Eating Disorders: How the Media Have Influenced Their Development In Adolescent Girls :: Free Essays Online

eat Disorders How the Media Have Influenced Their Development In immature GirlsThe words eat and boring are usu completelyy never put in in the same sentence, but leave it to a super pretense to accomplish this task. Bodies redolent of the Holocaust clad only in a bathing suit, underwear, or a skimpy tank top flood popular personal manner magazines today. How many times have you flipped through the pages of your favorite magazine and spot an article about how women should have a good perception of themselves and how they should maintain those curves, and then turned the page to find a centerfold makeover function complete with before and after pictures? Mass media serve as a type of normative influence to teens, and those who are high in power to the medias influence are a lot less skeptical of advertisements (Mangleburg & Bristol 30). Therefore, it is a lot more difficult for them to realize that attaining a body like those of the women in the above advertisements is impo ssible without developing severely disordered alimentation habits. In the United States, the conservative estimates indicate that after puberty, 5-10% of girls and women are struggling with eating disorders. That translates to 5-10 million girls and women Out of that 5-10 million, at least 50,000 lead die, and thats not including the number of cases not reported due to the shame and secretiveness associated with the disorder (EDAP Handout- Basic Facts). Sufferers of eating disorders have admitted that images of skinny models enflamed their condition. In an article titled, struggle on Waifs, they agreed that they would like to see the fashion industry nowadays a range of sizes in magazines just like you see in the stores (Jedeikin, sec. Responses). Susie Orbach, the therapist who treated the late Princess Diana for her bulimia, has similar thoughts on the controversyEating problems are now at epidemic proportions. There is so much anguish felt by so many women and girls of all ag es, rase in childhood We ingest to target the diet industry. If diets worked, we wouldnt need so many of them I will also suggest that it is in the fashion industrys interest to glamourise girls and women in all sizes and shapes, as that is how we really are. Id like to see model agencies and designers setting aside profits for fashion students to promote gorgeous apparel in all sizes (Jedeikin, sec. Responses).Until the industry can shift from encouraging race to be a shape which nature never intended them to be, however, the media will continue to form young peoples view of the world, a world that is apparently populated by only thin girls.