Blog 3: What role does the media play in how we feel about our bodies?

                The role of media and Hollywood combined have helped to establish unrealistic images that nearly all women want to look like and every man wants to look at. The average fashion model on the runway has an average height of 5’10” and an average weight of 114 lbs. meaning that the BMI is approximately 15 to 17, which is under the minimum for a healthy woman. As Hollywood and the media have helped perpetuate this through the years, one can simply look at the all popular Barbie doll that every girl in our great nation has probably received at least one of before she reached grade school. Barbie’s perfect proportions helped to perpetuate the image that the Hollywood and the fashion models that cover the newsstands and the TV screens day in and day out. In the last few years there have been enough outcries that Hollywood and the media have realized that they ran the risk of alienating mass numbers of the populations, after all over 60% of our population is either obese or overweight. A size 0 fashion model is approximately 12 dress sizes smaller than the average American female.

                Health educators need to put the facts out front and expose Hollywood and the glamour industry for the blatant lie that they are. Every year, entirely too many girls are hospitalized for bulimic and or anorexic issues. Putting the facts up front at an early enough age, those young ladies can grow up with the information in hand to spot a lie when they see it.

                To a small degree, the media has opened up a little bit, but only because that the voice of the people became so loud and the potential for losing that many customers, literally scare Hollywood and their glamour industry cronies. In the past year or so, a comedy, Mike and Molly, came on to CBS and rather quickly won a fairly large audience over. Mike and Molly both weigh an excess of 300 lbs. and for a first time I can remember there is a fat girl on a popular show during prime time besides Oprah. While changes have been made, it has not really amounted to an awful lot though. One TV show amongst hundreds and thousands of TV shows is a drop in the bucket. Being overweight may not be the healthiest thing for you, but being stereotyped by Hollywood surely is not a good thing either. As the future unfolds, only time will tell if more TV shows or modeling careers go to plus size models and actors, the power is in the hands of the American consumer if they chose to buy or if they chose not to buy will make a huge difference in how producers and investors approach this question.

CDC, n.d., Healthy Weight - it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle! Retrieved From: http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/index.html

Bill Hendrick, February 10, 2010, Percentage of Overweight, Obese Americans Swells Americans Are Eating Poorly, Exercising Less, and Getting Bigger, Survey Finds, Retrieved From: http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20100210/percentage-of-overweight-obese-americans-swells