Internet and Beauty Standards

When scrolling through Instagram or simply browsing the Internet, women cannot escape from the media’s demand to get fit and shed some extra pounds. We are constantly bombarded with images of emaciated models, dietary supplements, and fitness strategies and these abnormal expectations have become embedded in our brains.  The push to be thin has become more extreme with the use of social media and these images of “fit” girls have brainwashed us into believing that in order to be beautiful- we need smaller thighs, longer legs, and flat stomachs.  Just type in hash-tags on Instagram such as “fitspo” or “thinspiration” and the trend is noticeable.

According to the NationalAssociation of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Eating Disorders, the body type portrayed in advertising as the ideal is possessed naturally by only 5% of American females. Additionally, in a survey of 185 female students on a college campus, 58% felt pressure to be a certain weight and 25% of college-aged women engage in bingeing and purging as a weight-management technique.  These statistics illustrate the fact that the thin trend has had a significant impact on a lot of women, especially at the college age.  As the ideal body has shrunk to almost nothing, women have experienced an unhealthy battle to become beautiful according to an almost impossible standard.

What we can see from advertising, the fashion industry and fitness models on social media, women are continuously barraged by images pressuring them to be thin.  The emphasis to be thin brings highly dangerous consequences for women. Women are constantly comparing themselves to other women they see online, oftentimes comparing themselves to computer-manipulated images of unhealthily thin and cosmetically altered models. Although it is important to be healthy and exercise frequently, what see on social media and in advertising represents an extraordinarily small portion of the population and it is unrealistic to emulate the bodies of some of the women we observe in online images. It is impossible to turn the computer on, open a magazine, or watch television without somehow being forced to confront the fact that thinner is better and more desirable.