Body image is something many teens, adults, and even children worry about nowadays. And yes, the media does play a HUGE part in that. Usually what you’ll hear is that the media has a negative effect on teen girls which cause eating disorders and what not, but I don’t necessarily feel that way. I do think that the media can get a little carried away but I honestly don’t see any sickly thin women on TV. I do see them on the cover of magazines but the magazines aren’t commenting on how great they look, it’s usually about how gross girls that might as well be skeletons look.

Now sure when you put a 120 pound girl next to a 200 pound girl there is a definite difference, but many things come in to play here such as the height of the girls and their genetics. If the girls were both 5”2 then my opinion would be that the 200 lbs girl might want to consider losing weight. I don’t think she should feel bad about herself as a person but being overweight is unhealthy. So I think instead of telling girls they need to lose weight people should tell teen girls that you need to be healthy. It isn’t healthy to only eat a cracker a day but it’s also not healthy to over eat every day.

People will literally sit around getting mad at the media for showing “thin, beautiful, women” but I don’t understand why it’s wrong to want to look that way. Is it so wrong to want to be pretty? Is it so wrong to want to have a nice body? In my opinion people are too negative on themselves and instead of seeing someone who is gorgeous and putting yourself down for not looking that way, I think you should try to look that way if that’s what you think is pretty. As far as I’m concerned if you have the mind set of knowing that you will never look exactly like famous women but you eat right and exercise daily then you have no reason to be ashamed of your body. Having a goal of wanting to look a certain way isn’t wrong in my book. It’s just like having a goal of wanting to win a game or wanting to get good grades. You wouldn’t get mad at someone for having a 4.0 GPA but you only had a 2.8 GPA would you? No, you would only try to get better.

People will also say that if guys see one girl look amazing and thin then they expect all girls to look like that but I don’t agree with that statement either. Girls can see hot guys in the media but we don’t expect every other guy to look like that do we? I would say that most males have the same mind set about that issue. And if a guy expects you to look just like Megan Fox for example but you have no desire of looking that way then he’s a loser anyway and why would you want to be with him? There is a guy out there somewhere that will love you for you.

So I guess what I’m trying to get at is that if you want to be skinny then be skinny but if you want to be fine with who you are then be fine with who you are. The media shouldn’t affect you either way. There’s only pressure on young girls to be skinny because everyone MAKES pressure and won’t stop talking about how much pressure there is. If we all just realize the fact that there is no way everyone will look the same then I think this so called “pressure” will die down. Be happy and do what you want to do.