Even the words role model explain it itself - the girls look up to these picture perfect, sickly, and older woman, hoping to be like them one day. (Phillips 1) .
For a magazine aimed at an audience of teenage girls, Seventeen does a lot of reporting on men. In 1992, 61 of the celebrities profiled in Seventeen's "Talent" section were men, while only 20 were women. Every issue of Seventeen has a column called "Guy Talk," in which a columnist named Robert Love expounds upon the male view of relationships and women. A man, giving his perceptions of "My Sister's Battle with Anorexia-, wrote one of only two articles in 1992 about eating disorders among teenage girls. The whole July 1992 issue was devoted to describing "One Hundred Guys We Love." (Perhaps as a follow-up, the August issue ran an article called "Hello, I Love You: How to Write a Knockout Fan Letter.") (Phillips 3) .
Each year millions of people in the United States are subject to serious and sometimes severe eating disorders. The vast majority are adolescents and young adult women. Approximately one percent of adolescent girls develop anorexia nervosa, a dangerous condition in which girls are intensely fearful of gaining weight. Magazines display images of glamorous and thin models everywhere. It is no wonder that eating disorders are on the rise and gaining speed along the way. Society places an excessive amount of attention on the value of being thin. Many girls are starving themselves daily to look like their television or movie idol. "The average model weights 23% less than the average woman. (Mudgett 2)- Maintaining a weight that is 15% below your expected body weight fits the criteria for anorexia, so most models, according to medical standards, fit the standards to be diagnosed with this disease. By only reinforcing that beauty, exercise, men, and clothes are important, clouding of the mind for a girl who reads these magazines occurs.
