King Edward the 8th abdicated his throne to marry the woman he loved—the twice divorced pencil-thin Wallace Simpson. She is long remembered for her view on the impossibility of being too rich or too thin.

Can you be too skinny?

Twenty years ago it was headline news when Karen Carpenter died. She was a famous singer of the 1970s who had toured the world, been on TV shows, and on the cover of many magazines. Her story was news again when it was discovered why she died—from anorexia-related heart failure. Anorexia (an obsessive fear of being fat) was common, but rarely talked about. After Karen’s death—eating disorders became the hot new topic. Since then, other celebrities owned up to their eating disorders including actresses Jane Fonda and Tracy Gold, and former gymnasts Cathy Rigby and Nadia Comenici. In a 1995 television interview the elegant, glamorous Lady Diana—the most photographed woman in the world—shared about her struggle with bulimia nervosa (an obsession with bingeing, purging, and dieting).

On October 30, 2000 the cover of People magazine read “Special Report—Dying To Be Thin—Desperate for a better body, more and more Americans are taking bigger risks—and paying with their lives.”

The worlds of fashion models, beauty pageant contestants, gymnastics, ballet dancers, and figure skaters are full of tales about young girls risking their health and their lives to fit into a preset standard of perfection.
Young girls, in their desire to emulate their role models—start to lose weight—by exercising excessively, restricting calories, making themselves vomit, taking appetite-control or weight-loss pills and laxatives.

In May of 2000 Ladies’ Home Journal printed the results of a poll. It said 60% of high-school girls are trying to lose weight.

TEENAGE GIRLS ARE LITERALLY DYING to meet the standards that they see on television and in the movies and magazines. Advertisers pay millions to reach their prime audience—those between 12 and 34 years old. They are targeting our teenagers. Our daughters watch beautiful women, with surgically modified bodies, carefully styled hair, and custom tailored clothing. How sad that many of our young girls are imitating women that are not real. Many models and actresses live in worlds of promiscuity, drug use, eating disorders, and depression. They are NOT good role models for our children.

The news program 48 Hours had a show titled, The Price of Perfection. It showed a teenage girl who had been struggling with anorexia and bulimia for years. When she was 13 years old, she weighed 28 pounds! She actually went blind in one eye from the stress that constant vomiting put on her body.

The closer I get to thin, thin, thin, the closer I get to perfect.”
—Teenage anorexic, 48 Hours

During their first commercial break of the news program, after showing this “prison camp” thin child, was an ad for Victoria’s Secret. A beautiful model, with a flawless, very thin, body was dressed only in a bra, underwear, and angel’s wings.

Where did that little girl get the idea that thin is beautiful? Is TV to blame?

I read a Harvard study regarding eating disorders in girls from Fiji. It said that symptoms of eating disorders have increased fivefold among teenage girls on Fiji since television came to the Pacific Island nation. TV was widely introduced in 1995, and since then, the percentage of girls that vomit to control their weight has greatly increased.

The study went on to say that the teenage girls look to television characters as role models. The increase in eating disorders was dramatic because Fiji was traditionally a culture that had focused on the importance of eating well and looking robust.
One news show said that eating disorders might be genetic. I think they can be passed on in a family—through example and criticism, not genetics. Our behavior—good or bad—affects how our children see themselves and others.

We need to educate ourselves about the seriousness of eating disorders and realize they can have long term consequences on our bodies—and are sometimes fatal.

If you or someone you know has an eating disorder – check out Remuda Ranch

This letter is shared with Whitney’s permission:

Hello Tonya,
My name is Whitney and I am 17 years old. I was watching tv today, and for probably only the second or third time in my life, I let the TV stay on CBN; I am not usually a fan of the 700 Club, but I left it there because something caught my
attention. I heard the words ‘defintion of beauty’. So I started
watching. I listened to your story, and I felt the need to e-mail you
and tell you a little bit of mine.
I have spent the majority of my teen years struggling in the fight
for a healthy image of myself and fighting against the definition that
our culture has placed on beauty. So this past year, my senior year in
high school, we were given the opportunity to write a definition paper.
We were allowed to pick an object or concept and define it in an
original way. Seeing my opportunity to take another step in fighting
the battle, I defined beauty. So, when I heard you say something about
our culture’s distorted definition of beauty, I felt the need to e-mail
my paper to you. So, here it is…

*****

“A Skinny Definition”

beauty [byoo-tee] n: the quality of a person (particularly a woman)
having absolutely no physical imperfections, skin blemishes, or
visible fat on a single part of her body.

