Survey: Many Young Women Would Trade Years of Life to Be Thin
Almost one-third of young women would trade at least a year of their lives to have a perfect body, according to a new survey of British undergraduates.
The survey found that 16 percent of young women queried said they’d trade a year of life for their ideal body weight and shape. Ten percent were willing to trade two to five years, and 2 percent were willing to trade up to 10 years of life away. One percent said they would give up 21 years or more.
…The majority of the women surveyed were dissatisfied with how they looked, the researchers found. Although 78 percent of the women sampled were normal weight — or even underweight — 79 percent of the survey group said they wanted to lose weight. Only 3 percent said they’d like to gain weight.
Negative thoughts about body image were almost universal: 93 percent of the women said they had negative thoughts about their appearance within the last week. Almost one-third had those thoughts several times a day. Almost half of all women surveyed said these pressures weren’t entirely internal: 46 percent had experienced ridicule or bullying because of their appearance.
In addition, 39 percent of the women surveyed said they would have cosmetic surgery if money was not an option. Three-quarters of those women wanted multiple procedures.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with my 18-year-old daughter recently. She got a solicitation in the mail to subscribe to “Teen Vogue” – which she’d never heard of. So she asked me about it. I laughed, and responded by showing her this post by women’s studies professor Hugo Schwyzer:
Tweens and teens grow up comparing themselves to models and tv stars. Few girls feel as pretty, as sexy, as skinny as the women they see in the media. As a result, many young women conclude that happiness is something that you only get when you get to your goal weight. And even more troublingly, when it comes to relationships, lots of straight girls think that if their own bodies aren’t perfect, they have no right to expect too much from guys.
Working with high school and college-aged young women, I’ve heard the same thing more and more often in recent years. These smart and amazing young women have somehow gotten the idea that in order to be treated with respect and love, they have to be damn near perfect. One student said to me last year, “If I were fifteen pounds thinner, I think my boyfriend would stop looking at other girls.” She didn’t feel like she had the right to ask her guy to stop checking out other women in public. “You have to be gorgeous for a man to want to be with you and only you. I’m not, so I can’t expect that.”
After she read it, I said “That’s what Teen Vogue is about: undermining your confidence at an early age to sell cosmetics and other consumer products.” She looked up from the computer screen, shook her head and said “I have so much to thank you for, Mom.”
Needless to state, she tossed the Vogue envelope in the trash. It’s a pity that more young women don’t do the same. Teen Vogue is hardly the only or worst offender, when it comes to unrealistic portrayals of women, but it’s certainly representative of the genre.
April 7, 2011
There is so much focus these days on “looks”. It just baffles me how so many young people, especially young women, put such a value on it. I realize peer pressure and todays media have a lot to do with it.
I remember way back when I was young, young people had very little pressure on them to look “perfect”. It just seems like today there is just so much emphasis on it.
It seems like everyone is telling young people they have to look “perfect” to get the best jobs or the best mate.
It puts so much pressure on young people who already have enough to worry about just trying to grow up mormal.