Article on Anorexia

I found this article on anorexia. It was written by Scientific American Mind after Christina Ricci said that it was Hollywood's fault she had anorexia when she was younger. The article is a bit long but is interesting if you feel like reading it. Just to give you an idea of what it is about, I have summed it up in a few dot points. The article addresses the:

• question of whether anorexia really is Hollywood's fault (and societies) or is it biological
  
• idea that not eating for people suffering with anorexic becomes addictive, almost like a drug and
• what happens in puberty may affect the person's genes and help develop anorexia, as 40 per cent of people with anorexia are between 15-19 years old.
  

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=addicted-to-starvation

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Is It the Media's Fault?

Every time I look in a magazine with incredibly skinny and beautiful teenage girls, I always think I wish I looked like that. I am sure I'm not the only person who thinks this! What I don't think about when I go through these magazines is the fact almost every photo has been completely retouched. Magazines constantly say they are going to put more 'real' girls in their magazines to help body image. In reality, they never actually do it! When the magazines (Cosmo, Cleo , Dolly etc.) do put a 'larger' or 'healthier' girl in their magazine, the person seems to be retouched anyway!

I believe - and you can disagree - that the media has a big influence on female and male body image. Although you cannot blame everything on the media, I think it definitely has played a role.

According to the butterfly foundation (a foundation for eating disorders), "After obesity and asthma, anorexia is the most common disease in females aged 15-24[2]. It is generally estimated that in Australia 2-3% of adolescent and adult females satisfy the DSM IV diagnostic criteria for anorexia and bulimia nervosa[3]. 10% of young adults and approximately 25% of children diagnosed with anorexia nervosa are male[4]. Average duration of anorexia is 5 years[5].

Onset of anorexia is generally in adolescence, with bulimia and binge eating more likely to first occur in late adolescence or early adulthood. The long-term nature of these disorders means that many people carry these conditions well into adulthood."

How are females and males meant to have positive body image and get past anorexia when they see pictures like this in magazines?

You can't really see this woman's face that well but she has probably been in hair and makeup for hours and has been working out for 2 hours everyday. I do feel it is important to exercise and be healthy but having stick figures like this in magazines and movies is not going to help women.

Not all women even have the body to look like that. Some women are just meant to be beautifully curvy!

Another statistic done recently (which was discussed on the Gruen Transfer) showed that only 1% of women think they are truly beautiful and perfect. How is that good? Every woman should think they are beautiful. Once again, I think the media has played a part in this. The media needs to take some action! Magazines need to try a bit harder. I am constantly reading comments from the public saying, "put different women in your magazine" or "do an article on healthy body image", yet nothing happens! Recently in Cosmopolitan magazine they put a young woman who was about a size 10 naked in one of their articles. The article involved 3 or 4 people (male and female) and got them to judge her body out of 10. This to me is horrible. It seem the only way to get noticed is to be gorgeous and skinny. No one gets recognized for anything else apart from their appearance.

Hollywood needs to change as well. Once again you can't blame it completely on Hollywood, but I know a lot of females (and males) that look up to people in the public eye. I realise how hard it is for celebrities to be good role models when the media is constantly on their backs and pressuring them into being even thinner or getting that nose job. I guess, just like we need to realise that we are only human, we also have to realise they are only human. Celebrities need to realise they do not need to look like they are just bones (Nicole Ritchie, Lindsay Lohan to name a few) and realise they are human beings and cannot be perfect! Once they have realised this, then Hollywood may be able to change and then celebrities can be good role models. I don't think celebrities realise what an influence they have on millions of girls and boys. To them being an actor or singer etc. may 'just be a job' but to the public they are who we look up to and what we think is normal or beautiful. The public likes to follow in their footsteps with trends, diets, hair cuts, clothes etc.

I do realise the pressure they are under to succeed but the world needs to change! In Obama style, I believe that "Yes we can change".

Please comment on your thoughts or suggestions :)

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Women over 40 - Andy Rooney

My Mother recently got an email about what Andy Rooney from 60 minutes thinks about woman over 40. Although what he says has nothing directly about beauty or being beautiful, I thought what he said was quite funny, smart and interesting.

This is what Andy Rooney said (blue text):

As I grow in age, I value women over 40 most of all. Here are just a few reasons why:

A woman over 40 will never wake you in the middle of the night and ask, 'What are you thinking?' She doesn't care what you think.
If a woman over 40 doesn't want to watch the game, she doesn't sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do, and it's usually more interesting.
Women over 40 are dignified.
They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won't hesitate to shoot you if they think they can get away with it. Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it's like to be unappreciated. Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over 40.
Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over 40 is far sexier than her younger counterpart. Older women are forthright and honest. They'll tell you right off if you are a jerk if you are acting like one. You don't ever have to wonder where you stand with her. Yes, we praise women over 40 for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it's not reciprocal.
For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed, hot woman over 40, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some 22-year old waitress.
Ladies, I apologize. For all those men who say, 'Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?', here's an update for you. Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage.

