Continuing..

By reading more and more into this particular topic I have found out that the root for which women are portrayed as they are in today’s media lays in the economy. The media by idealizing, both the male and female figure, and by providing such a difficult imagery to achieve bursts the economy in various fields such as pharmacology, cosmetics, nutrition and many more (Media Awareness Network). During the years the imagery of the ideal women changed, but not drastically. When I talk about ideal women I mean (super)models, actresses, singers and all the thin and ‘flawless ‘women visible on every channel you turn on. I say ‘flawless’ because even these role models to whom we stick up to have flaws and in order to achieve this spotless look their picture need a lot of retouching and cleaning.

In the past, about twenty years ago, models weighed 8% less then the average women while today the weigh 23% less. Another yet important fact that most girls nowadays forget is as, Sarah Michelle Geller said: “How can women be as thin as we are? We have personal trainers to work us out. We have specially prepared meals” (Kidzworld). Most girls tend to deify these Hollywood, MTV stars that can be seen on TV; or the supermodels from a specific magazine, however, by envying them and wanting to be exactly like them esthetically wise, tend to take the wrong path. The path of starvation or they get caught in a cycle of bingeing and purging.

Moreover I would like to quote a Media Activist who said “Women are sold to the diet industry by the magazines we read and the television programs we watch, almost all of which make us feel anxious about our weight” (Jean Kilbourne, Media Awareness). In relation to all that was said beforehand I wanted to add the following statistics; in 2006 up to 450,000 Canadian women had eating disorder problems. While back in 2003 Teen Magazine (US) reported that about 50 to 70 percent of girls with normal weight thought they were overweight while 35% of girls between the ages of 6 and 12 were at least once on a diet (Media Awareness).

Videos related to this topic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TczkBlcAAjs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsiQptl_Y9E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs5IyioCUFU&feature=related