The media lies Try to spend a day without the media and its devices. Starting from the morning, don’t watch any morning shows on TV and don’t read a newspaper. While walking to the bus stop or driving to work, neither look at any advertisement nor listen to the radio. Even at work, don’t watch YouTube or any news video clip on Yahoo. After work, even during dinner, don’t turn on the TV. It would be undeniably excruciating for anyone to undergo— I personally wouldn’t dare to. This phenomenon shows how much the media has been ingrained into our everyday lives. As much as the media plays a huge role, it also bombards our lives with advertising, images, stories and opinions, which appear to force us to conform to particular images of how women are supposed to look. Its power and influence are tremendous, especially in shaping women’s understanding of their own bodies, and what their bodies should look like. As if to provide the appropriate body image materials women want, the media disguises itself, because its goal is to influence women’s views of their bodies. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, the author of The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, has stated, “talk about the body and learning how to improve it is a central motif in publications and media aimed at girls” (24). Brumberg believes that the media’s intention is to have an impact on women’s views of their own bodies. It is indisputable that the media is the most crucial factor in influencing the ways in which women regard and treat their bodies due to its falsification of women’s beauty, identity and values. One of the biggest problems of the media is that it permeates a delusive definition of women’s beauty into our society. From magazines to TV shows, many glamorous women with slender bodies can be seen, yet most of the women’s bodies that are shown in this kind of media are hardly attainable for the average American woman. Gossip Girl, a famous drama television series, is a perfect example. In Gossip Girl, the average weight of three protagonist actresses— Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, and Taylor Momsen— is 123.5 pounds. Contrastingly, the average weight of American women is 160 pounds, according to the Gallup's annual Health and Healthcare survey. By displaying such figures with skinny bodies, the media cunningly imbues American women with a higher standard of being fit and beautiful and falsifies the true definition of women’s beauty. Unfortunately, women standardize and construct their identities through media images they see—that is, the media exploits women. For instance, when my ex-girlfriend, Dora and I went to Victoria’s Secret at the mall, I vividly remember that she used to idolize tall, skinny models and compare herself. She said, with a frown on her face, ”remind me how skinny Miranda Kerr was on that wall, when we eat tonight. Don’t forget to tell me! I’m not joking this time.” Although Dora was considered attractive and in good shape, she still felt pressured and inferior by looking at impractical, delusive advertisement. Women commonly—and even sometimes habitually— feel the pressure of and obsess over losing weight. According to Teen Magazine, 50 to 70 percent of normal-weight women think they are overweight. As the media presents figures with overly skinny bodies, it defrauds countless women— even at a young age— of their true standard of beauty by changing their views of how their bodies should look. This misrepresentation succeeds in leading women into redefining their own beauty based upon the misleading images the media presents. The media’s manipulation results in causing women to take drastic measures to their own bodies. The media’s representation of showing unreasonable body images of women deceives women’s identities and values of their bodies. This irrationalism by the media can lead to serious eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia, which are unsafe to many women’s lives. Stories of fashion models