Woman’s Body Image Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the prettiest of them all? When you look into the mirror, do you see yourself for who you truly are or do you see the person you wish you could be? Even as a little kid we are taught to poke a prod at the images reflected in the mirror, rather than seeing ourselves for who we truly are. Women being pressured to be thin has been going on for a long time, but now it is at its highest. Everyone is focused on the outer beauty and never accepting the beauty within. Whether you’re over weight or skinny, most women will never reach full satisfaction with their body weight. (Fisanick) With these unrealistic images portrayed in the media, not only do they cause people to suffer from eating disorders, but those people also spend millions of dollars on surgeries and cause American’s to have a low self-esteem; all the blame goes to the media bombarding us with these unrealistic images. It is estimated that eight million Americans have an eating disorder. Out of the eight million Americans who suffer from an eating disorder, seven million of them are women and one million of them are men. (Eating) Not only can people suffer from anorexia and bulimia, but athletes a lot of the time will burn more calories than their calorie intake; which is a form of eating disorder. "Today, more women participate in sports than at any other time in history. They are running, swimming, cycling, rowing, dancing, playing ball and more. They are testing their limits and setting new records. But for some women, the point of each day's workout is not just to achieve an athletic goal, but to burn off flesh. For some, fitness has come to mean complete subjugation of body and appetite." (Wagner) Each day, you need to eat a certain amount of calories to be healthy and stay healthy. For some, athletes will deprive their body of the healthy

calorie intake and literally burn of every ounce of, so call fat, to achieve the look that the media portrays as being the ideal body image. While searching for interesting facts and information on women’s body image, I came across a very interesting blog about eating disorders, but what was most interesting was the image that was pasted onto the blog. In this image stood a very malnourished woman that looks to be between the ages of 15 and 20. What made this image stick out the most to me was that the image that reflected back at her was a heavy set women, but still very much beautiful. The most disturbing part of this ad was that this is what she actually thinks of herself.