Companies Encouraging Eating Disorders

Recently, body image has become a big issue with teens in the US. I think this is mostly due to the fact that advertisements depict women as having a perfect, skinny body. Health classes have been talking more and more about body image and misleading representations of the female body that companies advertise. Many women in magazine advertisements are starting to look fake, like this Ralph Lauren model:

 

Teenage girls are definitely affected by advertisements like these. After seeing them over and over, the girls start to believe that this is what they should look like when in fact, the models themselves don't even look like this.

 

Jennifer Ouellette from California has a daughter who is recovering from anorexia. She is very invested in not only helping her own daughter recover, but helping other teens in her community recover from anorexia as well. When she came across a sunglasses company named "Anorexxxy" (because of their "slim" shape) she was outraged, claiming that this company is "mocking a deadly disease" and encouraging teens to lose weight as if they are trying to make anorexia trendy.

 

Jennifer got about 15 other moms together, some with daughters that had died of anorexia, and rallied on social media against Anorexxxy. They constantly tweeted on Twitter and posted statuses on Facebook to raise awareness against eating disorders and to alert others of this company's horrible name. Immediately, the Anorexxxy changed its name to "AXXXEXXXY" and claimed that it "never wanted to upset anyone". It is sickening to hear this from a company that was clearly associating its product with an eating disorder. Companies like this and many others are indirectly encouraging eating disorders and body image insecurities through sly (and not so sly) advertising tactics.