Time to Ditch the weighs

Time To Ditch The Weighs

Choosing a magazine to read on the bus is a harder task than once thought. There is constant reminder of how the female body should be from the media eye. Skinny and beautiful! This doesn’t give much confidence to us pear shaped women now does it? As much as I try and laugh at the fascination of celery stick celebs such as Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie it is frightening to think that these are the icons that our generation adheres to be.

“Popular film and television actresses are becoming younger, taller and thinner…women’s magazines are full of articles urging that if they can just lose those last twenty pounds, they’ll have it all – the perfect marriage, loving children, great sex and a rewarding career,” says Robin Gerber, author of ‘Beauty and Body Image in the Media.’(2005) He has researched into the subject and believes that it is an economic development of the millennium, putting pressure on the public to become thinner and younger sells beauty products.

The diet industry to date is known to be worth over a billion dollars, no wonder with all the different ‘miracle’ lotions in the shops!

Gerber explains the negative to this increase of sales, “researches indicates that exposure to images of thin, young, air-brushed female bodies is linked to depression, loss of self-esteem, and the development of unhealthy habits in women and girls.” Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders Inc state that ¼ of girls in college use unhealthy ways to loose weight such as fasting, skipping meals and laxatives. American statistics from 2003 showed that 35% of girls from ages 6-12 have dieted at least once, and 50-70% of girls of normal weight believe they are overweight.

Gerber explains in his chapter ‘Unattainable Beauty’ how only a small percentage of women can actually get hold of female images of the media, meaning that the images used are the decision of males of the media. When a group of men where asked to create a perfect Barbie doll, the top half was so heavy that in reality a woman’s back would not be able to hold the weight. “A real woman built that way would suffer from chronic diarrhoea and eventually die from malnutrition. Gerber’s article does seem to blame the male race for our obsessions with out bodies, but when I went out and asked a group of males of how their ideal female body would look like, the results were positive. “I think there is far too much emphasis placed on achieving the ‘ideal’ body these days. Women are expected to conform to the body image set out by magazines, films and other media industries, this is undoubtedly unfair. Personally I prefer the curvaceous body type rather than the slender woman portrayed in large sections of the media. Unfortunately for many women, they are led to believe that ‘beautiful’ is a certain category. This is wrong” says Tom Poole, 21.

There is evidence that there is more of an obsession in women’s magazines of the perfect image, “quarter of the magazines have at least on headline on the front page about dieting, exercise or something else about changing the body” Gerber, 2005. Even the models used are underweight. 20 years ago, 8% of models were under average weight, today 23% are underweight. Magazines believe that having skinnier models will sell products but when a larger woman appeared on the cover of ‘New Woman’ the readers were grateful of this but the advertisers wanted the magazine to return to having thinner models on the front page.