We’ve all seen it, haven’t we? They’re everywhere you look; stick thin, tall, bronzed and, well... perfect. This, the media’s idea of beauty, is instilled into our minds, making us feel fatally flawed somehow, making us hate ourselves for being the way we were born. Why do we depend so greatly on what society considers beautiful instead of how we perceive beauty? Has our world become so brain-washed that we see beauty the way we do because of what media tells us? The question is not only how to help the people of today, but also how to stop society from eradicating people’s self-esteem.

Over the years, models used for advertisements have gotten thinner and thinner. The average model weighs in with a BMI low enough to be classified anorexic, making the youth of today strive to do the same. Up to 24 million people suffer from some form of eating disorder in the US, and only one in ten will seek help. This so called ‘perfect’ image is spreading like a disease, and needs to be stopped before it affects anyone else.

Many teenagers, and according to some studies children ten years old or younger, go to extremes to achieve this body, starving themselves or purging to lose unhealthy amounts of weight fast.

People care more about weight than they should. They value being thin over everything else that used to matter to them. For example, two out of five women would give up three to five years of their life to realize their weight loss goals. People are really willing to shorten their lives to be thinner and it’s absolutely sickening to hear. Something even worse is that according to a survey, adolescent girls are more afraid of gaining weight than getting cancer, losing their parents, or nuclear war! Are we so blind that we would rather, die, lose our parents, and see the world ablaze from nuclear weapons? This indoctrination of our minds has to stop!

As I stated earlier, young children have also been affected by the media. For example, 81 percent of young girls who are only ten years old fear becoming fat. Even worse, 42 percent of first through third graders say that they wish to be thinner! The average age when girls usually will start experimenting with dieting is at only eight years old! What ever happened to kids of that age being carefree, without worry actually living their childhood as children?

This perfect image doesn’t only affect girls, and neither do eating disorders. In fact, ten to fifteen percent of people with eating disorders are men. Over the past twenty years, male models have become increasingly muscular with less body fat while, for the average male it has been the exact opposite. Men and boys are always pressured to be the strong, masculine, fit hero in most movies and stories we see as children. They would have to work relentlessly in the gym and eat healthy foods to achieve that body type just to make other people like them. What happened to liking ourselves for who we are? Isn’t self-esteem and personality supposed to me more attractive than what you look like? Is society actually wrong?