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Press Clippings and Media Coverage
TV Causes Anorexia 27-Jun-2002 Doctors now have concrete evidence that TV watching causes eating disorders in teenage girls. Its long been suspected that skinny actresses like Ally McBeal make teenage girls feel fat, even if theyre not. Now a major study examining the impact of the introduction of television into two towns in the Pacific islands of Fiji shows that TV watching can be the cause of poor body images in girls. Dr. Anne Becker of Harvard Medical School found that eating disorders among girls on these islands have increased since they were first exposed to television. Fiji is a country where girls traditionally have round shapes and few of them used to worry about losing weight. But after TV came to the islands, researchers find that girls began vomiting in order to control their weight, refusing to eat and dieting. TV was first introduced to the area of Nadroga in 1995. Researchers interviewed and tested girls a few weeks later and again in 1998. In 1995, the number of girls who used self-induced vomiting to control their weight was zero. But three years later, 11% of them did. Researchers also found that dieting had become common. In 1998, 69% of those studied said they had gone on diets to lose weight and 74% said they thought they were "too big or fat." The study showed that girls living in houses with a TV set were three times more likely to have eating disorders. The girls said they admired television characters and tried to copy them. Becker says, "The impact of television appears especially profound, given the longstanding cultural traditions that previously had appeared protective against dieting, purging and body dissatisfaction in Fiji." There are a few ample gals on the tube, like Camryn Manheim of The Practice. Lets hope we see more of them soon before girls throughout the world start to hate themselves. |
