POPULARITY’S PRICE

Today’s media paints a dangerous picture for young America

By: Dan Schultz

Edited by: Noah Shepardson and Alexis Kowaleski

Flipping through a magazine never used to hurt so much. Advertisements rendering a chiseled man or a toned woman only remind a person about the “perfect body” they do not have—a body that scares doctors.

“More and more pictures show people with that perfect body,” said Erica Fisher, a nutritionist for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).

Fisher, a Central Michigan University alumna, was taught to be aware of the excessive pop culture images.

“It used to just be female models, but now you see more and more of images of men with zero body fat and tons of muscle,” Fisher explained.

In a recent study done in Life Science Weekly, 8 percent of all girls and 12 percent of all boys reported using products in the past year to improve their appearance.

The study mentions both sexes of adolescents that read magazines and watched television regularly were “twice as likely to use supplements to increase muscle mass and definition.”

The influence of the media cannot be ignored—Calvin Klein advertisements make the burly man or curvy woman a goal for society.

Anabolic steroid usage can be connected through the internet where drugs lure the customer with appealing products to fuel their self-esteem.

“The Internet is full of sites where these substances can be purchased, and many are advertised in popular health and fitness magazines,” Dr. Alison Field, an epidemiologist at Children's Hospital Boston, said during an interview in Life Science Weekly.

These advertisements cover up the dangers of steroid abuse, which has been associated with heart attacks, strokes and tumors.

Despite these dangers, adolescents continue taking steroids to match the media’s portrayal of the perfect body; a portrayal that doctors know is usually impossible to achieve.

“Most of us (doctors)… think it's best to stay away from these products altogether,” Field said.