Body Image Society's Negative Effects On Teenage Girls

“It’s never easy to except, that our bodies are fallible and flawed, but when do we draw the line?” (Body Love Part 1, Mary Lambert). One in every twelve teenagers between the ages of fourteen and fifteen cause harm to themselves, whether it be by cutting, burning, or something else. Most of these girls harm themselves because the specific body image society has put on them. This has been taken too far, last year there were 12 suicide attempts per day. Society has made American teenagers negatively compare themselves to models, make them want to meet standards, and make them believe they need expensive brands to fit in. Many teenage girls look up to models because they want to look like them or act like them. They want to achieve an unrealistic goal of being perfect. In reality models aren’t actually perfect there is a thing called photo shop that seems to make people look a lot better than they actually are. “56% of teens feel that the media's advertisements are the main cause of low self-esteem” (Teen and Body Image, stageoflife). As well as wanting to achieve models looks, they want to achieve their bodies. Teenagers want to be smaller and taller. The average height of a model is 5ft. 10in. and the average weight is 115lbs. While the average women is 5ft 4in. and 191lbs. making it an almost unrealistic goal to be like the

You must be thin but not too thin, and you have to have curves. You have to be athletic and muscular, but not bulky. But a lot of people don’t realize that somebody that maybe is 5ft 2in. and 120lbs. looks “fat” but someone is 5ft. 6in. looks skinny. “Currently, 80 percent of women in the U.S. are dissatisfied with their appearance” (Why Do Women Hate Their Bodies, Ross). Girls have many more standards they have to live with. Teenagers also have to be tan but not orange, wear makeup but not be a clown, have clear skin, have to shave/wax, and many more standards that society puts on