Laura Herrmann

I believe that media has a huge impact on our health and fitness, because people orientate themselves opon the pictures they see on magazines, social media and TV. 

 

I think that the medias relationship with media can defnietly be a good thing, when it motivates people to get fit or to generally stay healthy. However there seems to be a thin line between that and becoming self critical when seing the images of super skinny and muscular people, may it be in TV, Magazines or Posters and knowing that oneself will never be that well trained or that skinny. 

 

Social media means that everyone has a voice, and everyone can contribute so when people follow very fit people on for example instagram it seems that the very fit people feel like fitness trainers and like its their job to give everyone advice on how to eat and how to exercise. This makes some people angry and frustrated. 

 

Another aspect of course is body image, and what is considered attractive by different people. Personally I would say that the woman on the image below is too buff to be attractive, and I know many people would agree however because different people have different tastes it means that the media can create an "ideal" of a body image which is not healthy. 

An example for this was when the "thigh gap trend" went around all social media platforms and many girls got obsessed with having a gap between their thighs eventhough for some it was not genetically possible because they had narrow hips, or if this meant that they had to be close to anorexic skinny. 

 

In conclusion the media's relationship to fitness can be positive and negative and I think one should just not get too obsessed with images which may have been edited and what not, if one keeps that in mind one can benefit from the positive aspects such as the motivation it gives so many people.