Thinspiration: America's Next Big Problem

"Unless you can see her collarbone clearly, she's too fat".

After hearing my classmate spit that rude remark, I had to fight back to the urge to yell at him because of his ignorance. Hasn't anyone noticed the mass problem that Americans seem to be having with eating disorders? If only every American would look around the influences that teenage females face.

Why don't you, yourself, look around? See that woman on the billboard advertising woman's perfume? She's a size two. The women walking on the beach who men whistle at? You can plainly see their ribs and their hip bones. Most of the actresses on the television? A size six or smaller. A large majority of the women walking down the runway as "models"? Size two or smaller. A size eight, in the modeling industry, is considered too fat. I mean, honestly - who wants to look at a woman that actually might meet the standard of what women truly look like?

Newsflash for the men of the world: sixty-eight percent of American women wear a size twelve or larger and fifty-two percent wear a size fourteen or larger. Looking like something more than bones is unhealthy, though, right? I mean, that must be why thirteen percent of our high-school aged girls take diet pills, three percent of our middle school girls (yeah, that's right. The girls which a majority haven't even had their first menstruation) are bulimic, and one percent of our high-school females are anorexic.

Of course, don't trust me on those figures. Don't believe that your teenage daughter may be attempting to look like a walking stick? Here's a dare for you. Look up "thinsperation" on Google. Go ahead. Now tell me that those results aren't sickening. Our teenage women are trying to look like someone that looks like she needs hospitalization. One youtube's video caption reads "love making these videos .. don't know why .. but I hope they give you strength!" Or, if that isn't enough to make you reconsider how you think about eating disorders, there's always this comment that was left on a thinsperation video: "skinny is the best if you're not under 100 pounds you may as well be dead". Yeah. Great way for our society to be thinking.