The media has become a huge part of everyday life in the twenty-first century. Every day most people encounter an advertisement, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat post, or see magazine covers. The first thing on these media mediums is a beautiful model with a perfect body on display across a screen or page. These models are used by producers, fashion designers and business owners to sell a product. They know the models can sell their product because most people are influenced by the beauty and desire to be exactly like the gorgeous people they constantly see. It is common knowledge to people that not everyone can look just like the models that are paid millions of dollars to look beautiful. Regardless, there is a majority of people desire to be “beautiful” and a handful of those people feel the need to go through extreme measures to change themselves to look more like models. Anorexia is becoming more common among young women. The pictures of “perfect” girls make young women feel bad about themselves and they are willing to starve themselves to achieve a model-like figure. According to the National Eating Disorder Collaboration, Anorexia has a standardized mortality rate that is 12 times higher than the annual death rate from all causes in females aged 15 to 24 (NEDC). The media creates an unattainable beauty standard for women. It portrays that success and power are automatically associated with beauty. When women struggle to achieve the cultural standard, body dissatisfaction increases as well as the development of eating disorders, such as anorexia. 

There is nothing wrong with trying to be beautiful and being satisfied with yourself. The issue arises when a girl never feels satisfied with herself, loses self-esteem and starts to take drastic measures to make herself as beautiful as she possibly can. The measures taken to achieve this start to get dangerous when young girl’s think that there is no other option but to starve themselves to obtain the results they are looking for. Anorexia is defined as an eating disorder characterized by an abnormally low body weight, intense fear of gaining weight and a distorted perception of body weight. People with anorexia place a high value on controlling their weight and shape, using extreme efforts that tend to significantly interfere with activities in their lives. Girls will starve themselves to death, literally. The medias part in the development of this disease is because the media gives society the message that you cannot be successful or powerful without having a beautiful body or face. Renee Englen, a psychologist and body image researcher at Northwestern University, makes a point that society is constantly bombarded with three messages. The first message is that beauty is the most important, most powerful thing a woman can be. (Englen). The second is that Victoria Secret models are what beauty looks likes and three, that ordinary people do not look like that (Englen). Girls in society are often reminded of these messages and it increases body shame and depression and decreases body satisfaction and self-worth.  Since we are over exposed to images of girls that are extremely skinny with big boobs and toned bodies we think that body type is the norm of society and we don’t consider them for what they are, which is rare. When girls don’t meet the societal expectation of being beautiful, they feel worthless and feel like they don’t amount to anything. To try to make themselves feel better and more successful, like they matter in society, they starve themselves and when they see results they keep up their habits. This is how the development of anorexia occurs. When they keep starving themselves it starts to get dangerous to their health and can eventually result in death. 

The media portrays stereotypes associating with body type. Evidence claims that people who are fat are poor and uneducated while thin-framed people are successful, rich and firm (Saguy). This stereotype makes people who do not have the skinniest frame want to become skinnier so they fit the stereotype of successful instead of the alternative. This is the media’s fault not only because they present this stereotype but, the people who are on the magazine covers and in pictures are all skinny professional women that make a lot of money and have an impact in the world. “A deep-seated cultural belief in self-reliance makes body size-like wealth- especially likely to be regarded as being under personal control and as reflecting one’s moral fiber” (Saguy). Whether it be entertainers or models every person on the magazine looks good because “sex sells” and the more beautiful people are in the articles or spread, the more copies are sold and the magazine company makes more money. The fact that beauty makes so much money is why this stereotype exists. If the media portrayed professional women that have ordinary figures would there be less of a belief that skinny equals easier success? “Thinness is a cultural value in the contemporary United States- it is a quality that is widely prized by members of this society” (Saguy). Since thinness is considered beautiful and is a cultural value, the media automatically plays a huge roll. The media can control that stereotype because they have heavy influence on our society and its values. Therefore, if the media took the current pictures of girls with incredible bodies that make the average citizen feel bad about themselves, and replaced them with incredibly successful women that look presentable and normal, women and girls would not have the idea that thinness causes success drilled into their heads. This would cause body satisfaction and self-esteem increase instead of decrease and the rates of anorexia would start to decline. 

The standard for beauty did not always use to be flat stomachs and small legs. In the 1900’s women who today would be considered thick and a little over weight were considered beautiful and models for every other America girl. However, iconic women in society, like Marilyn Monroe, were not considered skinny. Marilyn Monroe had a reputation of being curvy but her waist was 22 inches which was approximately two to three inches less than the average women waist in the 1950’s (Hiskey). Arguably the most beautiful women that Hollywood has come across and one of the most influential actresses in changing the typical stereotype of beauty was way below average for waist size. Women who were perfectly average and had feminine and beautiful bodies were expected to have below average waistlines because the most beautiful women in the media was way below average. 

