Why are kids so focused on losing weight?!

It’s gotten so bad that each time I hear about Marilyn Monroe is that she was a size 12 or 14 or 16! I don’t think she would have wanted to be remembered that way. What about Jane Mansfield and Sophia Loren...why aren’t they ever mentioned? Maybe a better example would be to choose today’s celebrities that looks super good while not being skinny (like Christina Hendricks or Sofía Vergara) so it’s not about that it was better in the past but that it still good now...provided that you play a character from the 60s (Mad Men is based in the 60s), or coming from South America where the skinny ideas have not caught up yet.

When I was a teenage girl, I never had a thought about my body. I was skinny/short and I did not mind people thinking that I was a few years younger than I really was (I milked that cow paying kids price at the movie theater). I looked like a genius at school (all As) when in fact I had to repeat first grade (personal reasons). I was older than most of the other girls and smart enough to never mention it. Then at 17, your age...boom, I suddenly matured into a woman and caught up on my height. That was a hard period of adjustment, going from being a little girl to a woman, getting boobs and boys’ attention.
I was skinny because I developed late and I was very active, walking or biking to go places. I was playing outside and when I was having fun inside, it was taking martial art lessons or splashing in a pool. I had no concept of “exercising” and “working out”. I was not watching TV (except after dinner), had no computer, no phone...having fun was going to the park, the fair or get an adrenaline taste while playing in an abandoned house falling to pieces (walk next to the walls and don’t wake up any hobos).

Kids nowadays hate their body because they’re not active. You can be very skinny but if you’re skinny-fat, you don’t look good and you don’t feel good. They should stay off their phone and their laptop once in a while and go to the park with their friends to play a game of Ultimate.
A 110lbs unfit person with little muscle mass and a third of the body being body fat (skinny-fat people, NWO = Normal Weight Obese) could have a low “healthy” BMI but still be as unhealthy as obese people and at risk for the same obesity related diseases.

Also, they’re constantly exposed to the media, zooming in on skinny photoshopped actresses/models and the constant chocking news about their eating disorders. It almost has become fashionable to suffer from anorexia, bulimia or food addiction which becomes a “fashion trend” and is demeaning to any other people suffering in their lives, because they’re not feeding off the media and reciprocally.
How come young people want to look like sick celebrities?
Even guys become victims when they think that their girlfriend should look like those airbrushed women in Maxim.
What about that celebrity starving herself, being a celebrity because she was the one looking better than a few other thousand ones, with a fragile ego (people wanting to be famous usually need to prove something) and after all her efforts, she gets photoshopped, like she still does not look good enough and she’s given bigger boobs, longer legs, thinner waist, perfect skin, greener eyes, whiter teeth, shinier hair until she looks like a plastic android, and becomes the fantasy of boys and the impossible goal of girls...If she cannot even look like her own picture, who could even look like her? Then she’ll get depressed looking at herself in the mirror in the morning, not being photographed by a professional, dressed by a wardrobe person and all made-up, and will look nothing like her picture that everybody sees and that she’s supposed to replicate on some red carpet! Talk about pressure and I’m going to lose my appetite or binge.

(End of my answer coming next...)

It has to do with subliminal messaging in media. It's the same reason that if someone came to school in very unfashionable clothing they would be made fun of. See, 50 years ago, models weren't what they are today. They were beautiful full-figured women (See Marilyn Monroe for example who wore a size 12).

Now though in everything from movies to magazines, musicians, all of it, beauty is being fed to our youth and even adults as being suuuuper thin, wearing whatever random crap that people are selling, etc, because that's what "beautiful" is and most people are simply too unintelligent and uneducated to understand these things.

Because us kids are insecure, we tend to care about what people think and about how we look and feel. Its something completely normal as long as we don't go overboard with it. Personally I think we should just accept who we are and love it.

Unfortunately the media has put the idea of being perfect into their heads. Kids cant be kids anymore. Its sad but then again its reality. Im a teen & i dont care about my weight, dont really worry about them types of things.

I had the same issues, it's called body Dysmorphic disorder. I was so thin every bone showed in my body, and I still thought I was fat. Finally I got really sick and gained a heck of a lot of weight and I'm happy to know that at least I'm "fat" and know I am (although I am very muscular).

It's society, tv, celebrities, ever since twiggy altered the future. Marilyn Monroe was a size 16 as of todays standards.

They can't really be helped, the girls that are super anorexic unless their parents step in, even then they probably won't get treatment. They see themselves even if they're bony as obese. It's very common.

life experience, cousin's doing the same thing, former anorexic sort of

(Here the end of my answer...)


An eating disorder is not only about food and being thin but about getting control of something in your life when you hate yourself. You could be skinny (Calista Flockhart), look fine (Jessica Alba) or big (Wynonna Judd), it only matters that when you look good or are big; you look healthier and therefore might not be diagnosed properly.

If I would be a has-been celebrity like Kirtie Alley or Valerie Bertinelli, I would pig out like a Mauritanian bride, gain 50 or 80 pounds, get around 200lbs, at least, making sure the paparazzi get very unflattering pictures of me, like ravenously eating drooling burgers in the middle of the street (really...who does that?...being a celebrity, with paparazzi around?) or coming out of a plane trip all disheveled. Then become a spokeswoman for Jenny Craig, getting a million dollars for each pound I would lose and then bring in my friends, like Valerie. Jenny Craig is happy to find fat celebrities willing to get fat and then lose the weight and end up looking great in a swimsuit. I would not be surprised if the deal was signed before they got fat and the bad pictures from the “paparazzi” are just part of the deal.


Women with publicized eating disorders...

Not that your question was about that, but 12 years old skinny (or not skinny) girls, hating their thighs and stomach are probably not active enough and at risk of using food restrictions to lose weight, stunting their growth in the process and sending their metabolism down the drain if they don’t eat enough to cover their BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate).

Paula Abdul
Jessica Alba
Kirstie Alley
Kate Beckinsale
Victoria Beckman
Valerie Bertinelli
Portia de Rossi
Princess Diana
Sally Field
Calista Flockhart
Jane Fonda
Felicity Huffman
Wynonna Judd
Lindsay Lohan
Alanis Morisette
Mary-Kate Olsen
Sharon Osbourne
Nicole Richie
Ashlee Simpson
Vera-Ellen (the smallest waist in Hollywood in the 50s)
Kate Winslet
Renée Zellweger