The Role of Mass Media in Self-Worth

The first and possibly most important step to avoid the pitfalls of how food and body play an outsized role in modern life is actually not related to food. Instead, we all need to focus on the elements of who we are and what we value in order to put food and weight in their proper place.

In many ways, food and body are defaults to represent self-worth and life priorities. There is an abundance of evidence to show that dieting, body focus and eating disorders arose in large part due to the inception of mass marketing. Only through the creative but insidious generation of images that pervaded our culture did these issues emerge. As media continues to grow and spread into every facet of our lives, we all struggle not to embrace food and weight as imperatives for a meaningful life.

I don’t mean to imply that food and weight haven’t had their place throughout human history, but media allows messages and images to spread much more widely and powerfully than ever before, and, as social beings, we are not wired to ignore the messages.

The only way to push back against the powerful societal messages is an active, directed approach. We need to spend time thinking about, considering and engaging with values and morals that are most important to us. We need to make decisions about how we want to eat for our own well being whether it’s based on how we feel, what we enjoy or the role food plays on our lives.

We need to embrace images of all sorts of bodies to counter the pervasive messages around thinness. We need to see the positive in our physical selves, our bodies and our appearance. We need to look for messages from people who think about and view bodies as beautiful in all shapes and sizes.

If we are passive about how we consider ourselves as humans, we remain very susceptible to the idea that our self-worth is based solely on food and body. But we also are very adaptable so making time to create our own sense of selves and our own thoughts about food and body that can counter the effects media has on each and every one of us.