My friend Sarah graduated from high school last June. Instead of asking her parents for an expensive car, she wanted them to pay for breast augmentation surgery. Her flat chest that never developed during puberty is now enhanced with Barbie-size breasts. The question that comes to my mind is this: Why do many young women today feel that they need to surgically change their appearance?
Media is extremely influential when it comes to women and their appearance. In a recent article in People Magazine, reality star Heidi Montag, discussed why she underwent ten cosmetic surgeries. Montag is a healthy 23-year-old woman and it is surprising that someone so young felt that she needed so much plastic surgery. Montag’s claim was that she wanted to feel “perfect.”
According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), an estimated 12.1 million cosmetic procedures were performed in 2008. By 2015, the ASPS estimates that number will rise significantly to 55 million.
Young women are exposed to thousands of computer-edited photos of stick-size models every day. Women’s magazines are full of articles urging women to lose those last fifteen pounds so they’ll have it all- the perfect love life, great sex, and a rewarding career.
The American research group Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders, Inc. says that one out of every four college-aged women uses unhealthy methods of weight control that include fasting, excessive exercise, skipping meals, laxative abuse, and self-induced vomiting. Young women are constantly weighed down by the unrealistic expectations that the media reinforces.
Researchers from the Media Awareness Network found that women’s magazines have ten and one-half times more ads and articles promoting weight loss than men’s magazines do. Also over three-quarters of the covers of women’s magazines include at least one message about how a woman can change her bodily appearance through diet, exercise, or cosmetic surgery.
Media activist, Jean Kilbourne, believes that the overwhelming presence of media images of painfully thin women mean the bodies of real women have become invisible in the mass media.
Young women need to change the destructive path that the media has created. Young women need to fight against the horrible messages that they receive every day saying that they are too fat, too short, or don’t have large enough breasts.
All women are individual and different from one another. Women need to take pride in them selves and start realizing that in order to be the best they can be they need to stop focusing on what they don’t have and start focusing on what they do have.
All women are beautiful the way they are and the media is making money off of telling women they are not good enough and need to change. The media is what needs to change. They need to stop discouraging and start encouraging young women to believe in themselves and be confident with the body they have.
