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The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that eating disorders affect more than five million Americans each year. About one in every one hundred women binges and purges to lose weight and an estimated one thousand women die each year of anorexia nervosa. One in Ten college women suffer from a clinical or nearly clinical eating disorder and 95% of women with eating disorders are between the ages of 12 and 25. (S.C.A.R.E.D., 2001) There must be a reason or reasons for a rise in the amount of eating disorders in women. One of those possible reasons would be the media's portrayal of slender women. .
People look to society's standards for their personal concept of ideal beauty (Pinhas, Toner, Ali, Garfinkel & Stuckless, 1999). Sociocultural pressures are often cited as an important contributor to the development of eating disorders, and the media is often blamed for perpetuating and further developing these sociocultural pressures to be thin (Wegner, Hartmann, & Geist, 2000). There is a thinner standard for women than men, as evidenced by television characters, movie stars, and women's magazines. Magazines read most frequently by young women contain many more diet articles and advertisements than those read by men (Wegner, Hartmann, & Geist, 2000). The media suggests the idea that "thin is in" by putting stick thin super models in fashion magazines and anorexic looking celebrities on popular television shows and in music videos shown .
On MTV. MTV is a major network targeted towards 15-30 year olds. MTV stands for music television but today it has evolved into more a network filled with, music, sex, humor and super thin singers, actresses and models. Does this portrayal cause young girls to starve themselves or induce vomiting to maintain or get a thin figure?.
Many girls today are concerned with body shape and weight gain, which is sometimes labeled as "drive for thinness" or "fear of fat" (Wiederman & Pryor, 2000).
