In the modern American culture, eating disorders have become, unfortunately, a common issue affecting both youths and adults. More than 10 million men and 20 million women will suffer from an eating disorder in their lifetime. Misconceptions and stigmas circulating around eating disorders affect the treatment of these mental illnesses and how they are recognized in the modern American society. These misconceptions directly correlate to how people with eating disorders are treated and how their illnesses are portrayed to the masses. The media, especially outlets relating to the fashion and dieting industries, is a major influence on the development of eating disorders as well as their corresponding stigmas. These stigmas include ideas such as that eating disorders are only centered around being thin. The American culture is obsessed with thinness and dieting, so much so that a thinness ideal has been developed. Oftentimes, because of the portrayal of unrealistic models in magazines, young people are afflicted with ideals they cannot meet, therefore resulting in a turn to unhealthy behaviors.

Thus, we ask Vogue Magazine to label retouched or altered photos of models in their magazines. This could be done through either a symbol or a worded tag, but it must be easily recognizable and understood to be a retouching warning. Body shame is a central factor in the development of eating disorder behaviors. The constant exposure of perfectly and unrealistically bodied models distorts younger people’s views of what their body should look like, and they therefore develop a bad relationship with how they look. This relationship and negative opinion of their self worth can manifest in starving, purging or bingeing tendencies in an effort to maintain or achieve what is presented as the ideal body. Since adults are often exposed to these images as well, the misconstrued thinness ideal is ingrained into multiple levels of America’s culture. The idea of disordered eating is almost encouraged in today’s society, and therefore people, even doctors, can often not recognize eating disorder symptoms as they occur. This can cause serious dilemmas for those suffering with an eating disorder, as their condition can become worse. Health problems can include heart attacks, strokes, and low blood pressure, and can even progress to death by medical complications or, in many cases, by suicide. That is why we ask Vogue Magazine to label retouched photos. This can be the first step towards curbing stereotypes surrounding those with food related disorders and the body idealism in the media. We hope that people may become more aware of how the thinness ideal affects people, and by becoming aware of this thinness ideal, the negative stigmas surrounding eating disorders or disordered eating behaviors, as well as overall body shaming tendencies, may be recognized on a more cohesive basis.