Perfect Body Image Essay

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Picture Perfect? Young girls now are more afraid of becoming fat, then they are of a nuclear war, cancer or losing their parents, according to the council on size and weight discrimination (A). I see people everyday who want to change how they look, people my age, middle school girls who are concerned and worried about how they look. Today, the media’s influence is powerful, and it is all around us: on our phones, on TV, in movies and in print. Teens today picture and dream of getting the ¨perfect body.¨ Our goals should be to help the world, to accomplish something, not to have a ¨perfect body.¨ If the media portrays an image of “beauty” by using models who are much thinner than average people, how will that cause people to feel about their …show more content…

Barbara Fleming, a coordinator for the National Eating Disorders Organization in Tulsa, states that she used to see eating disorders mainly in young college-aged girls, but now it is not uncommon to see anorexia or bulimia in middle school or even elementary school girls (C). The ages where disorders begin is increasingly lower, which is showing that girls even younger are being influenced to change themselves to become more "perfect" like the media conveys. These feelings can start at ages as young as 3-5. Experts have found that even some childrens’ toys such as G.I. Joe and Barbie are unrealistically proportioned (A). The toys are made to look better visually and fit what people want to see, but they are not even possible for a person to achieve. The toys are supposed to be people, but the proportions of the body are not the same as a person, and the dolls have changed over the years to fit the modern style. Researchers from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine examined the attitudes and preferences of preschool aged children. Their studies showed that 91% of the kids would prefer the thin doll over a thicker doll. Even the overweight children mostly picked the thin doll (B). Desiring a certain body image is starting to affect younger ages, but the desire to act on those feelings increases with age. Although younger kids may feel that there is a certain body image that is right, they don 't take their reaction to the same extremes as teens. McCarthy states that when teenage girls have a bad body image, it leads them to dieting, which in itself leads to helplessness and depression (B). Girls are already going through hormone fluctuations and feeling insecure, and the media 's influences worsen these

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