Anorexia and the Media

Anorexia and the Media

It is no wonder that many girls are anorexic: it is from the media. The media’s promotion of super-skinny models has lead many young girls to believe that they are nothing. This is not true, and yet the media promotes it. The image of being “thin and beautiful” pushes young women to diet, which, in their attempt to fit into the “mold” of the model, may lead to anorexia. Approximately one to three percent of women in the United States are anorexic (Cha 1). Clothing companies, such as Calvin Klein, are to blame for this growing epidemic.

Klein, whose models “[look] like runaway teenage junkies” (Goldberg 1), almost seems to promote anorexia. When Klein made an icon of Kate Moss, posters of her in Manhattan were “defaced with graffiti reading ‘feed me’” (Goldberg 2). A group called the Media Foundation made a parody of one of Klein’s commercials. In the commercial, “a naked woman heaves and groans. The camera pans around to reveal her vomiting into a toilet. A caption reads, ‘The beauty industry is a beast’” (Goldberg 2).

A few years ago, the beauty industry seemed to become less of a beast: the media started promoting larger attractive-looking models. But Klein did not consider this when he decided to promote “real people.” These not-so-flattering photos seem to mock big people, says Idrea Lippman, an owner of a plus-sized boutique in Los Angeles (Goldberg 1). These two photos, which feature a man and a woman, show the contrast of what larger people are wanting to see. The woman, who is wearing all black make-up and clothing, “slouches and grimaces” (Goldberg 1). The featured man, who is swinging his arms ridiculously around him, seems to be in the middle of a dance move. Lippman ...

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...weight with sinfulness (Goldberg 3). This mocking of fat people needs to be transformed into beauty so that the steadfast media can see that larger persons are worthy of beauty as well. They just present themselves in a different manner than thin people do.

Although thin people seem to dominate society, the average size for a woman today is a size twelve. That puts the number of models on a smaller scale, and boosts the number of ordinary girls that make up most of society today. It’s not just about ordinary girls outnumbering models; it’s about the way that the media portrays these models. Slowly, the image of the “thin and beautiful” being the best is going down the drain. Larger models and actresses are taking the places of the “thin.” Hopefully, this will decrease the increasing numbers of anorexics in the United States as well as all over the world.