Because the media has set ideas for what is beautiful, it affects everyone’s idea of what beauty is. This leads to girls and young women feeling pressure from some adults and males to be thin also. Many girls think they must be skinny and look like the women on TV to get boys to like them. Sadly enough, many males do set their standards close to those of the girls on TV. Many girls have the same thought process as this college senior, Delia:
“I’m looking at all these beautiful women [in magazines]. They’re thin. I want to be just as beautiful. I want to be just as thin. Because that’s what guys like…Guys don’t like fat girls. Guys like little girls. I guess it makes them feel bigger and, you know, they want somebody who looks pretty. Pretty to me is you have to be thin and you have to have good facial features. It’s both. My final affirmation on myself is how many guys look at me when I go into a bar. How many guys pick up on me. What my boyfriend thinks about me” (Hesse-Biber 7- 8).
In other cases, the girls’ parents stress being thin and beautiful. The young woman who made the statement above was drilled about being skinny and pretty ever since she was a little girl. Her mother constantly accentuated the importance of being beautiful:
“‘Only eat small amounts. Eat a thousand calories a day; don’t overeat.’ My mom was never critical like, ‘You’re fat.’ But one time, I went on a camping trip and I gained four pounds and she said, ‘You’ve got to lose weight.’ I mean, she watched what I ate. If I was going to eat a piece of cake, she’d be like, ‘Don’t eat that’”(Hesse-Biber 8).
It is easy to see how much pressure a young girl can be put under by her parents. Children look up to parents and believe everything they say. If they say you are too fat, then you conclude that you are too fat. Some girls learn to deal with it and accept themselves, but many other girls, like Delia, try to mold themselves into these models they call “idols”.
Certain activities like gymnastics and cheerleading, which focus on a certain body type and physical fitness, can easily lead to eating disorders. I am not claiming that gymnastics and cheerleading cause eating disorders. Often, it is the coaches or teammates (who have the conception of “the skinner the better” drilled into their heads by the media) that contribute to eating disorders. For example, Delia was part of the cheerleading team. She weighed 93 pounds and was unhappy with her weight. Her male partner, who would lift her during stunts, would contribute to the pressure of being skinny:
“I loved being on the squad, but my partner was a real jerk. He would never work out, and when we would do lifts he would always be, ‘Delia, go run. Go run, you’re too heavy.’ I hadn’t been eating that day. I had already run seven or eight miles and he told me to run again. And I was surrounded by girls who were all concerned about their weight, and it was just this really horrible situation” (Hesse- Biber 9).
It is plain to see that there are many factors which can contribute to the development of eating disorders in young women. They all relate back to the media.
WhyTheChange?