Magazine Feature: Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.

If the seventies were the Age of Aquarius, then we’re now living in an

age of disordered eating. During the past fifty years, there’s been a

significant change in how western society views the female body, as well as

in how women view themselves.

For example, I’m a fat girl. To most people, I’m an extremely fat girl.

I see them staring at me as I walk down the street, when I board a transit

bus, or as I meander through the grocery store. I lower my head in public

places so I don’t have to see the disgust that flickers across the faces of

strangers, as they look me up and down. More than anything I want to be

invisible, an impossible feat for a girl who weighs over 200 pounds and

stands at almost 5’11”.

I hate my body. I hate the reflection that peers back at me when I

look into a mirror. I know I’m not the only person ever to feel this way.

There are girls and women who are half my size, yet they consider

themselves fat, and are repulsed by it. But why do we feel like this? Why

does the appearance of a voluptuous, or over weight, woman incite so much

hate?

Is it because we are truly disgusting, and deserve nothing less than

total distain from the public? Or could it be because of something much

more elusive and intangible that surrounds us during our every waking

minute but which we fail to acknowledge? Something as seemingly

ingenuous as the mass media?

Everyday I am exposed to thousands of images. They’re in the

newspaper I read in the morning. Splashed across every page in the

magazine I flip through during my daily commute. All over the web pages I

surf sporadically throughout the day. They’re even on the evening news I

watch during dinner.

Over 3000 advertisements bombard the public on a daily basis

according to reports published by Seattle’s National Eating Disorder

Association’s (NEDA) website. Many of these ads promote an ideal physical

of perfection that is unhealthy and artificial.

But it wasn’t always this way. Historically, voluptuous women were

beautiful. Had I been alive five hundred years ago, my natural curves

would’ve been considered signs of my fertility, maturity, and sexuality.

Each era portrays its vision of the perfect woman in its art. For

centuries, the perfect woman resembled the goddess Venus in Sandro

Bottecelli’s, The Birth of Venus. In the painting, Venus, who is naked, has a

rounded belly, thick thighs, and large breasts.

This is no longer the case. Advertisers and producers now decide

what the perfect woman looks like: she’s young, gorgeous, and very thin.

The average model in today’s advertisements is in her early 20s, is almost

six feet tall, and weighs 117 pounds (53 kg). The average Canadian woman

weighs 153 pounds (69 kg), and is almost 5’4” (161cm). In his book, “The

Ways of Seeing,” British novelist, John Berger had the right idea: he wrote

about the goddess being replaced by the model

In our society, body repugnance has replaced body acceptance. For

many of us, being beautiful and thin is more important than being healthy

and happy. It’s also something we’ll try to achieve no matter what. I’ve

stopped eating for days or weeks at a time in order to slim down. Some

people starve themselves for years. Although no one thing can be blamed

for disordered eating, the mass media’s obsession with thinness does

perpetuate the disease.

The Canadian Women’s Health Network reports 90 per cent of women

are dissatisfied with how they look. It’s no wonder in a world where females

are taught from birth that the only way to be truly happy is to achieve

western society’s skewed image of perfection. In 2006, the Canadian

Mental Health Association reported that 450,000 women were suffering

from an eating disorder.

However, it wasn’t always the intention of the mass media to distort

reality. The media was born in 1454, shortly after the invention of the

printing press, and as it grew and evolved, so did the information it carried.

By the eighteenth century, the mass media had emerged and begun selling

society unrealistic values.

The relationship between the mass media and eating disorders has

been extensively studied and documented by an array of professionals. One

of the leading educators in the field is Dr. Jean Kilbourne, who’s spent the

last 30 years studying how the mass media affects women.

In her film, “Killing Us Softly 3,” Kilbourne explains, “The primary

purpose of the mass media is to sell products. Advertising does sell

products, of course, but it also sells a great deal more than products.

“It sells values. It sells images. It sells concepts of love and sexuality,

of romance, of success, and perhaps most important, of normalcy. To a

great extent, (it) tells us who we are, and who we should be . . .

(Furthermore, it teaches us) that what is most important about women is

how (they) look.”

An historic example of this is Dr. Scott’s Electric Corset, which was

sold in the 1800s. It was marketed to women under the guise that electric

wires sewn into the item would prevent a disruption to blood flow by

manually stimulating circulation. To this day, corsets are items of desire,

symbolizing slenderness and sexuality. I own two.

