Women and girls need self-esteem; sign the petition

The women’s magazine Off Our Chests has started a petition called the “Protect our Girls and Pass the Media and Public Health Act,” which is seeking ten thousand signatures nationwide.

The petition will encourage the passing of federal legislature that will require advertisers and editors to stop airbrushing and photoshopping models or call for labels to inform readers that a picture or model has been altered.

The magazine’s website says: “The simple fact is there’s an epidemic crisis of confidence affecting girls and women, and both its causes and effects are going largely ignored and unspoken in and by the mainstream.”

In the United States, over 50 percent of 13-year-old girls say they are unhappy with their bodies and by the time they have reached 17, that percentage has reached 78, according to change.org.

These girls are exposed to over 250,000 television commercials sending them the message that body size matters and the only way to achieve success and approval is to be perfect.

According to the Girl Scout Research Institute, one-third of all girls have a distorted idea about their weight and one in four college women are suffering from an eating disorder.

These figures are startling. If modified advertisements are required by law to be labeled as such, then at least this would illustrate to girls and women that no one is perfect. Not even models.

Off Our Chests states that 80 percent of women said they lose confidence and feel bad about themselves after they have seen a beauty advertisement. But this is the point.

Advertising companies spend 20 billion dollars on beauty marketing in the United States annually. By making women feel inadequate, this persuades them they need the product in the advertisement to feel beautiful, when the narrow idea of beauty portrayed is not even attainable.

“If we save one life, if one girl or one woman feels better about herself because of truth-in-advertising labeling, how’s that a bad thing?,” the Off Our Chest website says.

Freshman Carrisa Sacherski, the newest staff member at the Women’s Center, said she is in full support of this act and has signed the petition.

“Girls seem to be affected by these media images the most,” Sacherski said. “They grow up having this idea of how they are supposed to look. It creates boundaries, limitations, and issues for them. It makes them more susceptible to lower self-esteem.”

She said these images have affected her because of how rare it is to see a full figured model in the media, even though the average woman wears a size 14.

“I grew up seeing these images everywhere,” she said. “It is not healthy. It does not make girls feel good about themselves, especially since women don’t really look like that.”

To start your own petition or to search and sign this one, go to www.change.org. I did.

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