The images and perceptions conveyed through the media, plays a major role in Australian culture and their obsession with staying young, dieting, keeping fit, looking good and changing looks through methods such as cosmetic surgery. Everyday, by simply turning on the television or opening a magazine, people are bombarded with images of slim, fit, healthy-looking, attractive models and messages of how we should look and what sort of person we should be [www.cyh.com/cyh/ youthtopics]. The reality is that the health and well being of a generation of young women is being threatened as they try to match up with this stereotype put before them. Girls as young as eight are dieting as a result of their poor body image [Davis etal, 1999:375] and this information demonstrates the influence that exposure to media images of the ideal body shape, has on young women's self-perceptions [Body Image Symposium, Brisbane:2000].
             I believe that poor Supportive Environments are definitely contributing to the negative body images, that so many of our youth have today – both male and female. Men are faced with the pressures to tone-up, muscle-up and look big, strong and tanned. While women are faced with the pressures to slim-down, tone-down and look petite and small [www.cyh.com/cyh/youthtopics]. As they are exposed to such controversial media, they are even more susceptible to self-image problem as they are influenced greatly by the stereotype of the ideal body. Its an unsettling fact that so many of our youth, mostly teenage girls are so vulnerable to negative self-esteem and that a lot of the time the consequences of these vulnerabilities is the development of an eating disorder. Girls see in magazines and on billboards the models that represent only a slim 5% of body types with these models weighting 23% less than the average woman [www.bygirlsforgirls.org/2002]. These girls take this minority, this 5% of body types and believe that ...