doxa.comunicación | nº 29, pp. 61-74 | 65
July-December of 2019
Carlos Fanjul Peyró, Lorena López Font and Cristina González Oñate
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
is to say, a body image in which attributes of the adult and adolescent are mixed. And the clothes they wear must highlight the body’s shapes, mainly pectorals and the waist (Cabrera and Fanjul, 2012).
In a society such as a consumer society, it is no longer enough to value being and claim with words the plurality of attitudes, but that being and that plurality must be manifested directly through behaviour and, above all, through the image. Advertising offers the consumer momentary models of identification and projection, as to say, it is continually proposing a system of symbolic models through which it can satisfy both the desire to join a social group and the temptation of metamorphosis, a change for triumph. This idea, immensely spread by publicity that success at all levels is achieved through a perfect body, proffers a problem when there is a clash between dream and reality, when there is a constant dissatisfaction when the suggested ideal cannot be reached and feelings of guilt and frustration appear (Pérez Gauli, 2000; Fanjul, 2008).
In this context, adolescents are the most vulnerable public to allow themselves to be enraptured by the world of “appearance”, allowing themselves to be pressured and dragged in a “pseudo-conscious” way by idealized canons of physical beauty and by a whole network of services and products destined to shape their appearance, with the objective of achieving these social referents and the benefits that are connotatively associated with them.
As this is a crucial phase in the evolutionary development people which significantly marks the future personality of the adult, it is common to find feelings of indecision in young people, apathy or frustration that are only a sample of the difficulties they go through in the search for personal maturity. It is in this moment where the influence of the environment will be decisive and where in a clearer way the pressure exerted from the family, school and social nucleus of the young will be determinant in the development of his personality (Lang, 2014).
Internet and social networks are the natural habitat of today’s teenagers, as they were born and developed immersed in the digital society. Devices such as the computer or mobile phones provide an open window to everything through which the child can view. And when “everything” is said, it implies any type of content or product, whether or not legal, whether or not it is convenient for the training of the user who consults, downloads or requests. In addition, unlike the physical world, there is no space or time coordinates on the Internet; in other words, a minor will be able to interact with or access content at any time and from any place when connected. There are no limitations and everything is available and within reach of a click (Rial et al., 2015).
When an adolescent perceives that his physical reality does not meet the standards defined and disseminated by advertising and the media, he finds a whole series of resources and contents (nutritional information, exercise charts, you tubers that explain training and sports routines...) on which he blindly relies to guide his effort and dedication in order to achieve the desired muscular development and definition. The dangers of this medium are hidden behind the freedom of content and the absence of censorship. Any adolescent will be able to access numerous contents that are prescribed or recommended by “anonymous entities” or covert entities that assure that if they execute certain routines or consume certain products they will achieve their physical objective (García, 2015).