Eating disorders are a daily struggle for 10 million females and 1 million males in the United States, whether these disorders are anorexia or bulimia. Four out of ten individuals have either personally experienced an eating disorder at some point in their life or know someone who has. Furthermore, 50% of teenage girls and 30% of teenage boys use unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting, and taking laxatives to control their weight ("Eating Disorder Statistics & Research.") So the question is how are so many people, adults and kids alike, becoming or being influenced to develop an eating disorder? The answer, according to some experts, is that media is having an overwhelming negative effect
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Images in the media, such as in magazines or other media, show models that are often photoshopped to meet the media’s criteria that achieves the ideal body image. Also many of the models shown on television, advertisements, and in other forms of popular media are approximately 20% below ideal body weight, thus meeting the diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa ("Contact Us.") This then exposes people through the media to body images that are, more often than not, unattainable to the average person.
Another way the media manipulates images is by not properly defining what constitutes a plus-sized model. Plus size models that are in the modeling industry today contain people that should not be considered plus size. PLUS Size states that plus size models are typically between sizes six to fourteen and Cosmopolitan says “In fact, not so long ago plus size models were around size 10-12, but that number has recently shrunk to an 8,” ("Myla Dalbesio on Her New Calvin Klein.”) These are people who should be considered healthy and normal, not plus …show more content…
These different messages and pictures from social media note the importance of being thin and say that a girl has to look a certain way to be acceptable to society. This is causing people to see how certain people, who may have a complete different body types than them, have obtained society’s ideal body and then compare themselves to those people that have bodies that, for certain people, are inaccessible. Peggy Evans a PhD consulting director of the Washington & Idaho Regional Extension Center stated in the Psychology of Women Quarterly, “Women often feel dissatisfied with their appearance after comparing themselves to other females who epitomize the thin-ideal standard of beauty,” ("The Thin Ideal.") Pressure is then put on girls to be thin which leads to body dissatisfaction and eating pathology. A study conducted at the University of Haifa in 2011 found that girls who spent the most time using Facebook and other social media had a greater chance of developing a negative body image and eating disorder ("Social Media Helps Fuel Some Eating
Images in the media, such as in magazines or other media, show models that are often photoshopped to meet the media’s criteria that achieves the ideal body image. Also many of the models shown on television, advertisements, and in other forms of popular media are approximately 20% below ideal body weight, thus meeting the diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa ("Contact Us.") This then exposes people through the media to body images that are, more often than not, unattainable to the average person.
Another way the media manipulates images is by not properly defining what constitutes a plus-sized model. Plus size models that are in the modeling industry today contain people that should not be considered plus size. PLUS Size states that plus size models are typically between sizes six to fourteen and Cosmopolitan says “In fact, not so long ago plus size models were around size 10-12, but that number has recently shrunk to an 8,” ("Myla Dalbesio on Her New Calvin Klein.”) These are people who should be considered healthy and normal, not plus …show more content…
These different messages and pictures from social media note the importance of being thin and say that a girl has to look a certain way to be acceptable to society. This is causing people to see how certain people, who may have a complete different body types than them, have obtained society’s ideal body and then compare themselves to those people that have bodies that, for certain people, are inaccessible. Peggy Evans a PhD consulting director of the Washington & Idaho Regional Extension Center stated in the Psychology of Women Quarterly, “Women often feel dissatisfied with their appearance after comparing themselves to other females who epitomize the thin-ideal standard of beauty,” ("The Thin Ideal.") Pressure is then put on girls to be thin which leads to body dissatisfaction and eating pathology. A study conducted at the University of Haifa in 2011 found that girls who spent the most time using Facebook and other social media had a greater chance of developing a negative body image and eating disorder ("Social Media Helps Fuel Some Eating