Women aren’t the only ones affected by the media’s preoccupation

with unattainable beauty. Harvard University Medical School has published

studies indicating up to 25 per cent of Americans with eating disorders are

male. Assuming the rate is similar in Canada, this means over 110,000 of

our brothers, friends, and partners are suffering from disordered eating.

In Australia, one company is cashing in on men wanting to conform to

the images displayed in the mass media. Equman, using the corset as

inspiration, has designed a new men’s product: Precision undergarments.

Equman promises its customers a product that provides a “Seamless

body-enhancing fit, (and) targeted muscle support for improved body

mechanics.” Precision tops and bottoms appear to be quite popular; a New

York Times article reported that Saks had sold 30 per cent of its Equman

stock in a four-week period.

For the past eight years, Wendee Kubik has been teaching Women’s

and Gender Studies at the University of Regina. In several of her courses,

Kubik teaches her students about the mass media’s role in creating

disordered eating and body dissatisfaction in females and males.

Although eating disorders are more common in females, Kubik says,

“There seems to be more images of men now. The firefighter’s calendar,

where men are being used as objects, just like women are. But . . . it

doesn’t have the same detrimental effect on men as it does on women,” she

said.

Kubik encourages her students to question the reasons behind selling

an ideal physical image to women and men and to ask who benefits. She

said she hopes her students “Come up with the conclusion that it’s a lot of

the companies that produce things like make-up, or . . . strive to promote

weight loss. There’s a whole culture out there fed by the pressure to

conform to this ideal beauty standard.

Eating disorders are “Very much linked to the wider society,” says

Kubik. “Our capitalist system is set up . . . to make a profit. And it doesn’t

matter how harmful it is, the profit motive is always there. They’re trying to

sell stuff—that’s what they’re doing.”

The women’s magazine I browse while commuting has 10.5 times

more advertisements aimed at weight loss than a men’s magazine of the

same calibre, according to statistics on NEDA, This helps explain why,

according to the Canadian Mental Health Association, “70 per cent of

women . . . are dieting,” at any given time.

I’ve been overweight for as long as I can remember. My first

experience with dieting was when I was 12 years old, the same year my

doctor began prescribing me hunger suppressants. This is becoming

normal childhood behaviour. Girls as young as five are engaging in weight

control measures, says The Canadian Women’s Health Network (CWHN).

And, 50 to 70 per cent of normal weight girls think they’re overweight.

The CWHN also reports that adolescents see almost 5,300

commercials a year promoting an unattainable beauty. It’s not surprising

than that two per cent of girls between the ages of 15 and 25 have anorexia,

and between three and five per cent have bulimia. Perhaps if they were

exposed to 5,300 commercials encouraging health, happiness, and body

acceptance, Statistics Canada would have better news to report.

Eating disorders are conditions that affect a person’s eating habits

and behaviours. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the two most

common eating disorders. Above all, eating disorders are mental health

issues, requiring the assistance of mental professionals.

When someone in Regina is diagnosed with an eating disorder,

chances are they’ll meet Andrea Stevenson, a nutritionist with the Regina

Qu’Appelle Health Region. She’s part of a team that treats in and out

patients, attempting to improve their health and well-being.

Stevenson said there are records dating back to 1689 describing

patients with eating disorders. But there was a significant rise in the

amount of people affected by this disease in the latter half of the twentieth

century. That’s “When Playboy centerfold and Miss America were getting

thinner and thinner,” she argues.

In her book, “Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent

Girls,” Mary Pipher writes, “Girls developed eating disorders when our

culture developed a standard of beauty that they couldn’t obtain by being

healthy. When unnatural thinness became attractive, girls did unnatural

things to be thin.”

For 50 years, Barbie’s been amusing young girls all around the world.

When I was little, I owned at least a dozen Barbie dolls and had more than

one box of accessories for them. I still have a Christmas Barbie in its

original case on display in my bedroom.

A summary of evidence on the impact of media images on body image

and behaviours indicates, “Girls aged 5 ½ to 7 1/2 –years old reported less

body esteem and a greater desire for a thinner body after exposure to

images of thin dolls.” That’s more than girls who either saw images of dolls

with a healthy body size or no dolls at all.

The majority of Stevenson’s eating disorder patients are young girls.

