For Our Daughters

Women and girls have so many issues with body image in our society. The statistics are staggering. They reveal things like 40-60% of fourth graders have already been on a diet. Need I remind you that fourth graders are 9 years old.

Here are some revealing facts:

• The average woman is 5'4" and weighs 145 pounds.
• The average fashion model is 5'11" and weighs 120 pounds.
• 95% of Real Women do not naturally look like the models we see in magazines.
• By graduation, the average teenager will have seen 350,000 advertisements
  Advertisers deliberately intensify anxiety about weight because it makes them rich!
• Images in ads have been "air-brushed" to remove all flaws, computer-elongated (with legs, torsos and necks stretched on the computer to make them appear longer) and sliced (with thighs, stomach and arms carved away to make them look thinner). We become programmed to believe that the women in ads, no matter how unreal, unattainable or unhealthy they are, are ideal!
• 70% of college women say that they feel worse about their bodies after reading women's magazines
• We buy products that we hope will make us feel better about ourselves.
• Teenage girls spend over $4 billion annually on cosmetics alone
• Americans spend $50 billion each year on diet products which DO NOT WORK!
• 40-60% of 4th grade girls are dieting
• 63% of high school girls are dieting
• A dieting teen is 8 times more likely to develop an eating disorder than her non-dieting friend----SO DON'T EVEN GO THERE!
• THE PROBLEM IS THE MESSAGES IN THE CULTURE, NOT YOUR BODY!

I got those facts from a great website: http://www.edin-ga.org/index.asp

What got me thinking specifically about our daughters was a comment in my previous post. I also had a link to a Mary-Kate and Ashley Shopping Website appear in my web surfing...which made me shake my head. Why would I, as a mother, want to encourage my daughter to desire to buy clothes from two celebrities who send out the wrong kind of message. Mary-Kate has often been in the media with concerns about anorexia. The last thing I want is for my daughter to desire to look like her. It is such a shame that these girls have been twisted and warped by Hollywood and it's expectations.

Remember when they looked like this?