Women's Body Issues in Today's World

"Does this make me look fat?"

"Do you have any spanx?"

    Today, women are under constant pressure to look just like that thin, beautiful, and happy girl on a magazine cover. The media makes us believe that beautiful and skinny are the same thing. Furthermore, they force us to constantly see images that make us feel inadequate. So many articles today, even on national news networks, focus on health and ways to lose weight extremely fast. It's not healthy. In fact, this is quite dangerous. The media is telling girls it's okay to be underweight, starve themselves, and in order to be "happy and awesome" they must be this way. 
   As a teenager, I saw many girls with eating disorders as a result of feeling inadequate.  Women who are your mother, sister, even your best friend throw up after every meal in fear of gaining any weight at all. It doesn't stop at just that either. When they wake up in the mornings, the first thing they do is look at themselves in the mirror to decide how hard they'll have to diet and work out that day. From the moment women wake up until they go to bed, they are constantly judging their bodies. They want that perfect "Hollywood" look. They want the glamour and for everyone to notice them.
    Today, Facebook puts women even at more attention of their appearances. It's popular to post pictures daily of themselves. Many young girls feel what their worth is as good as the last picture they were tagged in. They crop out parts of themselves that look "fat", edit the pictures to look tan, and modify the picture to look skinnier. Facebook allows the world to see women in such a short amount of time. It's so easy to just flip through a girl's Facebook profile pictures album to decide whether or not she is worth looking at and deemed beautiful.
   Unfortunately these issues start at a young age and progress well into adulthood. As the women of today become adults and welcome in new generations, they teach their daughters that judging your appearance every single day is how to live. Mothers disown their daughters, in some extreme circumstances, if they don't look up to par.