• The media plays a big part. Surrounded by thin models and TV stars, teenage girls are taught to achieve an impossible goal. As a result, many teenage girls intensely dislike their bodies and can tell you down to the smallest detail what’s wrong with it. Most teens watch an average of 22 hours of TV a week and are deluged with images of fat-free bodies in the pages of health, fashion and teen magazines. The "standard" is impossible to achieve. A female should look like, and have the same dimensions as Barbie.
• Take a look at the 10 most popular magazines on the newspaper racks. The women and men on the covers represent about .03 percent of the population. The other 99.97% don’t have a chance to compete, much less measure up. Don’t forget it’s a career with these people. They’re pros. Many have had major body makeovers and have a full-time personal trainer. Most ads are reproduced, airbrushed or changed by computer. Body parts can be changed at will.
• The images of men and women in ads today do not promote self-esteem or positive self-image. They’re intended to sell products. In the UK, consumers who pursue the perfect body spend billions of pounds. The message "thin is in" is sold thousands of times a day through TV, movies, magazines,

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• Parents can give mixed messages too. Especially if they’re constantly dieting or have body or food issues of their own. How we perceive and internalise these childhood messages about our bodies determines our ability to build self-esteem and confidence in our appearance.
• The diet/fitness craze is mind-boggling. It’s not just dieting, it’s diet foods, and diet commercials. Everybody’s counting fat grams. The talk centres around dieting, fat thighs or tight "abs" and how many pounds can be lost with the latest diet. This kind of intense focus on food and fat can lead to abnormal eating habits or - disordered eating - a warning of eating disorders, which is taking it to the extreme.

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