We get a lot of information from the media. Some of what we get from the media is what a woman ought to be like, rather than what she is like. Apparently only 5% of women could achieve the slender Barbie woman proposed to us by the media. The Western ideal of woman is now starting to affect women in developing countries, and they are now suffering from disordered eating, like bulimia or anorexia.

This site has a go at showing how the media affect us. It shows that advertisers show images of men as active and doing stuff, or being funny. The images of woman, curiously, find them lying on the ground, crouching, or crawling.

Western culture exerts pressure on women to conform to the current fashionable body shape, even though women have always come in all shapes and sizes. This pressure leads to unhappiness.

Research carried out by Northumbria University showed how Western culture is starting to put pressure on South African women to conform to Western ideals of beauty and the preferred body shape. In the past, South African women had to be fat in order for their husbands and fathers to demonstrate their prosperity. So in one way, the report suggests, this is a sign of empowerment. On the other hand, the women also say that they want to be thin to please their men, who are also developing preferences for the Western ideal. The women said they wanted to be like the women in the adverts.

Striving after unachievable ideals of body shape only make us unhappy. When we are unhappy, we eat to comfort ourselves and lo, we put on weight. Try hypnotherapy and break free.