The Media: Does it Cause Eating Disorders?.
Ever since an early age we have been bombarded with media messages and images that give us the idea that in order to be successful and happy you must be thin and beautiful. These messages and images are mostly targeted towards women. The media emphasize thinness as a standard for female beauty, and the bodies idealized in the media are frequently atypical of normal, healthy women. Today, you cannot read a magazine or newspaper, turn on the television, listen to the radio, or shop at the mall without being assaulted with the message that fat is bad. Some researchers believe that the media intentionally normalize unrealistically thin bodies in order to create an unattainable goal, which causes consumers to buy constantly. The fact that the diet industry alone generates $33 billion in revenue suggests that these researchers may be right. Consistent exposure to female-oriented commercials and ads may influence young women to become self conscious about their bodies and to obsess over their physical appearance as a measure of their worth. The trend toward being slim, skinny and even anorexic in order to fit the American standard of beauty is as scary to me as it is unhealthy. For, today's fashion models weigh 23% less than the average female, and a young woman between the ages of 18-34 has a 7% chance of being as slim as a catwalk model and a 1% chance of being as thin as a supermodel. However, 69% of girls in one study said that magazine models influence their idea of the perfect body shape, and the acceptance of this unrealistic body type creates an impractical standard for the majority of women. .
1. Cover after cover, and one movie and television show after another portrays images of slender women. While we may envy Janet Jackson's abs and slender physique, it is not realistic nor is it healthy to harm our bodies to look just like her. Janet, like most entertainers and television/movie stars, has costly personal trainers and exercises her body for hours to obtain the look she wants.
