Hips or no hips? Over the hundreds of years that have passed each decade or so has an “ideal” body. That creates the idea that something is always desirable and anything other, not, which establishes a beauty standard. The idea of a beauty standard creates a culture and tradition that women feel the need to fulfill. This idea of a desirable body is terrifying. The tradition wreaks havoc on today’s young girl and women’s body images from birth, encourages body shaming, kills their self-esteem, and leads to eating disorders. The right and wrong body impression that America has created for its women is unrealistic and impossible to achieve. On top of that, the body image strengthened by the media is leading American …show more content…
Some (by no means all) of the young girls and women who have seen these fairytales believe the closest to the American beauty image is the best and nothing less. They see other women who are overweight and they think of them as ugly because of the beauty standard, leading to fat shaming. Fat shaming is making an overweight female feel uncomfortable by telling her something is wrong with her weight. This was a recently coined word, which was created in response to bullying overweight women who do not meet the beauty standard. When people do, this they fail to realize all of the contributing factors, such as medical disorders that can affect weight. When it gets to the point when words are coined because of a discrimination against unorthodox beauty it should become obvious to people that the distorted female body image needs to …show more content…
The American standard, which glamorizes the photo-shopped women’s body, highly promotes eating disorders. Which in some women’s minds seems like the only way to get that “perfect” body. Eating disorders, such as bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa have had a high statistical presence; according to ANAD by “age 20, 86% of people report onset of an eating disorder”. Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder that is characterized by vomiting or using laxatives to expel food. According to ANAD, “In 25% of college-aged women binging and purging were used as a weight-management technique”. Anorexia nervosa is characterized by under eating and skipping meals it is also “the third most common chronic illness among adolescents” according to ANAD. To say the eating disorders statistics are astronomically high is a sad truth and many of them are due to the American body image. “Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness” (ANAD). When will America learn from their