At age 17, 78% of american girls are “unhappy with their bodies”. Television, movies, magazines and the internet all show images of women that put pressures on what their bodies should look like. The media does this by portraying an impossible body image. Millions of teens believe the lies and resort to unhealthy measures to try to fit themselves into that impossible mold. There is way too much pressure on girls today to have the “perfect” body.
The media plays a huge part in body image standards. They’ll show "beautiful" women with "perfect" bodies. Usually it’s a 117 pound 5'11" blonde with long legs, when the average US woman is 5’4” tall weighing 140 pounds. For a girl with red hair and freckles, how do you think that makes them feel? They see what is stereotypically beautiful, and then they are sad because they do not fit the mold of what is portrayed as beautiful. Teens spend 9 hours a day on average consuming media, which definitely has a big impact on body image standards.
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13% of girls age 15-17 acknowledge having an eating disorder. Common eating disorders include bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa. Bulimia is when someone engages in binge eating large amounts of food and then purges or tries to get rid of the extra calories in an unhealthy way by forced vomiting or through excessive exercise. Anorexia is is an emotional disorder characterized by an obsessive desire to lose weight by refusing to eat. A person suffering from anorexia sees herself as overweight when in reality she is life threateningly skinny. 1.5% of American women will suffer from bulimia nervosa in their lifetime and for anorexia nervosa it’s 0.9%. Women think they should look a certain way and that has resulted in a high amount of girls with eating