How Celebrities Influence Teenagers

Teenagers today look up to celebrities for their everyday fashion tips, movies or albums and even their bodies. But what happens when you take looking up to someone to a whole different level. And sometimes very tragic things can happen. When teenagers turn on their televisions and see Lindsay Lohan or Nicole Richie in photos looking frail with all their bones sticking out, that sends out a powerful message.

Teens think, "look how beautiful she looks and she's skinny as a stick." They think that just because they are celebs and get comments that they can go and starve themselves to death just to look like them. Knowingly there's a lot of pressure out there for these Hollywood Starlets to stay thin because they think it's in and the fact that they are getting paid major bucks to grace the pages of Elle and Maxim magazine with the hottest bodies on earth. What teens don't reconize is that their bodies take a lot of work and crash dieting to look like that, it's certainly not naturally, we all know that if you want to look hot you have to have work, dedication and pressure which is why some starlets begin to fall downward turning toward eating disorders. Anorexia is a when you starve yourself in order to lose, or maintain your weight.

Symptoms include osteoporosis at a young age, frail bones. Bulimia is when a person eats a huge amount of food in one sitting and then either vomiting or using laxatives to get rid of the food. Signs are clear teeth instead of white teeth, scars on ones knuckles from the acid in the vomit. Drug use is another common problem those goes along with the image of celebrities. Paris Hilton smoking pot, Nicole Richie arrested for drugs and Supermodel Kate Moss for her cocaine addiction . This is all a sign to teens that it's cool to do drugs. People who look up to their idles think they can do no wrong so when they hear about their favorite celeb getting high and in drug rehad, they want to do it also.

Not to mention that they make it look pretty glamourous and they don't talk about all the side effects that these people go through just like any other human being on the planet. I have heard girls say that they wanted to do drugs just because a celebrity did it, and it was cool. It's the same thing as peer pressure except there's more power than you can see. Celebrities influence a lot in our culture, they way they act, what they wear and what they do can say a lot to young girls out there who need really good role models out there for them to look up to. It's best to keep images clean-cut so that our children have positive images in magazines and on newstands they can count on.