Violette+Faromet

“The Lie in the Mirror” To what lengths will a young woman go to look like the emaciated stick on her favorite magazine cover? The statistics are alarming. Over 2,500 girls where surveyed in the United States proving that out of “schoolgirls aged between 13 and 18…more than three-quarters said they wanted to lose weight and two-thirds had dieted in the past year” (Wykes and Gunter 1). The media is driving girls, some barely even pubescent, to drastically change their appearances. In a time in their lives when girls should be focusing on nourishing their changing bodies, they are stifling natural progression. These girls are not just faceless statistics; they’re normal girls, some just like me.

As long as I remember, I have never been satisfied with my weight. I remember meeting one of my best friends in the 6th grade, and one of the first things we talked about was how fat our thighs were. Within the next couple years, she began eating only salads at lunch, which caused many people to playfully taunt her and call her anorexic. That’s not so funny when the dangers of an eating disorder are actually considered. Her eating habits continued, including months of not eating potatoes. She, however, eventually found a healthy balance and is one of the most disciplined and healthful eaters I know. My concern about weight, however, has been growing as I have aged.

Another good friend of mine traveled to France for an extended period of time. There, he was immersed in a skinny culture. He started developing habits of restricting food and would tell me about the control he felt when abstaining from food. Around this time, I stared to stress about my weight. Eating didn’t seem like a pleasure or necessity anymore, it started to feel like a weakness or a burden. Most people considered me small, but that’s hard to believe when the mirror reflected thunder thighs, a protruding stomach, and breasts that are disproportionately small, calves that are too large in circumference and a jawline and cheekbones that aren’t prominent enough. Basically, I didn’t look like Megan Fox. Moments that I played over in my head are when a friend’s mom complimented my deep collarbones or when my friend poked my newly visible hip bones and told me I had lost weight. I often thought that my favorite feeling was when I was running purely on coffee, hunger, and lack of sleep. That was the culture I wanted to be a part of. On a blogging forum I started using last winter, I started following blogs like “No One Said This Would Be Easy,” a blog of a genre dubbed “thinspiration” which includes girls’ or boys’ struggles to reach a lower weight, including pictures of thin people and tips on losing weight quickly. Goal weights are often posted, along with links to progress blogs. Of that particular blog, the girl in charge has lost over 17 pounds in less than 2 months. Constantly subjecting myself to this type of media was just making me feel worse about myself, and all I really desired was a flat tummy.

It’s easy to see where these body image issues are coming from. The ideal body is not something that has been the same from generation to generation. In the past few decades, though, it has gone to the curvaceous Marilyn Monroe to the skin-and-bones Twiggy and models like Kate Moss, where people have to ponder how all of her organs fit inside her thin frame. Striving to look like these models, and other women in media, such as actresses like the Olsen Twins or members of high social class, like Parris Hilton, adolescent and young women are constantly in a struggle to make their bodies do what they were not meant to do.

Earlier, I mentioned the 2,500 schoolgirls and how the majority was dissatisfied with their bodies. They didn’t stop with dissatisfaction. According to Wykes and Gunter, “8 per cent of this sample reported that they had vomited during the past year to lose weight, 2 per cent had used diuretics, and 17 per cent, diet pills” (1). These are all symptoms of having an eating disorder, and it is frightening how many people exhibit this kind of behavior. Something that is thought of as a serious disease or illness, something people themselves would never get, is becoming increasingly common. These behaviors are not as strange as many people think, also--“eating disorders can include anorexic or bulimic behavior; the first involves the rejection of food and the second purging after eating” (Wykes and Gunter 1). It frightens me to admit that, although I have never done it long-term, I have kept myself from eating before. Often it was just a meal I skipped, but in order to have that beautiful body I see on television or the Internet, I was willing to stop eating for a while. Wykes and Gunter were also the source for another harrowing fact--“In the UK, recent research on 37,000 schoolchildren found 60 per cent of 14- and 15-year-olds felt overweight even though they were actually average and below weight” (1). This epidemic is not just affecting those who are overweight, but this problem is affecting everyone.

This growing problem has, fortunately, caught the eyes of people in media. //Glamour// magazine recently released a magazine with pictures of plus-sized models to show how women of every size can be beautiful. Also, Dove has been releasing commercials and workshops for their “Campaign for Real Beauty.” Dove is using diverse models to help with body images of the women and girls who use their products. According to Shari Graydon, the validity of these efforts is questioned, however, because the same people who are in charge of Dove are also in charge of Slim Fast. If the company was completely devoted to promoting changes in healthy lifestyles and image, they should not market a product devoted to weight loss that is fast and questionable in degree of health. People, however, are starting to look over this hierocracy and focus more on how it is actually helping. If more corporations start to take more steps like these, girls will have a very positive example on how to look. Instead of being bombarded with pictures of generic beanpoles, they will see women that actually look like they do in the real world: images that are not airbrushed on paper and screens, but people with pulses. Graydon also mentioned that a minimum BMI is being practiced by many modeling agencies. Instead of encouraging their models to become nothing but flesh and bones, they are making sure their models still will have a heartbeat when they walk down the runway. Unfortunately, this was enforced after some tragic deaths, (you should explain, back up with a citation) but the fact that it is being enforced is a huge step in nursing COMBATING the harmful idealistic body.

Media is pumping the world full of everything but reality. The bodies plastered up on billboards and pulled out of centerfolds are not realistic. Writing this essay is almost hypocritical for me. Although I claim it is just for the betterment of my health, I know that I’m going to the gym to have a flat stomach and smaller thighs. I know that I’m watching what I eat because I want to be desired and have a body that is envied. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m going to continue to scrutinize what I eat and feel guilty after occasionally indulging. I feel guilty and worry because I’ve gained weight since starting college, and that is taking me several steps away from my goal weight, a technique I learned from thinspiration blogs, of 108 pounds. It’s the lowest healthy weight I can be for my height. In order to fix this problem, steps need to be ensured that media portrays woman realistically, and soon, before the next generation gets even worse.



Bibliography Graydon, S. (2008). How the media keeps us HUNG UP on BODY IMAGE. Herizons, 22(1), 16-19. Kotz, Deborah. "Instant Body Image Boost: Fuller Figured Models in 'Glamour' Magazine." Health. U.S. News World Report, 6 Oct. 2009. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. < []>. ** This article will be helpful in showing how not all of the media is hurting how women view themselves. It was really helpful in showing how media is trying to help this issue. ** No One Said This Would Be Easy; 2010 Oct 10 [cited 2010 Oct 10]; [about 5 screens]. Available from: [] ** I’m going to use this internet blog as a big source of information. I’m really familiar with this type of cite because it’s part of a forum I use often. They’re called ‘thinspiration’ blogs, and I’m going to use a lot of the things girls like her say as a direct source of what media can do to girls’ self-esteem. ** Wykes, M., & Gunter, B. (2005). The media and body image :If looks could kill. London; Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. ** This book will be one of my more helpful sources. It gives terrifying facts about what media is doing to self-images and also is one of the easier to read sources I’ve found. It gives really modern facts on many ways media can be harmful. ** ** ﻿ **
 * This article will be one of the most helpful, I think. The information given is really terrible and really brings the point across about how body image is getting worse and people are expected to be smaller. I’m hoping my paper can convey a similar message as this article. **