We all have our own definition of beauty. What one person might find beautiful another person might not. Whether we realize this or not we also have our own definition of health. What does being healthy really mean? According to most people being healthy is having a good blood pressure rate, not having any types of disease and not being restricted from a particular type of activity. However according to others being healthy is simply being skinny or being underweight.

My parents are from China and most Chinese people are very skinny and the celebrities are even skinner. My mom’s definition of being healthy was not having any disease and such and also being very skinny. Starting from a young age my mom would tell me that I was fat and that I needed to lose weight compared to my older cousin who lived in China. When she watched Chinese movies on tv she would tell how skinny and pretty the movie stars were and when she took me shopping she would hand me clothes that were at least a size bigger than I was. This made me really insecure about my weight and I became obsessed with it. I became anemic and I would always go on diets every few months or so.

The topic that I chose to do is the media’s influence on our health. Everywhere we look we see beautiful models and celebrities on ads, magazine covers, side of public transportation, televisions and just about everywhere else. The majority of models on runways and in magazines are skinny, underweight and what most people might describe, perfect. When we see these people many of us will stare, comment and wish that we look like that person. Some of us might even go to great lengths like starving ourselves and going on extreme diets just to look like the model/celebrity we saw.

In my actual paper I plan to write about how girls (not all) are raised to believe that being underweight and really skinny is healthy; also the great lengths that many of us might go through to achieve that. I also plan to educate my readers on the different eating disorders that many young people have today.

media artifact: