She’s your mother, your daughter, your sister or your coworker, a girl in your class, your neighbor or your best friend, or just a woman you know … or maybe even you. No matter what you call her or the role she plays in your life… she’s a woman. And if she’s like most women, she has struggled with body image dissatisfaction at one time in her life.  Why should you care? Because we believe that body image is neither a sorority issue nor a collegiate issue. Body Image dissatisfaction is a women’s issue.  And we believe it’s time to take a stand. 

The term “body image” is used to describe how someone feels about his or her body. It’s about more than just physical appearance; it’s about one’s psychological thoughts and feelings, too. “Do I look okay? Am I pretty enough? Do I even fit in here? If I could just lose 5 more pounds …”

Unfortunately, women everywhere are burdened with thoughts of negative body image—the thought that they might not measure up to the “thin ideal.” And these thoughts are only confirmed by retailers, magazine articles, runway models, TV commercials and movie trailers, who perpetuate an unattainable—and certainly unhealthy—ideal body type.

• Did you know that Barbie, the best selling fashion doll in the world, has unattainable and unhealthy body proportions? If she were alive, her waist would be smaller than patients with anorexia nervosa, and she would be unable to menstruate (Dittmar, Halliwell, & Ive, 2006). Research has shown that very young girls (ages 5-7) who are exposed to Barbie have lower body esteem and want a thinner body than they have.
• Did you know that fashion models are thinner than 98% of women in the United States (Smolak, 1996)? According to the National Eating Disorders Association, the average woman is 5’4” tall and weighs 140 pounds. Yet not surprisingly, the average model is 5’11” tall and weighs only 117 pounds.
• Did you know that more than half of American girls ages 18-25 would rather be hit by a truck than be fat? More than two-thirds would rather be mean or stupid. In her 2007 book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, Courtney Martin notes that 90% of high-school-aged girls think they are overweight.

It’s been suggested that body image dissatisfaction in females is a key factor in predicting unhealthy weight control behaviors as well as the development of some eating disorder symptoms. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychological disorder and are one of the most prevalent disorders found in young women (Fairburn, Cooper, Doll, Norman, & O’Connor, 2000).