Eating Disorders In Mean Girls

Self-esteem, some are born with it, some grow into it, and some never seem to have it. Every girl wants to look like the skinny, big-breasted, and clear skinned girls they see in movies and every boy wants to be with those girls. When I was twelve years old, my worst fear was gaining weight. A light dinner is all I ate for months. After eating, I would find the closest bathroom and stick my fingers down my throat. At the same time, I was on the soccer team playing for at least six hours a week. I was determined to look like the girls I saw in the movies. Before I knew it, I had dropped twenty-five pounds. I was officially diagnosed with Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS), an eating disorder that lies on the spectrum with Anorexia

Mean Girls, a Hollywood film, is popular amongst young teenagers. The teen film portrays the three popular girls of the film, referred to as “The Plastics” and teen royalty by their peers as three dumb girls. The Plastics are Regina George (Rachel McAdams), Karen Smtih (Amanda Seyfried), and Gretchen Weiners (Lacey Chabert),. When a new girl Cady Heron (Linsday Lohan) moves from Africa to the school she meets two friends Janice Ian (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese) who explain the lunch table groups describing two of them as “the girls who eat nothing” and “the girls who eat their feelings.” This scene normalizes eating disorders. Cady along with her friends Janice and Damian plan to undermine Regina George because Regina kissed the boy Cady had a crush on, by Cady joining the three girls: Regina, Karen, and Gretchen. To become “popular” Cady begins to wear short skirts, low cut shirts, and heels. When adolescent girls see this film, the will have a skewed view of how to become liked by their peers. A scene in in the film shows “The Plastics” inside Regina’s home having “fat talk”, where the girls are seen pointing out flaws they see in themselves such as: “I hate my calves”, “My pores are huge”, and “My hips are huge.” When watching the film,

Young adults are molded by the images surrounding them. Societies “ideal thin” comes from media. When the main character has a slim waist and big breasts, the male characters fawn over her. Adolescents are in a forming state and developing their personalities. Adolescent boys see women in film and develop their unrealistic ideal woman, then expect young girls to look the same way. “[S]tudies have generally found that after men are exposed to sexualized content, their behavior toward women is more sexualized, and they treat women like sexual objects.” (American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls) Studies found that men who viewed sexualized images and film, the men were more likely to perceive women as sex objects. After young boys watch the way women are treated by men in film, they are likely to mimic their actions. The repeated actions can likely lead to sexual harassment and treating young girls as objects. In 1989, Albert Bandura developed the Social Cognitive Theory, the theory states children imitate people they relate to. A child will learn from the consequences seen by the people they look up to. In turn, young boys view the men treating women poorly in film, then the women respond positively to the actions. The young boys will begin to treat their peers the same way. Film is a highly influential base of information that can form a young person’s