Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 2/21/08 Section: Opinion

One such recent casualty included actress Jennifer Love Hewitt, who was skewered when photos of her in a bikini cropped up in magazines and on the Internet next to headlines that read: "A holiday swim reveals Jennifer Love Hewitt has piled on the pounds" and "We know what you ate this summer, Love - everything!"

Last year, I wrote an incensed letter to the fashion equivalent of Ann Landers: Elle Magazine's E. Jean, a self-proclaimed authority for girls "tormented, driven witless, and whipsawed by confusion." One woman, who complained about being overweight, wrote: "I want to be attractive despite my weight … my fat shouldn't define who I am! What makes me me should be the main attraction."

E Jean's reply? "Miss Daunted, your drawing power - your major-league lovability - comes from the fact that though nearly every hour of your girlhood was hell on earth, and though your weight is now one husky headache, you end your letter with a defiant shout that your 'fat shouldn't define' you. Auntie Eeee adores the irony (and adores you too), but come on, honey bun, your size is defining you. You wouldn't know who you were without it. And the one sure way to find out … is to get rid of it."

"Get rid of it." I couldn't believe it. Her reply was the equivalent of suggesting a woman get a boob job to spice up her sex life. "C'mon honey-bun, it's just a silicone hop, skip and a jump away from the best sex he'll ever have."

This person whom young women could go to for advice was merely an accomplice with a mass media that constantly, perpetually, unendingly tell women every second of every day they're not good enough. And the media seductively tells those women: We can help you accomplish perfection. You, too, can become the ultimate object of desire. Let us help you attain the unattainable.

We have become slaves to the fantasy - a pursuit driving women to starve themselves to death.

As any typical teenage girl in high school, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't extremely susceptible to the images of girls in Seventeen magazine. I hated them, but at the same time I wanted so desperately to be them. Beauty was, for me, defined within those slick, perfume-laden pages. I imagined what it would feel like to see the clear definition of my shoulder blades in the mirror or the faint outline of my rib cage.

So, when you look at the 5 million to 10 million girls suffering from an eating disorder in this country, I don't think it's too far-fetched to say the media are feeding these distorted afflictions in girls. These impossible ideals of beauty are coming dangerously close to embedding themselves within our collective consciousness - where girls fresh out of the womb are told they aren't OK.

Many young women, including myself, believe that happiness is just a few pounds away - and the media are complicit in keeping this delusion alive. They thrive on our insecurity and low self-esteem.

And I can't help but notice the 8-year-old boy or girl staring at these perfect specimens from behind their mothers' grocery carts in the checkout lines. The media will raise her to believe she has to look that way - and he will expect her to.

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