Regardless to what other cultures believed before, a wave of Westernized values and believes are rapidly spreading throughout the world and the body image portrayed to us, is slowing becoming a universal image. Most sources draw this as a conclusion. The media in other countries are picking up on the success level that has been created in the United States and is looking for the same reward. So in the end, all countries will have been taken over by this image craze and not only will Americans be feeding our money to the industry, but soon every country that has access to the television and magazines will do the same. This form of instrumental evil will one day be so successful and so large that there will be one general image to obtain, regardless if you live in the East or West.

So how is all of this evil? We loose our sense of self, individuality and fall victim to narrow definitions of beauty defined by the media. The media acts as a propaganda machine determined to shake our confidence, remind us we are not good enough, we haven't made it, that we just simply do not measure up. A resent poll indicated that women are made to feel so insecure that they are willing to try diets that pose health risks (34%), go "under the knife" (34%) and 93% indicated they had made various and repeated attempts to lose weight to measure up to the images, (Smith). Why is the media bent on making us feel so down about ourselves? Why do they go to such lengths to make us feel "less than,"? The answer is quite simple, pure economics. The media machine is economically driven as billions are spent on items such as cosmetics, new diets and clothes. This "beautifying" empire is dependent on our disempowerment. They count on us buying into their myths and misrepresentations: "we will never fit it, we can never be happy, thus we can never end the pursuit," (Smith). Alas, the pursuit is endless, the products are endless, the damage to our self-esteem is endless, and the body hatred created is devastating. The financial, social and psychological and physical damages of a woman's lifetime pursuit of thinness are impossible to measure. Depression, despair, depletion of self-esteem, the withering and wasting away of physical, psychological and financial resources are unbelievable. We must all take a personal inventory of how our lives have been impacted by these images and how we have fallen victim to these lies and misrepresentations of beauty. By examining how these images have impacted your life you are better equip to avoid falling victim to these myths. You will learn to measure yourself by intrinsic qualities that are of far greater value and are far more beautiful than any image manufactured on a movie screen.

BDD is often misdiagnosed as another psychiatric disorder. This occurs because BDD can produce symptoms that mimic other disorders such as social phobia, agoraphobia, panic disorder, trichotillomania (hair pulling), obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression. All of this pain and abuse, possibly sprouting from the media and the brain washing that we have subjected ourselves too.

So what we have here are children exposed to such a strict body image that health problems are taking over. First we have anorexia and bulimia, which are become more and more common

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