Weight is a big concern in America. In the social media of today, a body must be perfect to even be considered okay. If a person thought their body was fat they might diet or even stop eating. If it weren’t for the media there would be nothing to compare to. Because of the media, anorexia and obesity are two big problems in America. The media is to cause for the abundance of weight problems in America. From the many commercials on weight gain or loss, to the magazines people are bombarded with talk about weight. Not only does the media cause people to hurt themselves, it’s also a major reason for bullying. The media causes a large variety of emotional pain; pain many would never have gone though without the media.

Every day the American people are being put though an endless cycle. A person can flip through commercials and see weight-loss ads show many times in under an hour. If a woman is thick sitting down watching her favorite show it’s highly unlikely that the advertisements showing tiny gorgeous women are going to make her feel good about herself. As a result, overweight people who see these ads may become upset, eat more, gain more weight, and feel even worse about themselves. Imagine a young teenage girl: she likes a boy and wishes he would ask her out. When he doesn’t ask her out she starts to ask herself why. She thinks she’s not pretty enough. She wonders if he likes some else. It’s then that the killer question sinks in. She starts to believe she is too fat. She wants to know why she can’t look like the women on the television. Eighty percent of American women are not happy with their body.
The media causes two major eating disorders; anorexia, and obesity. The two major eating disorders are on complete opposite ends of the scale and yet cause by the same thing, bad self esteem. Obesity is caused by being emotionally unstable and using comfort food to fill the hole that’s there after the self-esteem is completely devoured. Simultaneously, Anorexia is caused by a person trying to be the image they see, believing they’re always just a little too fat to be perfect. Whether the image is in their mind or in a magazine the person will never be able match it.
Most models used in magazines, for example, are not in the ninety-eight percent as the rest of America when it comes to weight. Think of it this way, an average woman about five feet and four inches tall weighs one hundred and forty pounds. The average model is five feet and eleven inches and usually weighing less than one hundred and twenty pounds. To an average young woman this would make her think about her own body. If all of the magazines only showed models like that or digitally altered pictures of movie stars, a person might think that was what the way a body should look. Media changes the way people think. Natural beauty isn’t what people want anymore. People want to be skinny, unnaturally skinny.

Secondly, in the case of obesity, there is usually something early on; often a stress point to make a person begin to rely on comfort food. In some cases the problem can be simply being naturally larger, or being raised in a family that has bad eating habits. Some times heritage is all there is, but three out of five women over the age of twenty are obese most likely because they saw the media’s image and knew that would never be them. When this is the case, they are angry, depressed, and sometimes even jealous. They take their anger out with comfort food. Psychologists call this an emotion plug. Food momentarily makes things seem better, but in the end it actually makes the problem worse. The more chocolate and vanilla bean that they eat the more weight they gain. It’s an endless cycle. Obesity is a serious problem in America; up to thirty-six percent of America is obese. Although obesity itself is a manageable condition, diabetes, a disease commonly caused by obesity, can be permanent. If not correctly managed having diabetes can kill someone.

Imagine if the media didn’t illustrate the perfect body. No photo editing and no asking women to weigh a certain amount to get the part. Imagine if everything everyone knew about beauty was natural. It wouldn’t be a perfect world, but it would be a much better place. If no one cared at all what the media thought, if everyone just loved themselves, the world would be a much better place to live in. There would never be a fat kid in gym getting made fun of for his weight; he would simply be a large kid, not fat. If that same young fat kid who was bullied became angry and began taking his insecurities out upon others, then he would be inflicting the same pain upon others as he was put though. Bullying is a cruel cycle. If no one cares about what the media says, there would be less hate in school systems and more importantly less hate towards themselves. Lower harassment rates in the school system and most likely a lower rate of teen suicides. Weight is major; it can affect a life in ways you’d never expect. Imagine if that was a good thing. It could be, if no one cared about the media, weight would have a much less impact.