Opinion Article - Sample Essay for Coursework for Assignment One

You have to be thin to be beautiful…
…Oh no you don’t, argues Grace Brodie

This is the message that hundreds of teen magazines are planting in the heads of us young girls the world over, particularly in the run up to summer, when the interviews with the lean, long limbed, slim and slinky celebrities are usually twinned with a stunning picture of them posing in a two piece. It just doesn’t send out the right message or boost a girl’s self-esteem in the slightest. While society is enforcing the point that you can’t be fat and beautiful at the same time, it is also becoming more and more worried at the alarming raise in eating disorders in young women.

A shocking amount of girls are now dying to be thin and there is not enough being done to prevent it. Unfortunately there are far too many of us out there depriving our bodies of essential nutritious food, and driving ourselves to starvation, anorexia or bulimia in the desire to resemble air brushed pictures of perfection. The media feeds us with ridiculous images on a daily basis; in the papers, magazines and on the television.

What many of us find hard to believe and understand is that these wonderful pictures of size eight stunners are more often than not, touched up, tummy tucked, and toned with the trusty airbrush. They hide the models’ natural figures. It is not reality. The pictures are forcing teenagers to drive themselves to a thinness that isn’t even possible to be healthy with. Once this fact has been proven to us, that models do have cellulite, and don’t have such tiny hips, it is warmly reassuring. Feeling good about ourselves is very important at our age and being known as “the fatty in year 11” is not exactly going to help us ooze confidence. There are some people out there who do find it amusing to give a girl a hard time because of her weight, but what it all boils down to, is lack of self confidence. They’re only picking on you because they want to shift the spotlight of fault onto anyone else but themselves. Rise above it.

Teenagers hate to be considered as the odd one out. If you come across a teenage girl, who is happy with herself, but finds that the lads are laughing at her and not interested in her, she will end up feeling as if there’s something wrong with herself and become paranoid and self conscious. If all of our friends are trying to loose weight then it is not surprising that we’ll try too. Sometimes girls diet, not because they are unhappy with their weight, but because everyone else is preoccupied about theirs, and they don’t want to seem odd. The sad fact of reality is that most teens you talk to today, stereotypically associate being thin with beauty, fame, fortune and success, but this really is not the case.

What is attractive about a spindly lanky body? Absolutely nothing. Don’t forget J-Lo, Beyoncé and above all Marilyn Monroe, who men still drool over. These three absolutely gorgeous girls have, or had, amazing careers. All three are incredibly successful and all three are idolised by teenage girls and women the world over. They’re all curvy and “bootilicious” as Beyoncé so beautifully put it!

Society and the media do not realise what they are doing. They are worrying about a problem that ironically, they are the creators of! If they seriously thought about the distress caused by daft articles about gorgeous leggy movie stars, discussing their weight problems, perhaps they would not publish them. Why do people who are blatantly not fat, start going on about themselves and their eating disorders? Shut up! It’s ridiculous girls! And what about those advertisements that are obviously slating the rounded population? We don’t have to put up with that! Curvy people are gorgeous and people are starting to realise that. Men are currently finding thin women a lot less attractive and the average size of a UK woman is a fabulous 14. J-Lo has recently been named one of the world’s most attractive women. Big is beautiful girls and don’t let anybody tell you any different!