PUBLIC BASIC SCHOOL STUDENTS’ VIEWS ON HEALTH, BODY AND MEDIA BASED ON THE BRAZILIAN SOUP OPERA ‘MALHAÇÃO’

Abstract

Teenagers’ current contact with the several means of communication (TV, radio, printed media, internet, and others) leads to consequences in their lives and ends up by shaping their opinions regarding what is presented by the media discourse. Thus, this research aims at investigating how high school students of a public school in Aracaju, Sergipe – Brazil, understand and associate the relationship between body, health and media based on the Brazilian soup opera “Malhação” presented by the Brazilian TV Channel Globo. A questionnaire was used in order to collect the data, and, based on the basic school students’ answers, together with the investigated literature, themes that are recurrent in the soup opera, such as, teenagers’ worries about health, the body image diffused by media vehicles, beauty pattern and tendencies were reflected and discussed. As a conclusion, it could be observed that students recognize the existence of certain body and aesthetic patterns conveyed by the soup opera, and that, in a certain way, they follow these models in their daily lives, which, at least in the investigated group, allows the confirmation of a small influence of the TV products on teenagers’ habits as, for example, clothing and musical styles.