What is beauty? Certainly, you must have a flat stomach and slender legs to be beautiful. This is the idea that the media sends to girls today. Girls feel like they are unattractive if they have so much as one ounce of fat on their bodies. An incredible 95% of women report disgust or disappointment with their bodies (Costin 53). It is easy to see why so many eating disorders develop. What can be done to correct this wrong image of what beauty is?

Eating disorders stem from a long chain of causes. The media causes society to form ideas of what is beautiful. This causes girls to feel insecure about their own bodies if they don’t meet the set model of beauty. They then feel pressured to meet up to these standards and go as far as hurting themselves to try to make their bodies “beautiful”. I am planning on elaborating on this domino effect.

Surprisingly, society actually hasn’t always had this picture of beauty. In the early 1900’s women who had a little extra fat were seen as healthy and beautiful. Somehow, things have changed since then. I will explore possible reasons why this change has occurred and exactly what it has developed into today. The use of statistics about how the number of eating disorders has increased since then will assist in strengthening my argument. [you may also want to look out how the beauty ideal in the 18th century was often informed by tuberculosis: idealizing thin and pale as beautiful]

The media today shapes a woman’s idea of what she should look like. Models are supposed to be people girls look up to and “model” themselves after [I think you can do some really interesting definitional stuff here! awesome idea!]. In reality though, most girl’s bodies just aren’t made to be like these women’s. I will discuss why the body image they convey is impossible and impractical. I will also add to the argument by talking about how girls are "taught" that skinny is pretty at such a young age. Here I will use statistics concerning how uncomfortable girls feel about their bodies.

Girls feel an incredible amount of pressure from the media to be skinny. This affects them psychologically, altering their own perceptions about themselves. Many not only feel self-conscious about their bodies but go as far as to hurt themselves to try too meet these standards. At this point, I will describe how these low self-esteems create eating disorders. I will also give a general description of each of the types of eating disorders and the heath hazards associated with them. I will use statistics concerning the number of incidents of eating disorders occurring in different age groups and the number of deaths relating to eating disorders.

This problem is a hard one to fix because it involves changing ideas that have been driven into the minds of society for many years. How do you change everybody’s image of what beauty is? We may actually be moving in the right direction. Here I will discuss Dove’s new "Campaign for Beauty." The campaign stresses accentuating each woman’s individual beauty, rather than conforming to the stereotypical image of beauty. Though it is a small step, hopefully it will encourage more people to jump on the bandwagon and form a new idea of what beauty really is.