Our culture defines beauty as perfection. We see this
definition in all kinds of media: television, movies, commercials,
billboards, and magazines. Say ‘beautiful’ and super-models and movie
stars fight to be named number one. The media sends out this distorted
version of ‘beauty’ (scantily clad, digitally altered women wearing too
much make-up and air-brushed tans) in magazines, advertisements, and TV
shows. It offers these women as role models for young girls, presenting
their beauty as some kind of goal, or a promise of what they too can
look like if they just buy whatever product it’s selling. Meanwhile, in
its efforts to make more money or get higher ratings, it leaves nothing
but destroyed girls behind. Through the presentation of the models’
beauty as attainable, the media leaves girls who don’t resemble them
wondering why they don’t, and desperately trying to change.
It’s no wonder our hospitals are filled with anorexic and
bulimic young girls. Studies show that one or two of every 100 students
(ages 12-25) struggle with either Anorexia or Bulimia at some point in
their lives (KidsHealth), and maybe it’s because they strive too much
to look like the women on TV and in magazines. The main problem with
celebrities is they really aren’t as ‘beautiful’ as the pictures lead
people to believe. Between make-up, hair-color, spray-tans, tummy-
tucks, and digital-alterations, their appearances are completely
changed. The final product that reaches the public may not look
anything like the original person. Magazine editors even air-brush
excess fat out of pictures. Because our culture has placed such a
skinny definition on the word ‘beauty’, very few women fit into it
without being unhealthy.
In a country where obesity is the most rapidly growing disease,
people are now focusing more on dieting and exercising, and rightly so.
A national study indicates that the percentage of overweight children
and adolescents has more than doubled since the early 1970s (Overweight
Teen). But there comes a point where the focus gets out of control, and
we reached that point several years ago. The goal of dieting and
exercising has become more directed towards looking good, instead of
being healthy. When we turn on the television or look through a
magazine, we encounter multiple health-related ads. One ad may be
saying ‘Lose 10 pounds in 10 days!” and another promises ‘get back into
your skinny jeans in just 2 weeks!” And all these ads use the same
guaranteed method of deception. Pictures. Pictures of ‘beautiful’
women. They’re the same kind of women that are paraded in front of the
adolescent girls, promising happiness and joy if they buy a certain
product, or shop in a specific store.
And it’s nothing but a lie.
And I am no stranger to it. I once bought into this lie. I’ve
never been the model-sized girl. When my friends or my parents asked if
I wanted to ‘get into shape,’ I laughed and replied, “Round is a
shape!” But all my laughing and joking covered up the fact that I, a
girl who succeeded in almost everything, always failed at one thing:
losing weight. Even now, thinking back through the years, I can’t count
the number of ‘diets’ I tried. I remember one time, one or two failed
diets into my short life, my mom promised to give me Pocahontas II if I
lost some weight. With nothing but good intentions, she tried to help
me slim down, more for the sake of my health than anything. For some
extra motivation, she even bought it for me (it was brand new in
stores) and set it in the kitchen. Sometimes I stood staring at it,
propped up on the counter, for ten or fifteen minutes straight. It
begged to be opened.
When that movie was released, I was only seven years old.
The years went by and the bribes became new clothes instead of
movies. Then I started playing high school sports. While my mom still
only wanted me to lose weight for my health, I started obsessing over
my look, my ‘beauty’. The summer before my sophomore year, I lost
nearly 25 pounds in three weeks. My days started at 5:30 am, before the
sun rose, and cycled through volleyball, band, more volleyball, and
finally softball until 10:00 pm when I collapsed into bed. I didn’t eat
much that summer; I didn’t have an eating disorder, I just didn’t have
time to eat. But because I had bought into the lie, I finally started
to feel good about myself and to fit into cute clothes. Then all too
soon, October came, softball and volleyball ended, and the pounds came
back.
After that season, when our slave-driver volleyball coach left,
I knew I didn’t have a chance at losing all that weight again. So I
gave up. Sure, between then and now I’ve tried some fad diets; one in
particular stands out as the reason that to this day the smell of
grapefruit turns my stomach. But even when the crazy diets worked, I
wasn’t losing weight in a healthy way, and I wasn’t doing it for the
right reasons.
My motives were all wrong. Instead of dieting for my health,
and for my future, I did it to look like the girls in the prom dress
magazines that my friends and I never went anywhere without. I wanted
so badly to look like them; I wanted to feel like Cinderella on my way
to my ball. But at sleepovers, when excited chatter about prom dresses
filled the room, I feigned sleep, not wanting to falsely participate in
a conversation that I felt didn’t apply to me. It killed me to watch my
friends go out and buy whatever dresses they wanted, while I was forced
to settle for a dress that simply fit.
But no matter how much effort I put into trying to look like
the girls in the magazines, I didn’t, I don’t, and I never will. It’s
not the way I was made. And besides, being skinny doesn’t translate
into being beautiful, and being chunky isn’t synonymous for being ugly.
Dove recently launched their ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ and in their
mission statement they say, “For too long, beauty has been defined by
narrow, stifling stereotypes. Women have told us it’s time to change
all that. Dove agrees. We believe real beauty comes in many shapes,
sizes, and ages” (Dove).
It’s time we get away from this skinny definition of beauty and
re-define it.

beauty [byoo-tee] n: the quality of a person (particularly a woman)
loving who they are, being thankful for their unique shape, and not
caring about what other people think of their bodies.

Finding Balance -
The first national organization dedicated to helping those with EDNOS

“Do concerns about food, weight and exercise take a lot of your time and energy? If so, you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to FINDINGbalance.com. We are a faith based health and wellness organization with an emphasis on eating and body image issues. We are also the first national organization dedicated to providing information and resources to those struggling with EDNOS and non-extreme disordered eating. Whether you’re overweight, underweight, or somewhere in between, if you’re constantly thinking about food, dieting, exercise, and weight, we’re here to help. There’s a better way to live. It’s all about finding balance.”

http://www.findingbalance.com/