Media Madness: The Never-ending Battle of Striving for Perfection

From fresher fears of fitting in and finding your feet, to third year dilemmas and disasters of the dreaded dissertation, it is fair to say that University life can more often than not feel like a never-ending number of milestones. The end of term is an especially hectic time for most of us, with all our Uni deadlines, the prospect of falling over in the foreseeable snow (if you have to walk down Royal Park Road, trust me, this will happen!) and of course the obligatory Christmas nights out before saying so long to everybody for a month, it makes me wonder how we possibly have the time to do two crucial things: eat well and stay fit.

As young girls growing up in a predominantly technological and media-orientated world, the simple act of being sufficiently active and eating your 5-a-day has certainly taken a back seat. Through intense media power we have become accustomed to extremely rigid and uniform standards of beauty and we cannot escape it. The societal emphasis of looking good is constantly reinforced by exposure to television and magazines which display idealised images of physical attractiveness, placing exceptional and airbrushed images of ‘beautiful people’ as the norm.

Almost every time my flatmate and I read a magazine, there is an image of a gorgeous woman with a caption underneath suggesting she has gained weight and is therefore now seen as less attractive. 34 year old Liv Tyler has put her career at risk in the past when she refused to lose weight, after movie bosses told her that if she didn’t reduce her shapely figure she would be less likely to be chosen for top film roles. Excuse me, but I think most of us would kill to look like the beautiful and successful actress, and society should be commending her rather than condemning her for fighting against the idea of ‘the thinner the better.’ With stories like these, it is no wonder that 80% of women over 18 are unhappy with the image they see in the mirror.

Liv Tyler pictured looking supposedly too big for top film roles.

The recent Victoria’s Secret infamous runway show caused some controversy when Adrianna Lama revealed the drastic diet that she undertook prior to the show. Adrianna claims that she usually drinks a gallon of water a day, and that for nine days before the show, she drank only protein shakes – “no solids.” Two days before the show, she abstained from the daily gallon of water, and “just drank normally.”Then, 12 hours before the show, she stopped drinking entirely. “You’re supposed to have no liquids at all so that you dry out; sometimes you can lose up to eight pounds just from that,” she says. She even stated that this year’s regime was in fact less extreme than usual, “This year, even though my diet was intense, I took it a little bit easier on the working out so that I wouldn’t be as muscular,” she said. She later anxiously expressed that the diet is part of her job and shouldn’t be assumed to be a normal and healthy lifestyle. “To those teenagers out there – don’t go starving yourself or only drinking liquids,” she said. “Don’t do that please.”

Even though she realised the negative impact of her diet on impressionable young girls, resulting images such as this one of her amazingly toned body are likely to be enough for young girls to disregard the potential dangers of such diets and actively start adopting Adrianna’s regime in the hope of the same outcome. An image of her fellow Victoria’s Secret Angel, Candice Swanepoel, shocked the nation as she appeared alarmingly thin during a photo shoot earlier this year. The entertainment website Hollywood Life called her “scarily, skeletally, stick-thin,” adding, “That’s not how the human body is meant to look.”

With images like these readily available to young children as well, it is awful to think that the media has contributed so significantly to a society where young girls are going on diets because they think they are fat and unattractive. In one American survey, 81% of ten-year-old girls had already dieted at least once. A recent Swedish study found that 25% of 7 year old girls had tried to diet to lose weight – they were already suffering from ‘body-image distortion,’ by thinking of  themselves as being much larger than they really were, even though they were a perfectly normal size for their age.

Candice looking toned and gorgeous in 2007 (left), and looking much thinner earlier this year (right)

It is about time that, as a society, we start focusing on the health benefits of eating properly and exercising, rather than turning small bodily concerns into damaging obsessions. We need to forget Kate Moss’ ridiculous and detrimental statement that ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.’ and realise that part of succeeding at University is living a healthy and balanced lifestyle. It is important to exercise regularly but it is even more important to understand that the images we see in magazines are air brushed and don’t represent a complete reality, and therefore that the occasional Lucky’s pizza after a night out is perfectly fine!

If your student budget doesn’t allow for a gym membership, there is nothing stopping you from occasionally paying as a non-member for a class you’re keen on, or for a swim, costing about £4. Or how about investing in some decent running trainers and simply using the old fashioned version of the treadmill – the pavement? The great thing about the pavement is that it’s completely free! The variety of exercise in my 4 person house alone shows just how much you can do to maintain fitness. From Crossfit (a programme focusing on strength and conditioning), to yoga, to running and to the Edge gym on campus, there are endless possibilities. How about keeping fit and healthy whilst also aiming for a target and raising money for a good cause? The Leeds half marathon is on Sunday 13^th May next year, so why not get three jobs done in one? Keep fit, raise money for charity and add something new and interesting to your C.V! Look at the links below to see how you can get started, and remember, try not to internalise the impossible standards set by the media. Don’t strive for perfection, strive for health. It is a much more attainable goal and will make your University life that little bit better.

 
Leeds half marathon: http://www.forallevents.co.uk/
The Edge Gym: http://sport.leeds.ac.uk/landing.asp?section=30&sectionTitle=The+Edge