The Media and Eating Disorders

Recently, I have been watching a lot of reality television (big surprise). One of my guilty pleasures is Tyra Banks' "America's Next Top Model." Here's a link to the show's website so you can get a better idea. The show is about aspiring models who are competing for a contract with Ford Models, a spread in Elle Magazine, and a deal with CoverGirl. Early on in the competition, one of the models was kicked off the show because the judges condsidered her to be too overweight for the industry. She was about 5'10, weighing a mere 120 pounds! Now that the competition has been narrowed down to five girls, the judges have been particularly hard on one model who has been gaining some weight. In one of the shoots, they made her do a "gluttony" theme, and the very next shoot was her posing as an elephant. I was appalled to see how the media depicts young, beautiful women. It makes people believe that beauty is measures by the size of your waist.
Here's a link to an article about the media's effect on eating disorders.

Young people have enough trouble accepting themselves as it is. They do not need to watch shows that are dedicated to cutting people down. Eating disorders are a huge problem, and there needs to be programs to rectify the problem before it gets progressively worse. This is a website with statistics on eating disorders.

Some of the more startling staticts are as follows:

• 10% report onset at 10 years or younger
• 33% report onset between ages of 11-15
• 43% report onset between ages of 16-20
• 86% report onset of illness by the age of 20
• 19% or more of college aged women in America are bulimic
• As many as 10% of college women suffer from a clinical or nearly clinical eating disorder, including 5.1% who suffer from bulimia nervosa