and I encourage everybody to read it thank you so much
her
telling us that more about it thank you Lisa it's a pleasure to be here