The article " 'Thigh Gap' : Reflections On Teenage Girls Latest Obsession" , by Silvia Pagan Westphal is about a mother and her thoughts and concerns about this new fad for teen girls and young adults. She talks about the conflicting world of images, and how media and social networking sites contribute to these problems. She also touches on how family members influence the way a young girl sees themselves.
After reading the article I looked up thigh gap in the search engine and what I found was saddening. The Tumblr, @Carasthighgap twitter page, and the Sexy Thigh Gap photos at thechive.com were really a negative I thought. I saw that on the Tumblr page a lot of the photos were celebrities or models and the Twitter page is an ode to model Cara Delevingne.
Why do girls feel the need to post half naked pictures on social networking sites?
How do you think Photoshop affects girls?
How can we educate girls more on genetics and being healthy?
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If you had any questions to add?
The "thigh gap" is something that has evolved into a huge fad on the internet. This has become extremely prevalent on the social networking site "Tumblr" which is part of the reason I stopped using it. There are a ton of Tumblr pages dedicated not only to thigh gaps but are also there to promote eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia. Here are examples: http://starveyourselfpretty.tumblr.com/ or http://skinniminne.tumblr.com/ These are sites that are known as "Pro Ana" or "Pro Mia." They use the nicknames people have given to eating disorders.
ReplyDeleteI think that one way we can educate girls (and guys) on being healthy could be by creating more Tumblr pages that promote a healthy lifestyle. If people are constantly on Tumblr looking at all of these negative images, maybe creating more pages that discuss positive visuals and messages would be a way of getting to the people who are being affected by the negative images all over the site. It is going to be difficult to get the positive messages across to those who have eating disorders but this may be a start.
I came across this concept of "thigh gap" in high school when one of my friends said that if your thighs touch you're considered unhealthy/fat. I thought it was weird because everybody has a different body shape and legs. Im petite so I pretty much stay thin but I still catch myself looking in the mirror and thinking I could be thinner. I know im not unhealthy so why the constant self scrutiny? One of the reasons I stopped reading fashion magazines was because I couldn't deal with seeing the same image of a girl over and over again and it was distorting my reality. Unfortunetly, teenage girls now are bombarded with more media than even we had to deal with just 3-5 years ago. Eventually ads are going to have to come with disclaimers because of the mental and physical health problems they cause.
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