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Back to Subjects - Social Issues

I Want To Be Perfect

I Want To Be Perfect Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In the eyes of society, women like Pamela Anderson, Tyra Banks and Carmen Electra are the epitome of perfection. What girl would not want to look like them? Unfortunately, a number of girls want to be just like them. Every year, millions of people are hurting themselves trying to be carbon copies of these sex symbols. The media presents society with unrealistic body types promoting people, especially women, to look like them. In this day and age there have been an increasingly high rate of eating disorders. The trend of turning to these eating disorders to maintain that perfect, “accepted” body type are now very common amongst women of all ages.The trends that influence these women include entertainment industry in our society, the peers and friends of women whom are all included in the same social group, and the pressure in athletics to maintain the perfect body weight in order to perform to the standard that will allow them to rise to the top. The first and most common influential cause of women turning to eating disorders is when women look at the beautiful people and begin to compare themselves to society’s entertainment business. Television and magazines are two of the most powerful methods of communication entire society. Women's magazines contain many more advertisements prompting weight loss than men. There was rise in eating disorders and advertisements promoting weight loss in in women's magazines body image has certainly changed over the decades. The media keeps dispensing images, but they don't realize the negative effects its causes on women and girls. Time and time again, you hear this confession in the conversations between with young women. They want to look good in a bathing suit. They want a tight butt. They go on diets and work out everyday. They're never thin enough, so they go to unnatural extremes because this is supposedly how the people in the entertainment business look that good. Women feel they must look like supermodels in order to be accepted in today's society. All this can happen from just seeing a billboard or a couple of commercials. These media images make women feel less about themselves, they want to look like supermodels: tall, thin, sculpted. Due to these perfect women, girls all over the US are suffering from anorexia show a refusal to maintain body weight over a minimal normal weight for age and height. They are disturbed by their body image and are always claiming to "feel fat". They have intense fear of gaining weight. It seems as these forms of entertainment have the power to mold women’s attitudes. Hollywood often has the tendency to also make people feel ugly. Women look at these stars trying to emulate the body type of the superstars. Stars have personal trainers, stylists, make-up artists and people to airbrush the wrinkles and cellulite out of their magazine covers. These people all create an image that is meant to be presented in a two-hour snippet or frozen in a photograph. The bodies we see on TV are perfect. They are bodies of actresses, models, and weight trainers. These people keep themselves in showroom condition all the time and are expected too. Another cause of eating disorders is when women compare their body types to those of their peers. The competitive attitudes betweem women are often the main causes of eating disorders in a woman’s social group. These competitive feelings usually arise throughout groups of friends or social groups that women include themselves in. Youthfulness, sexuality and appearance are all categories which women tend to compete in. No matter how close these women seem to be, most of the time there are always jealousies, and parts of the group that feel threatened by the others. Due to these jealousies, women will go to any extent to look better than the other women in their social group. Most of the time eating disorders become a part of this equation. There are many times when a group of friends are sitting around watching their favorite sitcom on Thursday nights, they are all again exposed to a group of beautiful people whom act as the leading characters. The women observing the show take mental notes on the latest fashion techniques, body types shown off by the gorgeous groups of women on Friends and Ally McBeal. The next few weeks one of the women will notice a change in their friends’ eating behaviors. By observing these trends of their friends, women often turn to their own social group when looking for the perfect accepting look. Most groups of friends are very competitive especially when it comes to weight loss. Women tend to use weight loss as a game. They see who can loose the greatest amount in the fastest time. What seems to be an innocent trend between friends can often result in dangerous eating disorders. Which lastly brings us to another cause of eating disorder. This occurs throughout many women athletes, especially at the collegiate and professional level, whom need to maintain the perfect body to perform to their greatest ability. Many of these athletes turn to weight loss supplements which allow them to loose the excess weight much faster than shedding the unwanted pounds by naturally exercising. Athletes also turn to these unnatural supplements. While athletes participate in the consumption of these supplements, they do not realize at the time that they could be very harmful to their body and also lead to many other eating disorders. Once they begin to lose weight by taking the supplements, they will want to lose even more weight. Eventually, these athletes will not even realize how much weight they have actually loss. Their entire purpose of losing weight, which was to enhance their athletic performance, is now pointless. An eating disorder is now formed which weakens their bodies causing the total opposite results of what they intended . In the end, we need to think of ways we can demolish actions that cause women to be so obsessed with their body type that they are caused to turn to the trend of eating disorders to lose weight. How do we change our thinking and feeling habits in order to unite our various parts and eliminate the negative views of the media? When will women stop turning to eating disorders in order to be as skinny as a friend in their social groups? Will athletes realize that by turning to eating disorders to lose weight they are actually making themselves weaker? There needs to be action taken on the petty trends that influences women to obtain eating disorders. The entertainment business, peer pressure, and supplements throughout the sporting community must be altered so that the intensity of pressure placed upon women will be lessened. The only way our culture will change is if we stop believing in the social attitudes which make us fell not good enough and start believing in ourselves and our right to our individual body. Bibliography: Bibliography Baker, Barbara, “Eating Disorders Increasing Among Minority,” Family Practice News, September 15, 1999. Bosch, Xavier, “Eating Disorders may Warrant Compulsory Hospital Admission,” The Lancet, March 20, 1999. British Medical Journal, “Spain Tackles Eating Disorders,” April 10, 1999. Chemist & Druggist, “Late-onset Anorexia Linked to Laxative and Diuretic Abuse,” July 17, 1999. Mothering, “Who’s the Fairest of Them All? Me!,” September 1998. Nathan, Paul, “Starve No More,” Publishers Weekly, April 29, 1996. Newsweek, “Fat-Phobia in the Fijis: TV-Thin is In,” May 31, 1999. Olson, Todd, “Images of Women: Should We All Be Like Kate?” McCall’s Magazine, February 3, 1999. Salladay, Susan A., “Food Fight,” Nursing, June 1999.

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