CW Opinion Piece

In a society where being skinny and beautiful is a top priority for many women, it's hard for young girls not to feel pressured into being a slim size zero. With perfect airbrushed faces scowling on billboards and twiggy models gracefully posing in magazines, it is easy for young girls in America to aspire to have Gisele’s legs and Kate Moss’s weight. American Academy of Pediatrics found that 59 percent of girls reported dissatisfaction with their weight, and according to the Girl Scout Research Institution, one third of all girls have a distorted idea about their weight. Such distorted ideas could lead to outcomes of eating disorders or even death in girls and teenagers. America needs to step away from the unnaturally thin models and advertise a healthier body shape to the American population in order to save lives and increase confidence.

            On a recent trip to Florida to visit family, I got to chat to my young cousin about gymnastics, one of her favorite sports. After she was done informing me about the art of cartwheels and round-offs, she confessed to me that she thought her thighs were fat. I looked down at them. What she viewed as fat was toned muscle with a diameter of a pencil. She was only eight. The same summer I went jogging for cross-country with a friend. She had just gotten back from a trip abroad and was informing me about all the delicious foods that she was exposed to there. She then went on to tell me that she probably wasn’t going to eat anything for a few days so as to burn it all off. Her legs are about the width of my arms, and it’s impossible to find a pinch of fat on her body. And every day at lunch, I am surrounded by skinny girls who nibble on their fruit salads and guzzle water while looking enviously at my bagel and cookie. I spy them inspecting skinny airbrushed figures on magazines, and I constantly hear them gushing about the beauty of an emancipated model. To them, and to countless other girls in America, curve-less, bony bodies are beautiful. To make it worse, being extremely thin is encouraged by TV icons, movie stars, celebrity fitness trainers, and even food advertisements. A new pretzel ad states in bold black letters, You Can Never be too Thin. Critics are enraged, saying the ad encourages eating disorders and promotes people to feel bad about their bodies. Tyra Banks, a famous supermodel and host of the popular television show “America’s Next Top Model,” recently praised a 6’2” model whose ridiculously tiny waist prompted another judge to reference Tic Tacs and watercress for getting the model that thin. Kristen Bauer, actress of the popular TV series “True Blood,” confessed that “as long as I’m in this business, I’m going to be hungry.” Girls will see hundreds of thousands of advertisements, clips, and models in their lifetimes, and they will desire a body like them. This unhealthy craving has huge negative effects. It leads to anorexia and bulimia, and in some cases, it even leads to death. If our nation promoted real beauty and stronger, curvier, healthier body types, there would be less self-hate and more confidence in our youth and teenagers. Girls across the globe are searching for celebrities and supermodels to look up to and imitate, so if these “role-models” are advertising unhealthy body-standards, their young advocates will follow and adopt serious problems because of it.

            Women and girls everywhere are searching for a healthy body image that they can replicate. Every woman, from your eight year old cousin to your forty year old aunt have moments where they see a skinny model in a magazine and want to replicate that image onto their own bodies. More than eight million people in the United Sates have an eating disorder because of this issue. Let’s change that.