Why does the media portray models in an unrealistic way, knowing the eating disorder statistics in the United States?

The media portrays models the way they do because that is what the stereotypical "pretty women" look like. In reality only a small, small percentage of the population actually look like they do and there are a lot of people that are pretty that don't actually look like that. Not everyone has the same idea of what pretty looks like and several characteristics go into making someone pretty. It's not based solely on looks or personality, but it's a good combination of several different things. The article "The Unrealistic Portrayal of Women in the Media: Beauty and Body Image" emphasizes that "media plays a major role in dispensing influential images to us." Media can be considered television, newspaper, movies, magazines, advertisements and more. Media is everywhere we look and our subconscious mind takes over. This leads to people judging and only looking at physical features, what designer brands you wear, the stuff people own, and people forget about what's important. This is much more of a concern for women, not that men aren't concerned, but women care more about what others think and they have a higher percentage of developing eating disorders. Women should be accepted for who and what they are without having to try and fit into the male idea of what they want in a women. The article makes a good point when saying the media portrays women this way to make more money. I watch the television station E! all the time and majority of what they focus on are name brands. Another one is work out commercials where they put very fit people in the commercial advertising the product as if every single person that uses that product is going to look just like that. I just watched the Ms. USA pageant the other day. That is not an accurate representation of our population. Also, the way the media portrays models in magazines and other advertisements is false. They edit those photos to make them seem even more "perfect." This is what leads people to want plastic surgery or develop eating disorders. The article states "The images portrayed in the past 30 years especially have been promoting the use of diets, exercise, and cosmetics for women to look and feel young...the companies that create the fantasy of the ideal female body, just keep getting richer." Now, in the United States "It is estimated that 8 million Americans have an eating disorder – seven million women and one million men" and a great deal of this can be credited to the media.


  Sources:
http://voices.yahoo.com/the-unrealistic-portrayal-women-media-beauty-4665231.html
http://www.state.sc.us/dmh/anorexia/statistics.htm