Why? Because women realize it's not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage!

This is a picture of the lovely and very funny Andy Rooney:



Got to love that last line! As funny as this was, I found it upsetting that 80% of women are against marriage. I still believe that marriage is an important and, hopefully, happy part of life. This kind of comes into how the Hollywood lifestyle is shaping our society. We constantly see celebrities not getting married, or if they do, divorcing quite quickly. Society's view on marriage are no longer that important. There is not really 'til death do us part' more like 'till we have a fight and I get the country house'. This to me is not a good view on life and marriage. Marriage was once important, now it is more important to have the perfect body, the perfect face, the perfect career. Life is no longer about self happiness but being better than everybody else and being the richest.

What do you all think?

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Did Hollywood do this?

The other day I got a flu shot and decided to stay home from school. While I was at home I watched a movie on Foxtel and I found out that The parent trap was on. If you have not seen The Parent Trap, it is a cute little love story kind of movie. The most important thing about this is that it was the movie that introduced Lindsay Lohan.

Lindsay Lohan was cute, innocent and looked happy. Here is a photo of her at the time this movie was released.

Now I know that everybody has read all the gossip mags of people talking about her going to rehab, becoming a lesbian, having sex with an older man, getting skinny, getting fat etc. I just can't believe that someone who looks that innocent has turned into the talk of Hollywood.

She now looks like this:

I really believe she would have continued being happy and healthy, obviously with some normal teenage problems, while learning who she is had she had a 'normal' life. I think (please comment if you agree or disagree) that Hollywood, and all of the horrible things that come with being in the spotlight, made her like this. She only became skinny when she became friends with people like Paris Hitlon and Nicole Ritchie. She only started doing drugs and drinking a lot when she was with this kind of crowd. I also believe that the media - mostly the gossip magazines - putting all of this and promoting this kind of thing in their magazines/TV shows etc. is not good. They are only promoting bad role models. No wonder there are so many anorexic girls and so much binge drinking and drug taking.

The media needs to remind us - the public - that these celebrities are actually human beings. Maybe if the media did this then teenage girls and boys will realise they are not perfect. They do not need to starve themselves and buy the expensive clothes to be liked and to be popular etc. If the media stops bugging all these celebrities then they might be able to relax, be themselves, be good role models and not have to walk the streets with big sunglasses and baggy clothes, hoping no one will notice it is them.

This is now turning into a bit of rant more than a discussion so I shall leave you with that and continue with my maths assignment.

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Judge or not to judge?

There has recently been a new show aired on Prime called '10 years younger in 10 days'. It is basically about couples who have 'let themselves go' and want to look younger. It consists of two teams - one for the men and one for the women - and their task is to make the person they've been assigned to look 10 years younger!

One part of the show is to put the couples in a glass box in the middle of a crowded place. The people who walk past then judge how young each person is. Then, at the end of the show, when they have had their 'transformation', they go back into the box to see how old the public now thinks they are.

This show is a perfect example of how society expects a person to look - whether they are male or female: beautiful, handsome and skinny. There is also another issue: humiliation and shame in relation to not being beautiful. It is as if the 'ugly' people who have 'let themselves go' should be punished by being displayed in a box for all the public to judge and criticise.

When I was watching this show, it made me think: when did it become okay to start judging everyone on how they look? Don't deny it, you do it as well. We all do. Just think of the number of times you have been sitting with your friends and judged how beautiful, fat or skinny the people who walk past are.

Here is an example of a before and after shot from a particular episode of the show:

When I saw this photo I went, 'wow they look old' and thought things like 'she should wear some makeup' or ' that guy should not be wearing that jumper'. Then, when viewing the after shot, I thought they looked fantastic. Not once did I think, 'I wonder if they are nice people' or 'how do they feel about how they look?' or even 'are they happy?' All I thought about was how they looked. This is my point: when did it become okay to think like this? I believe Hollywood has something to do with it. We all know how much power and influence the media has and it is all of the pictures and movies of the beautiful, skinny or muscly and handsome that make us think like this: that make us compare ourselves or others to photographs of people that have probably been retouched a few times.

Anyway, my media teacher is telling me to get on with my filming. So I will leave you with that for the moment.

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Is this really okay?

Okay. So recently I was watching some bad TV show on Ten in the holidays about the best and worst plastic surgeries and it hit me that everyone is obsessed with being perfect. Almost every celebrity has had or will have plastic surgery to keep their perfect Hollywood image. But how far is too far?

For example, maybe it has gone too far when you look like this:


Or maybe when you look like this:

Honestly, how on earth is that a change for the better? I am sure they looked fine before they went and did that!

There have been some good plastic surgeries that have improved the faces of celebrities but how did it become okay for society to think that getting plastic surgery was normal? And how much is this celebrity fascination with plastic surgery affecting the decisions of normal teenagers and adults to go and do the same?

Anyway, I will leave you with that thought and will continue with this later!

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