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To our children, we must realize the effect television has on the youth of today. The views and images portrayed on television go right to the heart of American youth. Young men and women are being taught that being over weight or not being enough means that you are unattractive and lazy. The ideal female body which television portrays as being normal has gone from the voluptuous figure of Marilyn Monroe and Mimi Van Doren to the skinny waist and bust-line of Pamela Anderson and Brittany Spears. It has become an obsessive, unattainable goal for our young teenage women. These teens find themselves in an endless battle to try and attain figures that are only made possible through cosmetic surgery and a profession that pays you to look a certain way. Many girls who find themselves unhappy with their appearance turn to starvation, which later turns to binge eating, then to self-induced vomiting.
Eating disorders are far more common in the United States than in any other countries. While some countries like Russia and Bosnia are struggling to find food, Americans are creating problems by consuming too much of it. Americanized countries or even any other industrialized countries with the direct influence of television are found to have considerably more problems with eating disorders. Carolyn Costin states in her book The Eating Disorder Source that western women seem to be at greater risk for developing disorders and the degree of Westernization seems to increase the risk. Costin then goes on to say that Evidence suggests that anorexia nervosa is uncommon outside the Western world and in less affluent Western countries. Furthermore, when immigrants move from less industrialized countries to more industrialized countries they are more likely to develop eating disorders. Costin is trying to say that you are at a greater risk of developing countries.