Which Media Have the Biggest Impact on Eating Disorders in America?

Nielsen Media Research's 2000 statistics found that the average American watches more than four hours of television a day. For the most part, the characters you fall in love with or cheer for on TV and in the movies are not overweight. On the screen, overweight characters get laughs and sometimes pity. Underweight stars play the heroes and the romantic ideals.

To see how TV and movie personalities influence society's image of beauty and style, check the latest fashions and hairstyles. People emulate celebrities or try to. When they can't live up to their ideal-and most people can't - that's when problems often start.

MUSIC AND VIDEOS

Preadolescents and adolescents listen to music (including radio, CDs, tapes, and music videos) between three and four hours per day, according to a 2001 study, "Popular Music in Childhood and Adolescence." They spend as much time listening to music, and maybe even a little more, than they do watching TV. The kind of music they listen to, especially if the songs contain angry lyrics or lyrics that objectify women, can affect how they feel about themselves and other teenagers.

The way women are portrayed in music videos can be as influential, or even more so, than movies and other forms of television. Male musicians often use attractive, sexy, thin women as "accessories" in their videos-the women are there to make the musicians look good. Female musicians typically wear revealing clothing. Their bodies get as much attention as their music, if not more. So, watching music videos is one more reason many adolescents have a distorted image of what their bodies should look like-and one more reason many feel their bodies just don't measure up.

FASHION MODELS AND MANNEQUINS

In the early 1950s, leading fashion magazines began featuring very thin models from France. This marked the beginning of a new definition of feminine beauty and a new desire among women to be thin. By the 1970s, the push to be thinner and thinner had reached epidemic proportions in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and, later, Japan.

In the 1980s, the average fashion model weighed eight percent less than the average woman. Today, the average model weighs 23 percent less. In direct response to this trend, mannequins have also become thinner. In 1950, the average mannequin had 34-inch hips, which matched the average among women in general. By 1990, the average hip measurement for a mannequin had dropped to 31 inches, while the average woman now had a hip measurement of 37 inches. The gap between fashion and reality is widening. In fact, if today's mannequins were real, their percentage of body fat would be so low that they would probably have lost their ability to menstruate.

Fact Or Fiction?

Models are healthy and look great.

Fact: Being overweight and lazy isn't healthy. Eating too little food or exercising too much is not healthy either. A body runs on caloric energy, and most models don't provide their bodies with the nutrients they need.

Many of today's supermodels meet the physical criteria for anorexia, which means they are at least 15 percent below a healthy body mass index (BMI). At 25 to 35 percent below a healthy weight, fashion models are anything but the picture of health.