Growing up with images of air brushed, stick thin, beautiful women causes girls to think that is what they are also supposed to look like. "By showing these images, targeting girls' insecurities about their bodies and knowing that only 2% of American women actually have this skinny body type, the media is, in a sense, promoting "starvation imagery" (Dissatisfaction with Our Bodies and Eating Disorders). Young girls will go to extreme measure to get that perfect body they see in magazines. "The national eating disorder Association (2006) reports that in the past 70 years national rates of incidences of all eating disorders have dramatically increased across the board. Bulimia in women between the ages of 10 to 39 has more than tripled" (Kovar).
20 Oct 2012. . This article it discusses the tragic numbers of people have eating disorders, and how the media’s promotion of an ideal body promotes it. An estimated 8 million Americans currently suffer from eating disorders. The media has glamorized extremely thin women resulting in many young girls feeling inferior. A study published in the Journal of Communication found that high school girls as young as thirteen are affected by the media’s portrayal of ultra-thin models and celebrities.
Her mom continues to remind her how overweight she is and says things like “Look at you! Enormous!” (Carmen, RWHC). Carmen tells her she would be beautiful is she lost weight. Ana doesn’t listen to her because she knows there’s more to a person than just looks. There is even a scene where she strips down to her lingerie at work, where they were all women, in front of her mom.
Jennifer Hoyt ENGLISH 100 7 November 2011 Thin Models Warping Girls’ Body Image “Do Thin Models Warp Girls’ Body Image” came from USA Today. It was written on September 25, 2006 by Nanci Hellmich, a reporter for USA Today for thirty years. She focuses on nutrition, diet, and fitness. The article highlights that models advertise an unhealthy weight among young females. The article states that over the years, models become thinner and thinner which sends out a message to healthy young females that they think they need to look just like them and be at an unhealthy skinny like them too.
Some say Madelyn’s grown-up beauty is giving other young girls unhealthy ideas about how they should look and these people sure know what’s good and bad. Should our 10 year olds be exposed to the world in such a way? I think not. Girls under the age of 16 should not be allowed to pose for images or walk on the runway.
Ironically, the dimensions that Barbie would not even be anatomically possible on humans. A women with her dimensions of 36-18-38 would not be able to live. The perfection Barbie portrays has influenced many women attain Barbie's body by having operations to make themselves "look like" Barbie. Cindy Jackson, founder of the Cosmetic Surgery Network, is a famous Barbie Doll human. She had more than twenty operations and dispensed more then $55,000 in her attempts to look like Barbie.
Sociocultural standards of feminine beauty are transmitted by almost all the popular media. Those media project an image that portrays what is considered as the ideal body. Most of the standards are unachievable for many women, but they do not seem to realize that a majority of the models displayed on television or in music videos are below a healthy body weight. The media send a message to women that in order to be beautiful, they must be unhealthy. For example, in music videos, most of the time girls that play a role in them are tall, white and thin.
But what a lot of young people don't realise is that it's not just education where our achievements are diminished by the media. Just a few weeks ago the newspapers were filled with reports on the "shameful state of the nation's teenagers" - "our 15 year-old girls lead the world in boozing, obesity and taking drugs" claimed one tabloid. In 500 words the journalist writing the piece managed to convince the newspaper's readers that all teenage girls in Britain were overweight, slobs, who spent hours slumped in front of the television drinking Alco pops and smoking drugs. The two case studies putting across a young person's perspective on the issue were only worthy of a small box in the corner, overshadowed by the bold headline. But this kind of reporting is not new.
It isn’t fair for a girl to open a magazine and think that the images they see are how they should look. A girl shouldn’t open a magazine and see a pore-less woman with eyes bigger than her wrist and think this is what she should strive for. I remember when I was younger and opening a magazine and seeing these girls and wondering why I was a size 9 pants in grade 7 and these girls who were older than me were a fraction of my size. If I cried that I was too fat and put myself on diets at 11, someone else is, too. The average girl starts her first diet at the age of 9… the average girl is starting her first diet before she is even out of middle school.
Beauty pageants are exploitive; they have kids that prance around in skimpy outfits. These girls in pageants really don’t want to do pageants but there parents force them to do pageants. People may say that beauty pageants aren’t always about looks. The contestants are scored on beauty, personality, evening wear, athletic wear and over all perception of the contestant. Beauty contestant ages range from 2 years old to 60 years old.