Her thighs still touch when she walks and her chin still has a twin. It is not fair. It does not make any sense. She followed the seven day fat loss detox written in the latest issue of Glamor Magazine exactly and still doesn’t look like the lean, beautiful model pictured with the article, drinking the fat-blasting concoction. She will have to start skipping breakfast and work out in the morning instead, or stop eating dinner all together. Yes, that will get her the results she needs to finally be attractive, just like the Glamor model.
Before using extreme methods to drop pounds and get skinny, teens should realize that the pictures they are comparing themselves to are not real.
It’s no secret that popular fashion magazines like Glamor, Marie Claire, and Vogue use Photoshop to transform celebrities into thin, ageless models that fit perfectly inside a square magazine cover.
Jezebel.com, a blog aimed toward womens’ interests, recently called attention to some of the edits made by Vogue to its edition featuring the star of HBO’s “Girls” Lena Dunham. Dunham is known for being comfortable with her body image which isn’t exactly Hollywood’s typical size zero.
According to Jessica Coen, author of the Jezebel.com article, having a woman like Dunham on the cover of Vogue is indeed a good thing. However, taking that woman and tweaking her appearance just enough so she is “acceptable” implements negativity.
“Vogue isn’t the place that we go to look at realistic women,” Dunham said in response to the controversy. “Vogue is the place that we go to look at beautiful clothes and fancy places and escapism and so I feel like if the story reflects me and I happen to be wearing a beautiful Prada dress and surrounded by beautiful men and dogs, what’s the problem? If they want to see what I really look like go watch the show that I make every single week.”
Coen agrees with Dunham in that Vogue is fantasy like, and it’s supposed to be. Still, many agree that it shouldn’t matter how glamorous the clothes, lighting and setting are, the people in these images are real and yet Vogue still has to take the “reality” of the human body and make it part of the fantasy too.
The need for perfection that Vogue, Glamor and other magazines possess and obtain through Photoshop has developed a negative impact on teens both male and female. But it is not just print media that is a bad influence.
Many social media sites like Instagram and Tumblr also carry the message saying if men and women can not look a certain way, perfect, skinny, flawless, fit, something is wrong with them.
Being obsessed with “thigh gaps” and hip bones was never something everyone thought about until bloggers made it popular.
“Girls don’t realize having a thigh gap is not a natural body structure for everyone,” sophomore Emily Battaglia said. “By starving themselves, girls aren’t becoming more beautiful, they are putting themselves at risk for serious health problems. By posting pictures that exploit their bodies they are only making themselves seem less confident.”
This skinny mind set is not only unrealistic but dangerous. Anorexia is the 3rd most common chronic illness among adolescents. Nearly half of all Americans personally know someone with an eating disorder.
“Beyonce doesn’t have a thigh gap so neither should I,” senior Addison Ransom said.