As globalization booms across the world, so does the growth of the media. With this vast expansion, the Western influence stretches on bringing its ideas of body image. American media is condescending when it comes to the controvesial topic of Body Image. Body Image in American media, espcially for women, presents the average female to be tall, skinny and with big breasts. More disturbingly these women are often prostrated across objects being sold or standing next to them in scantily clad clothes. Thus, because of the frequency of these advertisements, the youth have recently begin to feel the effects. In 1970, the average age of a girl who would start dieting was at the age of 14, while in 2004 the average age has shifted to 8 years old. To start dieting at this young an age is traumatizing for any person.
The diet industry alone, makes a revenue of about 85 billion dollars yearly and on temporary weight loss solely. Imagine how much a woman may spent on diet products for herself annually. The sad part out of all these consequences is that the results of a study found that all women who took part, overestimated the size of their hips, while those same women correctly estimated (within range) the width of a given object. Fortunately, there is good news. Many organizations are taking steps to combat this new issue such as the Sadie Nash Leadership Project (SNLP).
SNLP is a non profit organization that empowers women to become leaders everyday. In this organization, there is a program known as the Summer Institute, which holds an assortment of classes for female youth. One of these courses is known as the Leadership Action Project (LAP). LAP teaches these female youth to learn about different aspects of their lives through a blunt lens as well as teaching them the skills necessary to be an activist. These youth (after taking the course) decide on a topic they feel is important and work on it together. This year, they unanimously chose to work on Body Image. After many days of debating, planning and organizing, while searching for the perfect and necessary approach to this topic, they decided to hold a rally. Their goal is to spread awareness about this subject to the unsuspecting population and reach out to people to change their perspectives on the topic. The rally is to be held on August 11th, 2009 at 11 am on Union Square.
As more and more people learn about the tampering of Body Image in the media, the more people begin to participate in the process of actively removing inhumane media effects in their work. Moreover, the only motive for the diet industry is to make more money and many organizations are trying to send out that message. On the other hand, it is only really up to the population to make the change. Not anyone else’s job.