Free Magazine: Britney Spears, Digital Beauty and Kids on Diets

The real Britney Spears looks quite different than her alter-ego in the media.
(Britney Spears @ Palms Hotel, Vegas; First published in the SUN 4/5/03)

What people forget is that every image you see of a pop-star, model or actor has been manipulated to look absolutely and glamorously flawless--larger than life, untouchable. Once these images are hoisted onto a cover and stacked at newsstands, an ideal is born. Women turn page after page seeing images of statuesque, exotic glory--pressure increasing with every turn. Make no mistake; these images do affect society in powerful ways, though subtle.

Stories about girls as young as five and six feeling the need to diet are now somehow commonplace. If adult women are feeling the pressure, how badly are preteens--even kindergarteners--feeling it? In fact, Teen magazine this fall reported that 35 percent of U.S. girls 6 to 12 years old have been on at least one diet, and that among normal-weight girls 50 percent to 70 percent consider themselves overweight.

What message is worth sending out if children are going on diets? Children do not stop growing until much later in life, even way past puberty. Diets alter them wholly--their state of mind, their development, their self-confidence. This sort of social phenomenon creates serious, deep-rooted altercations that affect an individual to no end. Maybe 'Toxic' Britney Spears doesn't like to think about this stuff... but it's time we did!~