Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Fashion Pressure


Advertisements, models, video clips, super star, clothes, fashion, makeup, magazines, internet, these are all pressures that little girls, teenagers and women have to live with every day. We always had a preoccupation for bodily perfection, children soon begin to perceive that things like nudity, sexual promiscuity and backstabbing to get ahead are okay. If girls are not like these women that we see in pictures, guys are not going to go out with them, they will be unpopular and they are not going to have a friend, that’s what companies try to make them believed. They are there to make money and girls are the perfect costumers. If the ad is interesting and will make them young or beautiful, they will believe what they will see and hear in the advertisements.


All these influences bring little girls to a hyper sexualisation that they don’t need. “Children now use sexually explicit talk as casually as they used to discuss the latest songs or fads. It's very difficult to countermand such tidal trends. Yes, we can turn off T.V., but to me, that's simply running away from a very difficult situation, rather than hitting it head on. We as a society need to examine our own shallow value system that places the acquisition of "things" over humanity.” said Candida Eittreim, an author that published The Waterbug, Internet Safety, Beginning Gardening Online Educator-Suite101 University since 2002, in one of her articles The Hypersexualisation of America, in 2005. This is not a new problem; girls really think that they have to look like a model to be appreciated by boys. Theses fixations can bring health problems. Girls will try to lose weight like their favourite super star. They see that everywhere in the magazines and on Internet. This situation can go too far; anorexia and bulimia. Have you ever seen a model in a fashion show? They are skeletal because if their weigh is not under 100 pounds they are not going to be choose, but at this point is not the health more important than the fashion? According to Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders, without treatment, up to 20% of people with serious eating disorders die. With treatment, 3% of people with anorexia die. “Statistics on anorexia show that mortality rates from anorexia are the highest of any psychological disorder.”


We don’t have to forget that all these pictures and videos are modified with the new technology like Photoshop, that’s not the reality. We have to encourage projects like Dove. Have you ever seen “Dove evolution” on YouTube? Or project like Pro-Ana which refers to the promotion of anorexia nervosa as a lifestyle choice rather than an eating disorder. We must stop placing such stress on body image and start emphasing character traits like integrity and honesty. It’s time for a change; women don’t have to live with this pressure but just be who they are at their natural.

Words by Marie-Ève Carrière; photos by Jennifer L’Homme

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