Starving to Be Skinny
Starving to be Skinny As much as people rely on the media in society today, it sometimes does more harm than good. Millions of people are unhappy with their bodies and this can lead to eating disorders. The media is one of the main causes of eating disorders, especially among teenage girls. "[It] has a large influence on young people 's body image, placing a great deal of pressure on obtaining the 'ideal ' body shape. This often leads to young girls adopting unhealthy practices. These include smoking, skipping meals, especially breakfast, severely limiting foods perceived as fattening, such as red meat and dairy produce, which are important sources of protein, iron, zinc and calcium, and adopting very low energy, and therefore nutrient, diets" (qtd. in Dutta). The media has many ways of influencing the minds of people. Some ways that it can encourage eating disorders include: television shows and movies associating thinness with success, advertisements and fashion industries using very skinny girls to promote products and fashion lines, and companies modifying already skinny girls with computers to create an unattainable image for teenage girls to pursue. When television shows and movies associate thinness with success, young girls are raised believing that if they want to be successful, they must have the ideal body that society has portrayed. If you watch enough television, you will see that, "A 'perfect ' body is equated with high self-esteem, success (in romance and a career), acceptance, and admiration by others. Television advertising sitcoms, and 'soap operas ' portray the heroines as slim, young, and beautiful. The cinema, women 's magazines, and popular newspapers further encourage the belief that to 'succeed ' and be happy women should be slim." (Abraham and Llewellyn-Jones 15). A woman being put in the mindset that they need to be thinner in order to be prosperous in life is a very dangerous thing. Many studies have been done, and treacherous
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