Stephen Tyler Brown
English 4
Mrs. Crist
March 19, 2013

Body Image

How does exercise effect body image? Body image is something everyone is familiar with, no matter what age or gender everyone has gone through various body image issues. The reason body image has become important is because of movies, television, and magazines, we can’t go anywhere with out seeing “10 tips to get the perfect body” or “Get the body of your dreams with no dieting and exercise”. This is what has started the whole epidemic of people always looking for ways to have the perfect body. The second biggest thing that body image has mostly affected is teenagers because they are always wanting to look like that model or that actor who has been airbrushed and fixed up by a team of wonderful stylist, and then we all wonder why we don’t look like they do after we buy the same clothes, fix our hair the same way, eat the same way, or the latest diet fads. When you get down to it, is it really how you look that defines you?

Body image is a very wide spread epidemic it has spread rapidly in even the past 5 years. Also the body image industry has came up with a new way to make everyone want to look like those skinny beautiful models they have put them in the stores we shop at everyday for clothes, such as Abercrombie and Fitch, in beautiful New York city they have shirtless male models standing out side to greet you when you walk in to the store, and billboards with only beautiful people all on television. The media has pushed the body image issues to the point the teenagers feel they are never shinny enough, feel they must have the best name brand clothes, stay only at the best places and drive the best automobile. Will there ever be a time when people will be happy with who they are and what they already have?

Here is some food for thought about 20 years ago models weighed 8 percent less than the average women and now they weigh 23 percent less than the average women, here is another fact the average women is 5’4 and is 140 pounds and the average model is 5’11 and weighs 117 pounds now just think the average person can not and should not be that thin still be healthy. The scariest fact is that by the 6th grade 7 percent of all males have tried steroids and about 40 percent of all men and women are on a diet at any point of the day. Furthermore Americans spend about 40 million dollars on weight lose products a year this is the same amount the US Government spends on schools. There has been a study done on African Americans versus Caucasians and they have a 40 percent less drive to be thin because they said “curves are what make you who you are” which is true but Caucasians are told that if you have curves you are FAT which is not true you can be thick and be way healthier than a person who is 6’2 and 100 pounds because there is a healthy fat. Nonetheless there are still people that feel they are fat when they are actually healthy.

When interviewing a thirdy eight ear old female who has recent lap band surgery , she stated she had been up happy for years with her body and since her insurance refused to pay for the surgery she took a second mortgage on the home and had it done. She did well at first losing 70 pounds and then the weight started coming off slower and slower at this point she has only lost 78 pounds and now has nausea and head aches all the time. Her life has not been the same. She wishes she had not been so wein and would have loved herself for who she was.

Historically body image was never a thing when out grandparents were growing up they were who they were and now it todays society if your and individual you are weird or some kind of alien to the community. Doctors have discovered that sometimes body image issues get so bad that now there is a disorder it is called Body Dimorphic Disorder. The study on BDD is that it is a mental disorder that causes ones self to see something in the mirror that is not necessarily there