Everywhere you look you can see members of “the cult of the skinny” From 
celebrities on the covers of glossy magazines to models on a run way to the girl sitting two rows ahead of you in class.
It is been broadcasting everywhere on the Internet from the YouTube channel Thinspo to web sites like proanna. It is evident that the obsession with being skinny is a prominent fixture in our popular culture.
Our society wasn’t initially this way, back in the 18 to 1900s many women were voluptuous and saw no shame or problem with it at all. The men loved it too. Even as recently as the 1950s, hollywood sex symbol Marilyn Monroe, had a size 12 dress size and was loved by all.
So what happened to our culture? Why did we abandon the curves for a stick thing figure? The reason is still unknown but this cult or obsession is a growing trend in society, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
A survey done by National Health Magazine found that 44% of women who are average or underweight think that they are overweight and that the average women’s dress size if a 12 and the average mannequin’s dress size is 6.
It appears that not only average everyday women is struggling with their body image. Celebrities themselves are jumping on the ban wagon of skinny, with a domino effect. It seems like stars are also being pressured to be stick thin, and once one actress gives in to thin and applauded for it next thing you know all her co-stars are loosing weight to keep up with her and so on.
Recently the tabloids have been targeting women with a fuller figure and have been calling them fat. This trend has been dubbed by society as “body bullying”. Many have reacted by losing drastic amounts of weight like Nicole Richie others like Tyra Banks and Jennifer Love Hewitt have lashed out at the magazine for promoting a skinny obsession in society.
Body bullying’s most recent celebrity victim: Jessica Simpson. She has visibly gained more weight since she was last in the spotlight, but that doesn’t mean she’s fat. Yet the media continue to plastered words like FAT, SIGNIFICANT WEIGHT GAIN and TOO MUCH HOMESTYLE FOODS over her photos in their magazine.
Does the media stop to think at what this does to society’s women, and how it is afffecting their perceptions of what a normal body size is supposed to be? According to a Survey done my NBC News in 2000 88% of girls feel the need to “look perfect”, and 70% believed that overweight people were generally seen as less intelligent and less attractive.
This isn’t the message we want to be sending to a society who has a death rate associated with anorexia nervosa that is 12 times higher than the overall death rate among young women in the general population. (American Journal of Psychiatry)
This addition to our contemporary popular culture isn’t one to be proud of, and society has recognized this with more programs being offered to young women on healthy body image at their school as well as the Dove company doing its small part in altering in a positive way women view their bodies.
Perhaps society is turning over a new leaf..