One of the reasons the media has created such a such a high beauty standard is because if the impact feminism has had on society. Women used to get better reputations in the media and from society when they stayed and home and did traditional woman’s work. “But even successful women and those who lived during the time of ‘women’s liberation’ have learned from…that women receive much less encouragement for the power and prestige associated with nondomestic achievements than men do” (Silverstein 5). When a woman’s role was not considered domestic anymore and women started to achieve professional jobs and become successful in a “man’s world”, the stereotype that came with the newly found power was masculinity. To compensate for the reputation, women would go to extreme measures to maintain or achieve a body type that was feminine. “The connection between curvaceousness and competence that appears to be part of many women’s self-concepts also affects their health. For example, today, as in the 1920’s, women oriented toward intellectual and professional achievement have often been found to be particularly likely to manifest symptoms of disordered eating” (Silverstein 23). As women’s roles changed in the professional field they also changed in the media. “During that period, females portrayed in all the mass media became slimmer, including Playboy models, Miss America finalists and the most popular movie stars. It appears that as go women’s roles, so go their figures” (Silverstein 20). Even though women have made huge strides in professional fields, most of the time that is not enough for them. For women to feel like the best versions of themselves they feel that the need to have a prestigious job and be thin, which ultimately means beauty. 

Instagram has become a huge part of society especially in teenagers and young adults. Instagram is an app that allows people to posts picture of themselves to share with their friends. Although this app is a great way to keep up with friends and what they are doing with their lives, the main purpose has become about getting affection and noticed by people based on physical appearance. There are fitness models that have thousands and sometimes millions of followers that post pictures of their flat stomachs and toned legs that some people can only dream of achieving. It is not bad that people have great bodies like this and they should be able to show them off. The negative consequences however are that when those pictures are the most popular ones on the app girls begin to feel self-conscious about their own physical appearance since they are not getting as much attention as the models. People also forget that models now how to use lighting, angles, and photo shop to make their bodies look better in the picture than it does in person. Fitness guru, Anna Victoria, encourages girls to embrace their normal body flaws. “‘As I’m getting older, I have cellulite and stretch marks that aren’t going away, and I welcome them, … How can I be mad at my body for perfectly normal ‘flaws?’ This body is strong, can run miles, can lift and squat and push and pull weight around, and it’s happy not just because of how it looks, but because of how it feels’” (Williams). The women that are known for their bodies still have stomach rolls and cellulite that is just hidden from the camera. When it’s hidden, it becomes a taboo and normal people have it ingrained in their brain that it’s frowned upon to have flaws. It is impossible to get rid of all the “flaws” in a person’s body but most people try to get as close as possible. When they get there, they think they can do a little better, and eat a little less and work out a little more. It is a cycle that gets worse and worse eventually becoming dangerous both physically and mentally. 

Media often is not the direct cause of the development of eating disorders in people but, it does mediate environments that increase the chance of developing an eating disorder by a lot. Eating disorders are over simplified when it comes to the media. Our culture does not influence a person. The cause of eating disorders is commonly effected by how a family or environment responds to the images portrayed in the media. “The extent to which the family transmits cultural messages about thinness and body shape, and the way the family conveys these messages to family members, are crucial to understanding the processes associated with the production of body image and the influence of these processes upon the development of eating disorders” (Hoeppner). A person with a critical family that often cares about body image is more susceptible to eating disorders than someone who has a supportive environment. “In the context of a critical family environment, talk about weight that occurred routinely and was a central organizing principle in family dynamics—represented by what terms a dominating encounter—predisposes members to value thinness and consequently framed how actors thought about self-improvement or adaptation.” (Hoeppner). Often families with a critical environment, a main discourse on weight can lead to dysfunctional consequences and can increase the risk of female members developing an anorexic or bulimic identity. (Hoeppener). Family values mean a lot to teenagers growing up and have a lot of influence on them. Media portrays success and power as being thin and looking the part, and when families feed into that they put pressure on their kids to be just like the people that our model in our media. 

Most of the research today has conclusive evidence that the media is to blame for much of the development of eating disorders in young women. Recently, there has been new evidence brought to light that suggest that there could be a possible biological factor that cause the development of eating disorders. Dr. Sanjay Gupta did an interview with a CNN anchor and discussed the possibility of an autoimmune process causing eating disorders. The autoimmune process can be compared to ones that causes multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. “These antibodies actually attack the body's own native tissues. Those are some examples of it, and again, when we're talking about eating disorders, what they are finding is that the antibodies' levels do seem to be increased in some of these patients with those eating disorders.” (Gupta). In a recent study, they looked at 57 women who had eating disorders and measured their blood to see if there were antibodies that were attacking the body’s own native cells. In the women, they tested there were a lot of antibodies in the blood that have a chance of influencing the way the women regulate how much they eat. All the research that pertains to this hypothesis has been inconclusive and does not have much evidence. The idea that media is involved with the mental illness young women get that force them to starve themselves is much more accepted in society today.

Overall, young women are constantly barraged with the messages from the media that suggests a perfect body is skinny and that if they don’t have that they do not amount to much in society. They think everything will be easier for them and their problems will go away if somehow they can develop a body that no one can criticize. Recently, there have been models like Ashley Gram who are plus sized woman that have huge model contracts that are starting to change the way media presents the ideal beauty. People are starting to realize that skin and bone is not as beautiful as people made it to seem. Although we have made progress towards a more body positive message in the media and society there is a long ways to go. There are often news headlines that body shame people. For example, Lady Gaga got ripped apart by the media for how her body looked in the outfit she wore for her halftime show. It was ridiculous. Most people would not look as good as she did in an outfit like that. It is situations like those that make people feel insecure about themselves and remind them they aren’t good enough for the standards of today’s society. If the media continued with the growing positive and accepting attitude of all body types the amount of eating disorder developed by young women would decrease and the self-esteem of many successful women would increase. 
