Assignment 1 "Kilbourne"

Cassie Lyne
ENG11. A12
"This I Believe"
1:47pm 9/13/09

In Kilbourne’s argument she makes many valid points. She explains the issue of many women feeling overweight when in reality they may be at fine weight, or even underweight. She gives examples with many surveys and explains that even girls as young as grade school are beginning to watch their figure. Kilbourne uses evidence to blame these issues on small wasted fashion models, movie stars, and pop idols. She argues these icons are a huge influence on the female perspective of beauty.
Kilbourne uses evidence from a few different sources. She opens with a survey from Glamour Magazine stating that 75% of its readers are feeling too heavy and only 15% felt right. It also states that nearly half of the women surveyed were actually underweight. She uses another source out of the book Beauty Bound by Rita Freeman. Of a sample of college women 40% felt overweight when only 12% were too heavy. Kilbourne also states that in a recent article in New Age Journal even grade school girls are going to extremes to be thin, and blaming icons like fashion models and movie stars. Another study by a professor at the University of California showed that almost 80% of fourth grade girls in the Bay Area are watching their weight.
I do mostly agree with Kilbourne in her assessment. I believe that the world of pop stars, models, and movie stars play a huge influence in the misconception of what it means to be beautiful. Using myself as an example I idolize stars like Megan Fox, Angelina Jolie and even Marilyn Monroe. In my perspective I think these women are beautiful and they are all thin, or in shape which does somewhat influence me to watch my weight. It also doesn’t surprise that girls as young as 4th grade are watching their weight with new stars like Hannah Montana and movies like High School Musical influencing girls as young as five. I have also noticed that in cartoons, and kids TV shows. They usually make the boy or girl that is overweight the character that is made fun of, or the opposite a bully or class clown. I believe this can also have an influence in a young persons mind. However Kilbourne seems to feel so strongly of being too thin she forgets the huge obesity problem in the U.S
I also believe in someways having icons representing that being in shape is beautiful can be a good thing. Many people in the U.S are overweight it has been proven that the obesity rate has dramatically increased in the past 20 years and obesity is a huge heath issue. People who are overweight are more likely to end up with heart issues, and even diabetes these conditions can be serious and eventually lead to death. So being too thin isn’t healthy, but being overweight isn’t good either. I believe society is doing more and more to encourage Americans to exercise, and eat healthy which in my opinion is how things should be. Being healthy should be everyone’s #1 concern, and that doesn’t necessarily mean to be very thin.