Morgan 1 Kadie Morgan Instructor: Malcolm Campbell English (1102) February 7, 2014 Is The Media and Air Brushing

the Cause for Eating Disorders among Women? Remember when you were in middle school and you had the glasses, the braces, and probably a pimple or two here and there. Wow, those were the ugly days for most of us and what made it even worse was when picture day came around the corner. Oh, how we all dreaded picture day. Picture day was the one day out of the school year where you probably had one more pimple appear the night before. Or maybe you forgot it was picture day and didnt apply makeup that morning. Well the good thing is, for ten dollars extra you can have all those zits and blemishes taken away! I know we all remember this because especially as girls we all begged mom to pay the extra ten dollars so we didnt end up in the year book as the girl with zi t city on the side of her face. This my friends is known as airbrushing or another familiar term might be photo shopping. Photo shopping did some amazing works for us ugly kids in the seventh grade but how does it affect us in todays time? How does photo shopping work in the real world? In the real world many people use airbrushing for many things like advertisements and commercials. The media is all about making people look their best. However, airbrushing doesnt just make a woman look skinnier on television it also makes the women at home feel ugly, overweight, and unattractive. In fact, according to Issitt, airbrushing is one of the number one causes of eating disorders within girls today (Issitt 1-4). The Mayo Clinic stated that, Eating disorders are a group of serious conditions in which you're so preoccupied with food and weight that you can
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Morgan 2 often focus on little else (Staff). Harmon stated in News Bank that, According to Eating Disorders Awareness and Prevention, 5 to 10 million females struggle with eating disorders like anorexia, bulimia and binge eating (Harmon). The three major types of eating disorder are obsessive-compulsive eating, bulimia, and anorexia. The most common is obsessive-compulsive eating, where people are constantly dieting until they lose control and go on a binge. More severe is bulimia, which is characterized by normal or binge eating habits followed by purging via vomiting, excessive exercise or laxatives. Anorexia is the most severe. Restrictive anorexics are very below normal body weight, greatly restrict their nutritional intake and have a distorted body perception that tells them they're heavier than they really are (Harmon). So, is it true? Is the media and airbrushing the cause for eating disorders among women? Point: Airbrushing in Advertisements Is Detrimental to Body Image says yes! Issitt stated, Airbrushing in advertisements creates unrealistic standards of beauty that contribute to body image issues, eating disorders, and depression (Issitt 1-4). They stated that air brushing is used to make models and celebrities look thinner, prettier, and flawless for advertising or commercial use, but what is this saying to the world? It is telling young girls that to be pretty they have to have a waist measurement smaller than the circumference of a human head. It is telling these girls to be thin like this celebrity and that model, but in reality no one can possibly be that small and look that good, even the person in t he picture. Airbrushing in advertisements is the process of using photo manipulation techniques to alter the appearance of individuals appearing in advertisements, stated Point: Airbrushing in Advertisements Is Detrimental to Body Image (Issitt 1-4).

