When young girls are constantly subjected to perfect body images and the idea that to be skinny and pretty is the way to happiness, they began to lose confidence in their own body image. A body image is how one sees oneself, and how one perceives others see them. Firstly, When the fifty young women surveyed were asked to rate themselves on a one to ten scale of how much they liked their body, there is a direct link between how they see themselves, and how much of the media they see on a regular basis. For instance, girls who rated themselves zero to three on the scale of one to ten, watched an average of 5.44 hours of television a week and read 14.4 magazines a year. Those girls who rated themselves seven to ten on the same scale, watched an average of 3.25 hours of television a week and read only 8.7 magazines a year. This shows us that the more a girl is subject to the media's unrealistic image of a "perfect women" the less they will see themselves and the worse there self image becomes. Secondly, the media's absence of the average women, and their lack of accurate information about how a women should really look also affects the self-esteem of young women. Only 8% of those surveyed recognized women in the media as "fake", "airbrushed" or "unrealistic". This lack of self knowledge and the media's lack of proper information leaves young females to believe that the women they are seeing on a daily basis in advertisements and commercials are that of the average women, when in actuality they are sadly mistaken. This accounts for the impossible expectations and goals young women set up for themselves and their feelings of worthlessness when this perfect image cannot be succeeded and contributes further to their diminished sense of a healthy body image. Lastly, women are constantly being pushed to diet and change their bodies. In 1992, the ten most popular magazines most commonly read by men and women were reviewed for ads and articles related to weight loss. The women's magazines contained 10.5 times more articles related to dieting and weight loss than did the man's magazines (AboutFace). This constant subjection to the idea that a woman can improve herself by just one less meal or one more diet pill is pushed upon women everywhere. For example, the countless gym advertisements that have the "look like her" attitude, with a beautiful women working out, and a message about becoming the best you can be. This gives women the idea that if magazines are talking about, then it must be a reliable source. Young women immediately began to believe that they are not good enough the way that they are and they start to believe that the only way to success and happiness is to change their bodies. Its is clearly evident by the points shown above that when young girls constantly see the perfect body images in the media, they adopt the idea that to be skinny and pretty is the way to happiness, and their confidence in their own body begins to weaken.

The constant images of Barbie like woman and the main media focus on skinny, pretty and perfect females as a medium to appeal to today's generation of adolescent females contributes to the rise in eating disorders in young females of today. According to a recent surve

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Approximate Word count = 2171
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)