Striving to be Perfect
By Ledina Meco
English 2 Honors
Miss Zima
February 21, 2012
Ledina Meco
Miss Zima
English 2 Honors/ 5
February 14, 2012
It has been estimated that around 8 million Americans suffer from anorexia. Anorexia is a mental illness that causes your body image to be distorted. I believe society causes most of these problems. They have created the stereotypical “perfect” teenage girl that everyone is supposed to look like to fit in. Teenage girls look at these models and strive to be like them in every way. They will starve themselves and to go extreme extents just to feel better about themselves. In all of our advertisements, there are skinny unrealistic girls portrayed instead of having your average everyday girl play the role. Even the models and actresses playing in these movies and commercials are usually anorexic themselves and even they risk getting life threatening conditions just to be skinny. We are taught to believe that if you aren’t a certain weight or can’t fit into a certain size jeans, then you will not fit in or be accepted.
In every advertisement we see now-a-days, there is a most likely a skinny model starring in it. Teenage girls look up to these models and want to be just like them. They think of them as beautiful and that if they look like them, they will get more attention or be more popular. But surprisingly these models are often photo shopped and not even real. These ads are everywhere in fashion magazines and TV shows. Girls begin starving themselves to achieve the figure of the models but they fail to realize that these pictures have been digitally altered (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). So in most cases teenage girls are attempting to achieve a figure that is not even possible. Not only are these pictures distorted but they also cause girls to have distorted body images which will cause them to look at themselves in different proportions than they actually are (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
Out of all mental...