Morgan 3 Ever since Twiggy the world has seen the definition of beauty to be in the size jeans you wear (Ballaro). Now, we all would love to be a size four, but we know thats not realistic. I know that, and you know that but why doesnt the media? The media is throwing things out to the public left and right about women with the super slim bodies, perfected hair and flawless skin. Clothing stores are publicizing it, weight loss programs are publicizing it, beauty supplies are publicizing it and even restaurants are publicizing it. Hardees has made commercials with very thin girls on the beach eating hamburgers and most of us know that they probably didnt really eat the hamburger and we know that even though she probably works out that her body had some photo shopping done to it. How about all the weight loss programs that we see on television? Is it fair to the consumers to advertise someone who has done the diet and participated in the commercials and has lost weight but not the amount of weight that the producers make it out to be? Is photo shopping okay when it comes to weight loss commercials, since it doesnt really matter how true the picture is since the consumer will lose some amount of weight anyway? Once again, the answer to perfected girls in advertising usually relates to photo shopping also known as airbrushing. Since the pre-digital era, glamour photos have been airbrushed by skilled photographers to remove imperfections on the skin (Tang). However, photo shopping is wrong in so many ways. Women look at these models and wonder why they dont look perfect when eating a hamburger. They wonder why when they do eat these things that the models promote they gain weight instead of lose. Or when they do try that diet they dont lose weight so they result in starving their self. In the end commercials and advertisements leave women and young girls with a low self-esteem, which may lead to starvation to reach the size of the models, or even worse.
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Morgan 4 Is media and air brushing the cause for eating disorders among women? Well Because of magazines, and television defining this perfect image of beauty, girls as young at five years old have started watching their figure. Dr. Nicole Hawkins studies show that after only three minutes of looking at a fashion magazine, 70 percent of girls feel depressed, guilty and shameful of themselves (Bailey ). Not only are these commercial ads and magazine ads directed towards the older girls but eating disorders are evolving through little things like Barbie dolls. Mattel Inc., which manufactures Barbie, has decided their current model of Barbie is too fat and needs to become thinner (Bailey). Now you cant photo shop a doll but by making her body look smaller it is making girls as young as seven wonder why she cant be that tiny. Whether we like it or not the media is corrupting the women, young and old, to think that the only definition of skinny is a size zero. The media should show a variety of images, not images of perfection, said Dr. Hawkins (Bailey). Next, think about this. How about those stores who have posters of models showing off their newest fashion line hanging all over the store windows? Let be honest most of these store only sell certain sizes and if they do sell a wide range of sizes the sizes run small. So when young teenagers or young adults walk in they see all these skinny young people showing off the clothing and most of them wish we could look like this. As Americans we should stop supporting clothing stores like this and find the stores who support all sizes. For instance, we dont know whether for sure that Abercrombies photographers use photo shop but they only sell s izes up to a size large. They also have young men and women walking around the store during certain times of the year wearing nothing but bathing suits or bikinis. Now as most girls walk by and drool over the men models other girls are walking by and wondering why they cant be as tiny as the girl models. When in reality those girls probably have to do some extreme exercise and
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Morgan 5 maybe even starve their self to get that job, because Abercrombie doesnt sell clothes for fat people. Abercrombie made a statement one time that only skinny people should be allowed to wear their clothes, hence the reason their sizes run small. What kind of message does this give the population of young girls? To wear the popular clothes you have to be a small size and if you are an extra-large, well you have to go somewhere else. For instance there is an article about American Eagles brand Aerie skipping the photo shop step in their advertisement. Even though in years past Aerie has photo shopped their models, now they are saying that Aerie Real is as real as it gets! In its press release regarding its ad campaign, American Eagle brand Aerie's chief marketing officer said, "The purpose of 'aerie Real' is to communicate there is no need to retouch beauty, and to give young women of all shapes and sizes the chance to discover amazing styles that work best for them"(Marder). Now this is the type of stores that we should be supporting. Stores like this speak to young girls, promoting that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. Growing up I have wondered why I couldnt have the perfect body, with the long legs and the long torso, but I know I wasnt alone. I know of many girls who have felt the same way I did. One of my closes friends is in the process of battling an eating disorder because she was tired of being fat. My little sister who is twelve years of age looks in the mirror and tries to suck in to see how tiny she can make her stomach. My sister is five feet and one inch tall and is fit to a tee, yet she still feels like she needs to lose weight. When we go shopping and she cant fit that extra small anymore, she doesnt buy anything because she feels fat. As women most of us are like this. We see an outfit on a manikin, who I must say is probably clothed in extra small sizes, and fall in love with it until we put it on, then most of us are let down because we feel too round to pull off those horizontal strips or too short to pull off those high-wasted jeans. All in all at some point in our lives, whether a girl is big, small, tall, or short, she is going to feel the
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Morgan 6 need to be as skinny and tall as that Victoria Secrets model. So why do we feel this way? What promotes this feeling in young girls today? Is the media and airbrushing the person to blame for eating disorders among girls? Are they the only ones out there to blame or are there more out there? After having a mindset that the media was the main causes of eating disorders I decided to research more. As I researched I found that the media is one of the most likely causes for eating disorders but they are not alone. Sources say that genetics can play a role within eating disorders, as well psychological factors, interpersonal Factors, social factors, and biological factors (NEDA). The Mayo Clinic breaks it further down into three groups, biology, psychological and emotional health, and society. Under the society column the Mayo Clinic stated that, The modern Western cultural environment often cultivates and reinforces a desire for thinness (Staff). Therefore we see that once again Media and the worlds view of beauty plays a role within eating disorders but there are also many other factors. The Mayo Clinic next mentions biology, and this is talking about the genes and the genetics that make some people more vulnerable to developing eating disorders. They stated that when someone in the immediate family battles an eating disorder it makes other people in the family more likely to establish one as well. The last group that was mentioned was the psychological and emotional health group, this is reflecting people that may have low self-esteem, perfectionism and impulsive behavior and troubled relationships (Staff). The Mayo Clinic does a good job at backing up my statement that Media is one to blame for eating disorders within young women but it also helps state some new ideas that also contribute to eating disorders as well.
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Morgan 7 For example, of all lets talk about Sara Hornbacher. This is the name of a young lady that grew up learning to diet. When she was like her mother would always influence her to watch her weight and to fast from day to day. By the time she was fifteen she was overly obsessed with her body and by the time she was sixteen and weighing eighty-eight pounds she started to see deformity within her body image. Sara soon thought it may be time to get some help, so she visited a doctor who told her she needed to weigh at least one-hundred and twenty pounds but her mother told her that at one-hundred and twenty pounds she would be considered fat. Unfortunately, Sara was and still isnt the only young girl being influenced by a parent to be skinny. All over American there are young girls growing up around their mothers stating that they need to lose weight and they need to get in shape, and lets remind ourselves how influential every mother is whether good or bad. Now, not every situation is like Sara and there can be other influences other than the mother, but when someone walks around always obsessing over weight and looks other people especially children are going to notice to. Sara stated that people need to accept their genetics, "Some folks are going to be apple-shaped, and some folks are going to be pear-shaped. If your expectation is that you need to be a thin hourglass when everyone in your family is a pear, well, you're going to be disappointed, frustrated and constantly feeling that you're not OK". All in all Sara is a good example of how hard battling an eating disorder, genetic makeup, and an influential parents can be (Harmon). All in all, many Americans would agree that the media and air brushing has a huge effect on girls and causes eating disorders along with feeling of depression and low self-esteem. I would have to say yes, with all the research that I have conducted the definition that the media has given beauty is putting a negative effect on the way women view themselves. But they are not the only ones to blame. I feel that they play a very big role but as a researcher I have to take
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Morgan 8 in all the facts and look at the topic from a broader view. So Even though the Media is one of the main causes of eating disorders, there are also many more. However when it comes down to the topic of the Media and air-brushing and its effect on Eating disorders we as Americans we should do our part to put a stop to false advertisement when it comes to beauty and perfection. We may not be able to make a difference in everyones self-esteem or home life but we can help change the Medias definition of beauty.

