TEXT C Now, more than ever, it
doesn’t matter who you are but what you look like. Janet was
just twenty-five years old. She had a great job and seemed happy. She committed
suicide. In her suicide note she wrote that she felt "un-pretty’ and that no man
ever loved her. Amy was just fifteen when hospitalized for eating disorders. She
suffered from both anorexia and bulimia. She lost more than one hundred pounds
in two months. Both victims battled problems with their body image and physical
appearance. "Oh, I am too fat." "My butt is too big and my
breasts too small." "I hate my body and I feel ugly." "I want to be beautiful."
The number of men and women who feel these things about themselves is increasing
dramatically. I can identify two main categories of body-image
problems: additive versus subtractive. Those who enhance their appearance
through cosmetic surgery fall into the additive group; those who hope to improve
their looks through starvation belong to the subtractive category. Both groups
have two things in common: they are never satisfied and are always
obsessed. Eating disorders afflict as many as five to ten
million women and one million men in the United States. One out of tour female
college students suffer form an eating disorders. But why Card Kirby, a
university of Nebraska mental health counselor, says that body image and eating
disorders are continuum addictions in which individuals seek to discover their
identities. The idea that we should look a certain way and possess a certain
shape is instilled in us at a very early age. Young girls not only play with
Barbie dolls that display impossible, even comical, proportions, but they are
also bombarded with images as well, "We immediately identify physical
attractiveness to mean success and happiness ①." The
media can be blamed for contributing to various body image illnesses. We cannot
walk into a book store without being exposed to perfect male and female bodies
on the covers of magazines. We see such images every day—on commercials,
billboards, on television, and in movies. These images continually remind women
and young girls that if you want to be happy you must be beautiful, and if you
want to be beautiful you must be thin. This ideal may be the
main objective of the fashion, cosmetic, diet, fitness, and plastic surgery
industries that stand to make millions from body-image anxiety. But does it work
for us Are women who lose weight in order to be toothpick thin really happy
Are women who have had breast implants really happy What truly defines a
person Is it his or her physical appearance or is it character Beauty is
supposed to be "skin deep". But we can all be beautiful inside.
People are killing themselves fox’ unrealistic physical standards dictated
by our popular culture. We need to be made more aware of this issue. To be
celebrity-thin is not to be beautiful nor happy. It can also be unattractive.
Individuals who are obsessed with their bodies are only causing damage to
themselves and their loved ones. But as long as the media maintain their message
that "Thin is in", then the medical and psychological problems our society faces
will continue to grow②. What issue is this passage mainly concerned with
A.People suffer from various medical and psychological problems today. B.Businessmen benefit a lot by producing and selling diet products. C.Physical attractiveness tends to be valued more than anything else in many people’s life. D.The mass media are always misleading.