Pressures of Being Thin

On top of this, 69% of girls in 5th-12th grade reported that magazine pictures and runway models influenced their idea of a perfect body shape (only 5% of the female population naturally has the body type portrayed as ideal in advertisement). This is obviously a problem because, growing up, girls everywhere are told that they’re pretty and that being pretty is the most important thing about them and they start basing their worth on their looks. But then, every single woman they see on TV, in movies, in magazines, any woman considered “hot” and “beautiful” doesn’t look like them anymore, which brings on deadly disorders like anorexia and bulumia that wreck the lives of young girls. Since 90% of people with eating disorders are women between the ages of 12 and 25, we should be asking ourselves “what is causing my child to develop destructive habits at such a young age?” The answer is that they’ve been told that the type of body

Furthermore, media surrounds teenage girls in today’s culture. It is impossible to escape the sight of media. The media’s constant idealistic beauty is ever present to a vast amount of self-conscious girls. This image of beauty causes girls to have low self-esteem (Clay, Vignoles, and Dittmar). Media defining this perfect body image causes many adolescent girls to feel dissatisfied with their bodies and become depressed. “Viewing ultra-thin or average-size models led to decreases in both body satisfaction and self-esteem in adolescent girls aged eleven to sixteen, with changes in self-esteem fully mediated by changes in body satisfaction” (Clay, Vignoles, and Dittmar).

It seems like every young girl dreams of becoming a model these days. Every young girl has the desire to get thinner than other girls in order to look like models on T.V, magazines and so on. The New York Times publishes articles for the majority of the audience to read, which is mostly adults. Mim Udovitch’s article, “A Secret Society of the Starving” talks about two major eating disorders that are anorexia and bulimia within many girls. Udovitch reports stories about three girls that are going through these disorders or have gone through them. The three girls Udovitch includes are Claire, Chaos, and Futurebird. Ken Jackson’s interpretation of

In a recent survey done by the National institute on Media and the Family, fifth graders, ten year old boys and girls told researchers they were dissatisfied with their own bodies after watching a music video by Britney Spears or a clip from the TV show “Friends.”(4) If this isn’t shocking enough, the research group reported that at the age of thirteen, fifty-three percent of American girls are “unhappy with their bodies.” This grows to seventy-eight percent by the time the girls reach seventeen. Also, eating disorders are beginning to start at an alarming young age. Statistics show that girls are developing eating disorders at the age of six.(1) Young girls that are exposed to appearance focused television programs, and magazine shows feel that they need to look like the models that they see. Most of these girls are not even have fully developed bodies yet and are already trying to perfect themselves. One girl had even shared how one of her best friends discovered that her fifth grade cousin was bulimic. Girls at that age should not even be concerned with their bodies yet and eating disorders being developed is a harsh wake up call as to how young girls everywhere are being effected by the media each and everyday.

The media plays a major role in the way our society sets certain standards and forms opinions. No matter where we go, the media is everywhere. The message that the media illustrates today is that “thin is in”. When was the last time you flipped through a magazine or through the television channels without seeing some type of advertisement promoting a new diet or new product being promoted by a super thin model or actress? Young girls are the main targets for new products. It is common for young girls to be obsessed with what is “in”. The message that young girls are getting from the media is that having bones sticking out is the way to look. They then become preoccupied with their bodies and self image. “ The exposure to ideal images coincides with a period in their lives where self regard and self efficacy is in decline, where body image is at its most fragile due to physical changes of puberty and where tendency for social comparison is at its peak” (www.eating-disorders.org.uk/docs/media.doc). The media illustrates to young girls an “idealized” shape which leads to being beautiful, popular, successful, and loved but which is not realistic to have unless you have the “idealized” shape. Therefore, they believe that their lives will be perfect as long as they are thin and have the “idealized” shape. The two main sources of media that reach young girls are television and magazines.

In fact, media is contributing to many false advertisements and unrealistic images that cause eating disorders. Media gives us these false beauty standards by making teens think they have to be thin and tall. Meanwhile, many teens want to be like the models and they try to be thin but instead of doing it the healthy way. The way they do it is to skip meals and that develops eating disorders. For instance, Arnett says, “Marketing and advertisement agencies focus on models such as tall, thin women or a muscular man with a chiseled jawbone when casting for photo shoots and television commercial” (265.) Therefore, we experience and seen is that the media do give us a false beauty standard which makes teens want to do everything that is possible to become like models. This has contributed

Magazine advertisements cause eating disorders. In the article “Skinny models 'send unhealthy message'”, it states ”In 1998, a survey by the Bread for Life campaign, cited by the Eating Disorders Association, showed that 89% of women between 18 and 24 wanted more "average sized" models used in magazines.” It also says, “"Advertising, in particular, may influence young people's perception of fashion and beauty and attitudes towards food. Young women may compare themselves to extremely thin models,