Morgan 9 Citation Page Bailey, Brianna. "You Can't Airbrush the Real Thing: How the Media Affects Women." UVU Review . (2010): n. page. Web. 10 Feb. 2014. <http://www.uvureview.com/2010/11/08/you-cant-airbrush-the-real-thing-how-the-mediaaffects-women/>. Beverly. "Body Image & the Media: An Overview." (2013): n.pag. Points of View Reference Center. Web. 10 Feb 2014. <http://web.a.ebscohost.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/pov/detail?sid=85bf5e48-03cb-4d87-a2e4-

"Factors That May Contribute to Eating Disorders | National Eating Disorders Association." NEDA: Feeding Hope. NEDA, 08 Aug. 2013. Web. 08 Mar. 2014.

Harmon, Rod. "A Craving To Lose." News Bank (2000).

Issitt, Micah. "Points of View: Airbrushing in Advertising." (2013): 1-4. Points of View Reference Center. Web. 10 Feb 2014. <http://web.a.ebscohost.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/pov/detail?vid=3&sid=66358c30-e00a-46ca8769-24f8fb5a0926@sessionmgr4003&hid=4209&bdata=JnNpdGU9cG92LWxpdmU=Ballaro,

Marder, Andrew. "Does It Matter That Aerie Skipped Photoshop in Its New Ads?." Motley Fool: To Educate, Amuse, & Enrich. 25 Jan 2014: n. page. Web. 10 Feb. 2014. <http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/01/25/does-it-matter-that-aerie-skippedphotoshop-in-its.asp&xgt;.

Morgan 10 Tang, Denny. "Airbrushing- Natural Smooth Skin." 2007. <http://www.photoshoptutorials.ws/photoshop-tutorials/photo-retouching/airbrushing-naturalsmooth-skin/>. Staff, Mayo Clinic. "Eating disorders." Mayo Clinic (2014).