Media And Eating Disorder
...in women magazines (Fillon, 2001). Everyday consumers around the world are bombarded with images of perfect human forms and thousands of people embark on diets with which they hope they will attain physical perfection. We have to face the fact; the women on television have become increasingly thinner in recent years. Television, used to portray the heroine of a program as sexy and voluptuous but now the women playing these roles are ‘waif-like’ and are often described as ‘lollipop’ figures (Thomas, 2004). The average icon pictured on television is 57”, weighs 100 pounds and wears size 8. However, the American’s women average weight is around 140 pounds and they wear size 14, they confessed that it is psychologically detrimental for them and that they feel insecure about their bodies as to what they see in the media (Thomas, 2004). They are portraying more and more the message that happiness and success come only with a thin body. By showing all the slimming products, slimming centres, and weigh-less programs and the skinny models, the media is implying that there are shortcuts to make an average looking women, feel slim. The media has not only affected the watching population but it has also plagued women actresses, models and singers for decades (Jantz, 2006). Famous stars like Karen Carpenter (1960’s), Victoria Beckam, Tracey Gold (Growing pains), Whitney-Houston, Courtney Thorne-Smith (Ally Mc Beal), Geri Haliwell (former member of the spice girl); just to name a few, all suffer from eating disorders (Jantz, 2006). Furthermore, with the technological improvement, the media is using all the visual effects to make us believe what the picture on television. For example, we usually find that advertisements use the ‘before and ‘after’ strategy to create false consciousness. We do not realise that it is a mere visual effect and many people believe in these...
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