The subject of this article are young girls, mainly who are in their teenage years, but also the parents of teenage girls. However, anyone can be impacted and learn from this article. This article questions why society drills the idea of thinness into the minds of people, and every reader can take a different stance and have a different opinion on the issue. Some people may take a stance and say that individuals, themselves, are the only influence on their body image. However, others may take the stance and say that society, as a whole, has a huge influence on an individual and their body image. The author of this article, Erica Goode, includes many quotes from parents of teenage girls, who feel as if they need to go to extreme measures to fit in with society. In this case, the author is creating the stance that society plays a role when it comes to influencing an individual. Goode also provides many

Walking into the library at most high schools brings to the eye an array of fashion magazines in the front shelves. Most schools acknowledges that fashion has a large audience, but the skinnier and skinnier models have created a large group of people with eating disorders and bad self-images. In her article “What’s Wrong with Skinny?” that discusses eating disorders linked to the fashion industry, Lisa Hilton states that women are “so pathologically stupid that they are unable to distinguish the fantasy of the runway from the realities of their own bodies”. Fashion is something that many girls let influence them into changing how they dress, feel, and eat; the skinnier the models are (or are “retouched” to look), the more it supports eating

It appears that most people with eating disorders have some level of underlying pathology. This pathology looks like either anxiety or depression. This is good news to a clinician. We are able to effectively treat anxiety and depression very well. If eating disorders are caused by some underlying anxiety or depression then logic would dictate that it is a symptom of anxiety or depression, rather than a unique

The culture of media has now taken a large affect on young girls and their body images. Young girls are feeling dissatisfied with their bodies because of the way society views women. The media tells us what to look like, what clothes to wear, make-up, what cars to drive, and sometimes what to eat. Media is changing people constantly through advertising and by showing us the looks and fashions of celebrities. Advertising has negative effects on the formation of oneself as seen through the nature of the promotion of its’ products. This effect is particularly prevalent among young adolescent girls. Young girls feel the need to join dietary plans or result to eating disorders Advertising in society results in negative effects on girls through self-image that leads to harmful consequences. The media is the biggest factor contributing to girls’ dissatisfaction with their bodies, causing eating disorders.

According to the article entitled, The Fashion Industry May Be Linked to Poor Body Image and Eating Disorders, psychologists and eating disorder experts say the fashion industry has gone too far in pushing thin image ideals on women and young girls. Professor of psychiatry at Rush Medical College in Chicago and Vice President of the American Psychiatric Association states “we know seeing super-thin models can play a role in causing anorexia.” This article argues that the common thin, sexy ideal in our culture and society has caused many women and girls to dislike their bodies and have poor self image, a body dissatisfaction that can lead to unhealthy weight control behaviors and

Therefore, the commendation of such look and shape commercializes unhealthy body image and procreates eating disorders. Unfortunately, at present the commercialism of a perfect body is encountered by almost everyone on everyday basis. The public is bombarded daily with images of glamorously thin women in commercials, on billboards, in movies in magazines and etc?According to Melanie Katzman, a consultant psychologist from New York, the media has actively defined the thin ideal as success and treats the body as a commodity. (Rhona MacDonald, 2001) It is evident that the persistent advocating of the media and the society produced a constant pursuit of thinness, which became a new religion. A study conducted by Harvard researchers has revealed the effect of media and magazines on adolescent girls in high schools. The children were exposed to fashion magazines and television commercials, and a while after were given self-rating surveys. The study found that sixty-nine percent of the girls said that magazine pictures

Eating disorders stem from a combination of psychological, biological, and social factors. Feelings of depression and anxiety along with daily stressors can contribute to

A large contributing factor to this problem is that many people in the fashion world encourage the use of overly thin models in editorials and fashion shows. For example, as Kathryn Shattuck, What's On Today: [The Arts/Cultural Desk], mentions that Kelly Cutrone, world renowned fashion publicist, encourages, “Clothes look better on thin people. The fabric hangs better” (1). The fashion industry’s emphasis on being thin and its use of extremely underweight models in unacceptable. Many people would agree that the fashion industry plays the majority role in eating disorders, but Lisa Hilton, British Vogue writer, disagrees. Hilton argues, “Its objective is selling clothes, and the consensus remains that in order to achieve this, models need to be thin . . . Fashion is about fantasy, about impossibility, about, dare we say it, art. Most women can’t tell the difference” (1). Hilton condescendingly continues to refute the criticisms that models are too thin and the fashion industry encourages eating disorders.