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If Barbie were a person, she would be 7’2” with measurements of 40-22-36 (bust, waist, hips) (Alston). Many girls grow up looking at Barbie as a role model for what an attractive woman looks like. In reality, a woman’s waist would have to be about the size of her head to look like Barbie. From the time they are very young, girls are pressured to live up to such unrealistic standards concerning their appearance, specifically their weight. Numerous reasons related to society exist for why young women feel pressured to be skinny today, resulting in one of the many types of eating disorders.
After only a couple weeks of being a freshman at Penn State, I was thrown into a world of real issues that I was not accustomed to back at home. One day while washing my hands in the bathroom, I heard the sound of a nearby toilet flushing four times in a row, poorly masking the sound of a girl throwing up. Before immediately making the assumption that she had an eating disorder, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, figuring she could just be sick.
Though, within the next few weeks I heard that sound many more times and realized that there was a girl on my floor suffering from bulimia. I remember seeing her eating in the commons one day and then seeing her less than an hour later throwing up in the bathroom. It really scared me; I had never been exposed to such a serious issue. It was an issue so serious that it could ultimately cause death. This girl, who was already thin, was starving herself and making herself sick in order to become even skinnier. I knew I had to do something; if she got much skinnier, she could start to develop some serious health problems. I told the RA about it and let her take care of it. I feel much better knowing that she got help and is on her way to having a normal, healthy body. I think it is important for society to demolish the idea that women have to be very skinny in order to be beautiful, so girls can stop feeling self-conscious about their bodies and start realizing that there are many different forms of beauty.
Eating disorders can take many forms, but the most common ones are anorexia and bulimia. Anorexia is starving oneself in order to obtain excessive weight loss (Anorexia). Bulimia is a cycle of binge eating and purging (through either vomiting or abuse of laxatives) in order to avoid weight gain (Bulimia). Over 90% of people diagnosed with an eating disorder are adolescent young women. One third of college women are bulimic. Girls as young as nine diet (Ice). These statistics can only lead one to believe that something is making females, young women in particular, feel pressured to be skinny.
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