| Now, more than ever, it doesn't matter
who you are but what you look like. Janet was just twenty-five years old. She had a great job and seemed happy. She committed suicide. In her suicide note she wrote that she felt "un-pretty" and that no man ever loved her. Amy was just fifteen when hospitalized for eating disorders. She suffered from both anorexia and bulimia. She lost more than one hundred pounds in two months. Both victims battled problems with their body image and physical appearance. "Oh, I am too fat." "My butt is too big and my breast is too small." "I hate my body and I feel ugly." "I want to be beautiful." The number of men and women who feel these things about themselves is increasing dramatically. I can identify two main categories of body-image problems: additive versus subtractive. Those who enhance their appearance through cosmetic surgery fall into the additive group; those who hope to improve their looks through starvation belong to the subtractive category. Both groups have two things in common: they are never satisfied and are always obsessed. Eating disorders afflict as many as five to ten million women and one million men in the United States. One out of four female college students suffer from an eating disorder. But why? Card Kirby, a mental health counselor of Nebraska university, says that body image and eating disorders are continuum addictions in which individuals seek to discover their identities. The idea that we should look a certain way and possess a certain shape is instilled in us at a very early age. Young girls not only play with Barbie dolls that display impossible, even comical, proportions, but they are also bombarded with images as well," We immediately identify physical attractiveness to mean success and happiness." The media can be blamed for contributing to various body image illnesses. We cannot walk into a bookstore without being exposed to perfect male and female bodies on the covers of magazines. We see such images every day--on commercials, billboards, on television, and in movies. These images continually remind women and young girls that if you want to be happy you must be beautiful, and if you want to be beautiful you must be thin. This ideal may be the main objective of the fashion, cosmetic, diet, fitness, and plastic surgery industries that stand to make millions from body-image anxiety. But does it work for us? Are women who lose weight in order to be toothpick thin really happy? Are women who have had breast implants really happy? What truly defines a person? Is it his or her physical appearance or is it character? Beauty is supposed to be "skin deep". But we can all be beautiful inside. People are killing themselves for unrealistic physical standards dictated by our popular culture. We need to be made more aware of this issue. To be celebrity-thin is not to be beautiful nor happy. It can also be unattractive. Individuals who are obsessed with their bodies are only causing damage to themselves and their loved ones. But as long as the media maintain their message that "Thin is in. ",then the medical and psychological problems our society faces will continue to grow. |