Americas Ideal Weight
American women constantly struggle with acceptance and appearance. Daily exposure to images of waif thin models and articles of diets that "will improve your appearance and self-esteem" only add to the strife. This mass exposure sways our struggle for acceptance by failing to show us diverse body types. With the huge number of females with eating disorders (5-10 million) in this country, the media who pushes "thin is in" everyday seems largely at blame.(5) Many people find it extremely disturbing to see an article on one page in a magazine of a young girl dying or suffering from anorexia, and on the next page an ad for clothing with an obviously underweight model. The obvious glorification of thinness in this country sends a dangerous message to women of all ages- yet who takes the blame? In a recent study taken by the Commonwealth Fund, 4 out of 5 American women find their appearance dissatisfactory and one half of women resort to some type of dieting.(5) This dissatisfaction clearly resonates from the media- mainly from magazines. Women's magazines are said to contain 10.5 times more advertisements and articles promoting
(4)A possibility exists that the media does not directly cause eating disorders and weight obsessions, yet they do affect the way Americans perceive themselves. Perhaps if the media concentrated on a variety of body types and included a more positive message regarding health and self-esteem; this issue could be reduced significantly. (4) What most women need to realize is that only a handful (5%) of women in America actually look like the models seen on magazine covers. Four out of 5 children at age 10 have expressed a fear of becoming fat, and one half of children of the same age feel better about themselves if they are on a diet. In the same study, adolescent girls were polled in regards to health issues and where they received the information. Not only did they make her face appear flawless, they trimmed her thighs and arms to make them seem thinner. They then went in and took any visible fat cells on her thighs and erased them. The statistics on children and their concern about weight can be traced to the parents possibly putting pressure on them. (5) Rarely do we see a woman on the cover of magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Glamour that weighs over 120 pounds. Ninety-seven percent replied that their source was the media. Staton 2True, these magazines often include articles about losing weight in a healthy manner, but in a study of one teen magazine over a period of 20 years, most of the articles promoted weight loss saying it would "improve appearance. This is not to say Cindy Crawford has a weight problem or a flawed body. " As many of them claim they are just on a diet, however, they are really putting themselves at high risk for obtaining an eating disorder. This may explain why diet products have brought in over 33 billion dollars in profit annually.
Common topics in this essay:
Cosmopolitan Glamour,
Weight American,
Glamour Cosmopolitan1,
Kate Moss,
Commonwealth Fund,
Cindy Crawford,
Miss America,
Marilyn Monroe,
Townsend English,
,
cindy crawford,
eating disorders,
improve appearance,
american women,
children age,
body type,
miss america,
body types,
size shape,
weight loss,
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Acceptance Essays
