This essay was written by our very own Maryellen Vanderdeen. Maryellen is 13 years old, and she attended GLI Summer Camp last summer. We are proud of Maryellen for articulating her strong opinions, and for sharing them with all of us! Go, Maryellen!

What if we lived in a world where teenage girls didn’t obsess over their weight? What if teenage girls didn’t have to constantly count calories trying to fit the “normal” body image?

Turn on the television or open a magazine and find many advertisements that use physical attractiveness as a way to sell a product; like a car advertisement that has a tall, blond, size 0, woman driving the car. If teenagers are constantly bombarded with images of the “perfect” woman; how can they feel beautiful as themselves? Studies report that the average woman sees 400-600 advertisements per day, most provoking negative body images.

I propose an advertising campaign: Love The Girls. What if we made just one of those negative advertisements a positive one, an advertisement that shows real teens and real statistics, without ridiculous size 0 actresses? This advertisement could ultimately influence healthy body weights among teenagers. The Love The Girls ad campaign would be all about loving your own body. It would encourage girls to be confident in their own bodies and give them a realistic ideal from all of the bone-thin models that we see in the media every day.

The Love The Girls campaign would be different than former advertising campaigns, by actually being relevant to teen and pre-teen girls. By creating an actual tool that would be fun: a “healthy REAL scale” that girls can relate to. The “healthy scale” would have affirmative statements which promote healthy body images and confidence. It is important to reach out to all ages because wanting to diet and being influenced negatively by the media/marketers start as young as 7 or 8 for most girls. A scale that girls could relate to would help the girls understand that size 0 is not healthy or normal for most girls.

Studies show that 1/3 of American women in their teens and twenties turned to cigarettes as a way to control their appetites.  40 billion dollars was spent in the dieting industry this year. These campaigns create expectations so absurdly unrealistic that women will continue to put money into dieting in an attempt to achieve an often improbable and unhealthy goal.

I am a size 6. For a long time this was an embarrassment for me. I avoided having a salesperson help me when shopping for jeans because I did not want to have to tell them my size! When I look back on it, I realize how superfluous this was. I was not fat; I was 5’4 and 135 pounds! My doctor told me that this was a healthy weight but all I wanted to be was a “perfect” size 0. I have friends who are still striving to be so-called “perfect”. This is why I want to be able to create the Love The Girls campaign; change and empower girls of all ages and try to capture the young before they can become negatively influenced by advertising.

Photo credit: suchitra prints