Susie Orbach Article

I think that this article by Susie Orbach is extremely relevant to the society that we live in today. I have two sisters so I know fully well how much time girls spend making sure that they match the depiction of the ideal girl that society has created. I’ve seen my sisters paint their nails four or five times in one day just because the first few coats didn’t match their standards. I think that even small things like this go to show that girls often times are far too concerned with making themselves look like a model instead of looking like themselves.

This goal that many girls try to accomplish has created a serious problem in our society. A part of the article I found particularly shocking is that 1 in every 4 college girls have eating problems. This number is surprisingly high because it is something that you would never expect out of a large number of people just from looking at them or talking to them. There is a small group of girls that look unhealthily skinny that you make assumptions that they have eating problems, but that definitely does not account for the 25% of all girls. That means that many more girls have the same problems on a smaller scale and it goes unnoticed every day. This should be a great concern for our society because nutrition is one of the major things that keeps us alive and functioning properly. If eating problems in girls can’t necessarily be identified obviously and still occur on a frequent basis then that is a very serious problem.

It seems that one of the main causes of this eating problem in girls comes from the advertisements put out by companies. Nearly all fashion companies that have advertisements use the same models for all of their ads. Tall and thin. This creates a false reality that everyone needs to look like this, when in fact, only a tiny percentage of girls can actually look like this. It creates a false sense of reality that many girls try way too hard to reach and end up hurting themselves.

I think that Dove’s advertising campaign to work on self-esteem is excellent for women around the world. I don’t think a good technique would be to encourage women to not wear makeup or no longer care about grooming themselves. However, I do think that these tactics should be encouraged to be used to accent the positive qualities that someone already possesses and not to create new qualities to conform to what society has created as beauty. I think Orbach did a great job of explaining all of these points in her article, and although I am by no means a feminist, I do think this is a very important issue that needs to be addressed for the sake of the young women and girls of our country.