Dying to be Thin: Belt sizes go down when Pressures go up

The media in mainstream America has had a profound effect on eating disorders in young women. Our mainstream media glorifies overly thin female celebrities, creating false idols for the average woman to admire. Some of these celebrity skeletons include skinny celebrity Victoria Beckham, who has crossed the ocean to America and had brought with her an unattainable standard of what a woman’s body should look like to young adults by taking the phrase ‘less is more’ and making applying it to the female body. Another example of virtually unattainable thinness is Kate Moss, the European model who redefined what size-0 looks like. These powerful women are examples of the negative role models in our celebrity-obsessed society today. Women are increasingly internalizing these types of images presented in the media, which is raising women’s expectations of one another. Peer standards have increased because of the media’s growing obsession with unhealthy-skinny celebrities; this has shifted who the role models are for American women from positive to negative. Celebrities Beckham and Moss are the leaders of unhealthy idols in our society, along with Keira Knightly, Kate Bosworth and many others. These thin women are making it harder to good role models to get the spotlight shined on them. Healthy women celebrities such as Kate Winslet, Queen Latifah, Julia Stiles, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and others do not get enough attention from the spotlight of the cameras, making it harder for them to reach young women to show them a healthy idol. Women now constantly feel they are being examined under a microscope for their appearance, from feeling pressure from the women in the spotlight, the skeleton thing ones. The pressures for young women to be skinny have reached an extreme in mainstream America today; the increase of America being an image-based society, the lack of positive roles models, and the raising of peer standards between women have increased body image pressures.
America’s transition from being a print-based to an image-based culture by the media has had a profound negative effect on young women. There were skinny models decades ago, but they didn’t have as big of an impact as the ones today have. Twiggy emerged in the 1960’s as a new icon of beauty: thin is in. This icon has never left the world of celebrities and fashion since. This has only made models and stars to become thinner and more prominent. Because of the change from America being print-based culture over to being an image-based one, images of dangerously skinny women has multiplied by millions. Instead of seeing one image of Twiggy every once in awhile on a product or in a magazine, now we see thousands of women looking just like Twiggy everyday, everywhere and on everything. There were also more realistic, normal sized models back then, like Cindy Crawford and Marilyn Monroe; it was one skinny model surrounded by a bunch of normal ones. Now the skinny ones are everywhere and there are fewer and fewer normal sized models. Another thing that has changed as a result of America shifting from being print-based to image-based is the definition of skinny. The average size has dropped from size 4-6 to 0-2 for models. Thin has become normal and skinny now to be thin, so in order to look skinny, a woman can no longer be lean, she must also have her ribs hanging out and her arms must resemble twigs. Being surrounded by unrealistic body types in images all the time, as a result of America being a primarily image-based culture, has had a dramatic effect on young women growing up.
The lack of positive role models in our society has led to the increase of pressures on young women to be thin. Women like Victoria Beckham and Kate Moss set bad examples to young women across America by portraying unrealistic body images which have become the standard throughout mainstream America. Women are constantly bombarded by images of unrealistically thin women. By being constantly exposed to skinny images, the mental development of you or your child gets distorted. When exposed to images of skinny women repeatedly, women begin to believe that they must look like the image in order to be beautiful. The images of near-skeleton looking female celebrities are in nearly every newspaper, magazine and movie; women are seeing these images and are comparing themselves to them. A major celebrity, Victoria Beckham, weighs less than her sunglasses and has become a fashion icon in the past year. Another famous model is Kate Moss. Moss has been on the cover of every major magazine, showing off her wispy, fragile looking body. Moss took thin to a whole new level, gaining fame and power for her modeling talents and endorsements; she also set the example that women should be thin, fragile and the adjective most often associated with her name, waif-like. The skinner both of these women got, as is true for many celebrities, the more publicity they got, gaining them fame and fortune. Some celebrities rely on that type of media attention, while others would rather be known for the talents than for their eating habits. Normal sized actresses like Kate Winslet and Catherine Zeta-Jones both have a strong stance against this new scary-thin Hollywood. Winslet has been quoted saying: “I hope that in some small way I’m able to say, ‘I’m a normal person, I’m doing all right.’ If two women as famous and successful as Winslet and Zeta-Jones can set the right type of example by loving their bodies and becoming positive role models, why do so many other celebrities have trouble? Skeletal images like those in every magazine and advertisement are creating negative body images for women. By comparing themselves to sickly-skinny pictures of celebrities, young women are growing up with negative body images of themselves.
Having a negative body image not only hurts the woman emotionally, but can also lead to serious physical problems, including eating disorders. The media has a major influence on the development of eating disorders. It helps to set unrealistic expectations of what body image is considered beautiful. According to Alison Field’s research, 69% of adolescent girls said that magazine models influence their idea of the perfect body shape. The media emphasis thinness as a standard for female beauty and this standard has been carried over into what women believe their bodies should look like; the media’s standard of beauty has become a majority of women’s’. Not only are the bodies idealized in the media thin or skinny, they are more than often frequently an unhealthy, skeletal looking malnourished body. The increase of America being image-based has hurt women’s body images because with more images comes more bad role models having negative influences on what a woman’s body should look like.
