“I’m never going to be that girl with 20 plus likes on her photos and status’. I’m never going to get to be that skinny, beautiful girl that every guy wants. I’m never going to feel loved or feel good enough. I’ll always be the quiet girl, alone at the lunch table a few seats down from the girl surrounded by the boys because she is beyond gorgeous.” Skinny, thin, sexy. Every girl wants to be all three of those words. Growing up, girls are pressured every day to be those three words. If you aren’t skinny, you are looked over. If you don’t have a “nice butt” or “a hot body” guess what: you are looked over. Society today has pressured girls to try so hard to be perfect that they are killing themselves due to eating disorders. Marketers have plastered an image of a “healthy” looking women in magazines, on television, and in TV ads. The fact is, these women in the magazines and on TV, more often than not, don’t look like that - they are photoshopped -- and unfortunately, this is causing massive amounts of damage to teen girls everywhere.

When a young girl gets her first Barbie Doll, nobody thinks of it as a big deal. “It’s only a toy.” Many people fail to understand that, these dolls are creating a horrible image in these girls heads making them want to be like Barbie. As a doll, Barbie looks like she would be very healthy but actually, she would be destined for disaster if she was a real person. If Barbie was an actual human, studies show that she would be 5’9” tall, have an 18” waist, a 39” bust, 33” hips and a size three shoe. The company calls this a “full figure” and likes her weight to be at 110 pounds. At her height and weight, this “beautiful woman” would have a BMI of 16.24 and she would be in the category of anorexic. Also, it was also said that she would not be able to menstruate. If Barbie was a real person, because of her proportions, she would have to walk on her hands and feet. A shocking discovery showed that ‘Slumber Party Barbie’ (introduced in 1965) came with a scale permanently set at 110 pounds and also came with a book called “How to Lose Weight.” This wouldn’t be such a big problem but the directions inside the book simply state “Don’t eat.”

Not only do these pressures start piling up as a young child, but they seemingly get worse as girls get into high school. Heather began showing symptoms of an eating disorder as a sophomore in high school. She wanted to lose 10 pounds for prom. “That eating disorder grabbed her so fast. After she lost those 10 pounds, she didn’t know how to get rid of it either.” Her mother tries to explain to an eighth grade health class. Also, as a teenage girl myself, it isn’t easy watching while all the girls get asked to prom and asked out on dates. It seems that only the skinny girls get looked at. It also doesn’t help when every girl on television is under 120 pounds. For example, watching the Victoria Secret Fashion Show, not one single woman on the runway has more than four percent of fat on their entire body. As a teenage girl, we look up to these women. We try our hardest to look like them so we can feel “pretty.” But more often than not, trying our hardest doesn’t seem good enough, which leads girls into depression and eating disorders.

Being a teenage girl is one of the hardest jobs in the world. Yes, it is indeed a job. Everyday girls need to work at being pretty. We need to work at being good enough for everybody. It is a job that requires self confidence and unfortunately, many girls don’t have that confidence to go through the motions every day. Girls do not, by any means, just simply decide to hate thier bodies: society teaches them too.