Model Effect
What do you think of when you think “attractive woman?” Most people would probably get the vision of a supermodel or an actress. We picture a beautiful woman with no flaws right? Well I have some news…not every girl in the world has a supermodel figure. Probably not even three fourths of them actually. Stick skinny models and actresses are sending a message to young girls, “If you are not stick skinny then you are not attractive, so if you want to be attractive you better lose some weight there girly.” This image they broadcast causes Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, malnutrition, and other serious health conditions in young girls. Anorexia and Bulimia are very similar. They both are obsessions that deal with food intake. Anorexia is when you see yourself as fat, and you don’t eat hardly anything. Bulimia is the same thing, but you eat and then you throw up what you have eaten because you are worried about what weight you will gain from that little amount of food. They have been trained by magazines, television, and peers to think that they need to live up to these standards or the world will not except them.
I can say from personal experience that people worry about their weight constantly. I know I do, and I know some girls that have had Bulimia or Anorexia. I’ve seen girls not eat at lunch, and you know that they are hungry, or they eat a bag of fruit snacks or something ridiculous like that. One of my friends had Bulimia a couple years ago. She and I weren’t very close, but I could tell she was having a rough time. She seemed depressed, and it looked like her whole world was falling apart. She would always go to the bathroom during class, and was missing a lot of school. It is sad that she felt so much pressure to lose weight that she had to resort to Bulimia. I see models on television and in magazines and they have the perfect bodies. You can’t help but to wish that you were that skinny, pretty, or tall. Fortunately, I am one of those girls that doesn’t have to try very hard to stay skinny. I don’t diet, I don’t starve myself, and I don’t puke up my food. I can eat whatever I want to, but what some people don’t seem to understand is exercise. I usually work out at volleyball, basketball, or softball practice. Some people are really lucky and they don’t have to exercise, but some people don’t understand why they gain weight. Well you have to exercise to stay healthy. You can’t just sit around like a potato and expect to have this perfect body. Just as I said before, because people are skinny doesn’t mean they don’t think about their weight. Usually Bulimics or Anorexics are already underweight, or at the weight that they should be at for their body type. They just feel so much pressure to be even skinnier that they start to give in.
My Human Geography teacher, Mr. Andrews, made an interesting comment about this topic the other day. He said, “How is it that our society can go from thinking that Marilyn Monroe, about a size 14, is hot back in the day, but now a girl that size is just not attractive? A girl has to be a size 0-3 to be ‘attractive’. Not saying that Marilyn Monroe isn’t hot because she is, but why is it so different now?” No one knew what to say to him. He explained to us that by putting models, actresses, and beautiful “skinny” girls in magazines and movies, we are being brainwashed into believing that those kinds of girls are the only “attractive” ones in the world. I’m definitely not saying that everyone in the entire world believes this, but a lot of them do. It’s not just men that create these stereotypes, but women as well. Take Eva Longoria for instance. She is pretty, and about a size 0-1. She is an actress on the show The Desperate Housewives. I know many of my friends who watch that show and probably look at her as a role model of some sort. So if she is that small don’t you think that people are going to want to be that small as well?
So many women are dying and becoming fatally ill from Anorexia or Bulimia. Why do magazines broadcast weight loss, workout secrets, and diet pills? Why are women going into depression? It’s all because that is what sells these days. People are going to be watching shows, buying magazines, and movies with the attractive skinny girls in it. You don’t see guys going to see the movies with the less attractive woman in it, you see them going to watch Jessica Simpson in The Dukes of Hazard. It’s just what our society has come to. Women now believe that they have to be stick skinny to be happy.
The world looks at skinny people and says, “I bet she never eats, she is so skinny.” From a differing view the world looks at overweight people and says, “Wow! She probably eats constantly.” But how do you know? You don’t even know the person. You don’t know their eating habits or how regularly they exercise. The skinniest person can have the biggest appetite, and eat ten times more than an overweight person. My point is that everyone’s body and lifestyles are different. We all have different metabolisms, therefore resulting in different weights and diets. A city person is going to eat different than a country person. In the same comparison a city person might feel more pressures to be skinny and perfect. They have a lot more that are judging them everyday.
By broadcasting models and actresses that have the perfect bodies everywhere, people feel the need to get that perfect body, even if it takes starving yourself to death, literally. It’s not all young girls that have these disorders either. It’s every age every body type, and in both genders. Have you heard the term Manorexia? It is estimated that 10% of the people that have Anorexia or Bulimia are males. They want more of an athletic appearance rather that just a thin frame.