Eating disorders are dangerous, and present a variety of consequences, the

most serious being death. Females can also become infertile, and if they

deny their bodies the proper nutrients, they increase their chance of

developing medical complications in the future. Stevenson said she has “A

patient right now who’s very young, and is showing signs of early

osteoporosis.”

“The majority of my patients that are underweight have the same food

struggles that somebody who is overweight has,” Stevenson added.

In a world where my body type is scorned, I’m ashamed of my size.

But it’s something I can never hide. Everyone who sees me sees that I’ve

failed to become the perfect woman.

In addition to being in danger, people with eating disorders are also

usually ashamed of their disease. As Stevenson explained, eating disorders

are mental disorders, meaning they “Aren’t something like diabetes, where

you may feel comfortable telling all your friends. Eating disorders are very

emotional, and they seem shameful for people.”

Several things contribute to the development of an eating disorder.

According to Stevenson, an individual needs to be born with certain

temperaments; anorexics tend to display controlling tendencies, whereas

bulimics tend to display a lack of control. They must also live in an

environment that allows the disorder to flourish.

“I agree that our culture plays a big role in (eating disorders),” said

Stevenson. “But I think you also need to have these other aspects. The

media creates unrealistic images for women, girls, even boys. The male

rock stars wear skinny jeans now.”

During the past few years, my mp3 player has seen an increase in the

amount of music produced that mocks the mass media’s influence on the

waistbands of North Americans. Artists like Lily Allen, Nickleback, and

Garbage have all written satirical lyrics about eating disorders. But a song

by Annie Lennox’s puts it best, “If you’re wise, exercise all the fat off . . .

keep young and beautiful if you want to be loved.”

In addition to the images produced by the mass media, there’s an

online network of pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia websites created by people

with eating disorders in order to find others like themselves. Many of the

sites contain thinspiration—images of extremely thin women that act as

inspiration—and other motivators like the 10 Thin Commandments. Among

the Thin Commandments are “(1) If you are not thin, you are not attractive;

(2) Being thin is more important than being healthy; (4) Thou shall not eat

without feeling guilty; and (10) Being thin and not eating are signs of true

will power and success.”

The mass media is everywhere; it’s nearly inescapable. There are

beauty ads in public bathroom stalls. No matter where I go, the same

message bombards me: Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels. So how

are we to escape the obviously detrimental imagery of the mass media?

There has already been movement in the beauty industry towards

using models that are more natural. In Sept. 2006, fashion houses in Italy

and Spain began banning underweight models that have a Body Mass Index

(BMI) less than 18. Dove has its Campaign For Real Beauty, and in

Germany, the top women’s magazine, Brigitte, banned the use of

professional models altogether.

Even though there isn’t an agreed upon formula for avoiding the mass

media’s notion of ideal beauty, Stevenson says there are things we can do in

our homes and lives to lessen its impact.

One of the most important things to do is realize everyone is different,

and is supposed to be different, Stevenson said: “That’s the way they’re

meant to be. Not everyone is supposed to be 5’10” and 110 pounds.”

This means not only accepting our friends and family, but anyone of

any shape or size. Stevenson said parents should also be role models for

their children, “They shouldn’t be commenting about other people. That’s

just not something that should happen. I think it can sometimes cause

eating disorder behaviours.”

Stevenson also said treating oneself well and staying healthy is

important because we only have one body. “People can be healthy and

perhaps be heavier than the BMI tells us, but they’re still healthy. Just

because somebody’s thin, doesn’t mean they’re healthy,” she said.

Stevenson and Kubik agree the public needs to stop accepting media

imagery at face value. They also say the public needs to start demanding

healthier body images.

For nearly 30 years, I’ve longed to be beautiful—as defined by the

mass media. I’ve struggled with body image issues and unhealthy eating

habits. My failure was inevitable, though, because my goal was based upon

absolute flawlessness. Many models have just had their hair and makeup

done by professionals. Many of the photos are digitally enhanced.

In the “Summary of the Scientific Evidence,” 43 experts urge the UK’s

Parliament and Committee of Advertising Practice to implement policies

that will help eliminate the use of unattainable beauty images in the media.

They claim this will protect the well-being of those vulnerable to negative

media imagery.

For my sake, and the sake of any children I may have, I can only hope

that one day, Canada will decide to enact legislation protecting its citizens

from the mass media’s use of unrealistic images to promote unattainable

goals. Until then, I’ll be following Andrea Stevenson’s advice: treating

myself well and working towards staying happy and healthy.