Justin Akama
Period 5
Risky Business draft

You can flip through all of the channels digital or cable and I can guarantee you will find at least one commercial that features only slim models. What kind of image does that create for the youth of America? That only sleek and slim people are accepted by society?

Of course there are other contributing factors to anorexia and binge eating such as Biological, physiological, and family as well as social pressures. Research shows that if a girl has a sibling with anorexia she is10 to 20 times more likely to develop the condition too. Families with drug and alchohol abuse also have a 10 to 20 time higher risk of developing an eating disorder. So the media isn’t totally responsible for anorexia and binge eating.

All over the world the standard of beauty in cultures is sleek slim people. Plus sized models are never used for advertising because the slim models are more visually appealing to the general audience. But the image it creates for people is anything but positive. This figure is extremely hard to obtain because a lot of your figure is determined biologically. Anorexia has been recognized as an eating disorder since the late 19th centuries and studies show that Anorexia and binge eating has increased with every decade.

Out of the approximate 6 billion people in the world about 10 million people suffer from some kind of eating disorder. More and more of these people are getting televisions and the programs on the TV contribute to eating disorders. If you watch most programs you’ll see that the bad guys and the other antagonists are usually portrayed as bigger and lazy especially in children’s shows. Examples such as super man, the twilight characters, and people like Ugly Betty on ABC are shown as bad and not in style or good. While a lot of little girls grow up with Barbie and ballet dancers that are all also slim. The thought that slimness, sleek bodies, and big muscles are implanted in the youth of America from a young age and that contributes greatly to eating disorders.

On shows like Entertainment tonight and the insider the shoot down celebrities for not having perfect bodies and teens who watch this get the idea that bodies that are average and that they should be happy with aren’t good enough when they really are. People should be proud of there bodies because the image of the “perfect body” doesn’t fit with a lot of peoples genetics and lifestyle and a lot of times that’s not something you can help so they should just be proud of there bodies and disregard what the media says and shows.