While writing my final paper, I have been reading numerous articles and case studies on the topic of media and body image. I have been, many times, fully engrossed in the study, anxious to know what they have discovered.

Then I noticed... all the conclusions use phrases like "perhaphs", "maybe it's the case that", "more research needs to be done about...", "we think that ___, but not a lot of research has been done", etc.

So I realized... there are no absolute truths about the way people are affected. There is no equation, right or wrong, way to solve it so we can avoid it, etc.

We can only continue to study and infer and make up our best guesses. So what is the point of researching if the ideas behind the data are already commonly known? What light does research shed on issues? Just confirmation that peole ARE affected by things?

I'd like to think that the goal is that media literacy will keep us from being affected. But this is not true. I think things are already ingrained in us. Even while reading about the society-imposed desire for women to be thin, I found myself thinking about how I was not as thin as I should be. I'd hoped that being aware of media/society's goal would make me push away those thoughts. Guess not.