The lack of positive role models being portrayed in the media today has had a dramatically negative effect on young American women. The media should be discouraged from using actresses and models who “would be considered severely underweight by the medical community and they serve as unhealthy role models for young girls. These images are encouraging women to criticize their own bodies by idealizing the models, believing that the thinner the body, the more beautiful the woman. Images of overly thin models encourage starvation diets and eating disorders. If the media refrained from showing severely underweight models and featured more articles that promote exercise, they would provide young girls with important positive healthy messages. Instead, the media puts an emphasis on extreme thinness being beauty. These women are not sending a positive message to young women of healthy eating and positive body image. Female models in the media help to promote thinness as desirable. The models are often depicted in ways that emphasize the physical ideal of thinness. It is against this ideal that young girls come to negatively measure themselves which can lead to body dissatisfaction and unhealthy eating behaviors. These unrealistic images of women, who are often airbrushed or partially computer generated, have a detrimental impact on women and how they feel about themselves. Young women look at images of these models and celebrities and feel ashamed and more negative towards their own bodies. Many women internalize these stereotypes of what women are supposed to look like, and judge themselves and their peers by the beauty industry's standards. However, the model often achieves her looks unnaturally. Most of these models have either undergone plastic surgery or are anorexic, the photos that appear on print media such as magazines are often airbrushed to hide or take away any perceived flaws. In this manner, a beauty standard is set that realistically, is hardly attainable. These women allow themselves to be morphed into what the media wants the ideal woman to be: perfect in every physical aspect.
The media’s negative stereotype of what women should look like has caused women to raise peer standards. Women are no longer as accepting of each other based on personality; they now focus on the physical flaws of one another. Young women now turn against each other, always holding each other to impossible beauty standards.
By comparing themselves to these sickly-skinny pictures of celebrities, young women are growing up with negative body images of themselves. These negative body images have led to a change of what beautiful means, and what makes a woman attractive. There is less emphasis on the inside of women, like their personality and intelligence, while more emphasis has been put on the outside of a woman: her body, face and clothes. Women feel the urge to cut other women down to make them feel better. This is because of the media and its portrayal of women, what beauty is, and what is important to look for. Women have become so competitive and judgmental because they are trying to make up for feeling insecure with their body images which are a result from the images they are exposed to daily of what a woman should look like. Celebrities like Jessica Simpson encourage the image of Barbie and the dumb blonde; she emphasis her body and physical appearance and then presents a hollow inside, being dumb and ditzy. Simpson is idolized by millions of young women across America and she is a negative role model because she sends the message to young women that physical beauty is all that matters. Simpson, like many celebrities, has gotten plastic surgery done on her body. This is another growing problem among women because now the images of women we see aren’t only airbrushed and taken of malnourished models, they also have gone under the knife to ‘better their bodies’. Celebrities who have had surgery done to tuck something in or to perk something up send a bad message to young women. By having surgery done tot heir already flawless-looking bodies, it shows women that instead of accepting your imperfections, one should just get rid of it. Celebrities who have plastic surgery for minor things are bad role models for young women.
These images have been ingrained in us as being the norm; which causes women to feel inferior and unhappy with their bodies. This self-hate encourages women to criticize others to make them feel better about themselves. Young women learn to compare themselves to other women, and to compete with them for attention. The focus on beauty and desirability effectively destroys any awareness and action that might help to change that climate. Women have become so concerned with looking like the women they see images of everywhere that they have lowered themselves to judging women based solely on their appearance. While being completely focused on their bodies, women are forgetting to stop the media from encouraging these images. Women are so blinded by looking into their mirrors that they are not seeing what kind of America young girls are growing into; it is one filled with prejudiced and hate based on physical appearance. This peer pressure of body image for women has reached an all time high, which has helped to lower self-esteem for girls, which can trigger the start of eating disorders. The more effort a girl reported making to look like females on television, movies and magazines, the more likely she was to start purging over a 1-year period. Young women are being engulfed with images, expectations and standards on what their body should be and who they should be comparing it too. These images have created self-hate as well as the constant need to compare and demean women based on physical appearance
The emphasis on extreme thinness being an ideal for beauty is a disaster. Women no longer have positive, healthy female role models to look up to that are covered in the media. This has led women to self-hate and to feel the need to cut other women down in order to make them feel better. They are surrounded by images of unrealistically thin and beautiful women who are flawless. Being engulfed in these types of images all of the time and seeing them everywhere has dramatically changed what the norm for women’s bodies is. Women have seen the change in what is expected of what their bodies should be and have raised the peer standards of body image. When women aren’t as beautiful, flawless or as skinny as another woman, she is instantly judged by other women for it. America’s transition from being print-based to now image-based has increased the pressures women feel on their bodies to fit the standard set by the media. These standards have created extreme pressures for young women in America to be skinny and flawless.