As readers flip through the latest issue of YM magazine, they come across countless advertisements for all sorts of products guaranteed to "fix" whatever may be "wrong" with the consumer. The consumer? Impressionable teenagers with a quest to fit in. "Easy, breezy, beautiful Cover Girl" welcomes the reader with the reassurance that they, a "cover girl" themselves, know what every girl needs to have. On the next page, a sporty photo of a female basketball player convinces girls who "know" their sport to be Nike girls. A thin, unsmiling teen promotes a scent entitled Fetish, almost mocking the obsession over teenage beauty products. From page to page, the reader encounters skin care products, pro-vitamin spray-in conditioners, a variety of tampon choices ("Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm having my period!" announces one), "hip" lip colors, and endless perfumes and body mists. Naturally, a magazine such as this one is aimed toward preteen and teenage girls who are forming a sense of identity. While almost all young women claim that television and magazine advertisements do not have any affect on them, research proves otherwise. Social ailments and diseases such as depression, anorexia, and bulimia affect teenagers more than any other age group. More than a million girls and young women battle anorexia yearly.

Advertisements are geared to sell consumers a sense of value, success, popularity, normality, and even romance. This is done by showing a very unrealistic "norm" of sorts. Most advertisements in teen magazines display thin, trendy, heterosexual, white females who are by no means disabled or scarred in any way. Rarely do advertisements display older people or wheel-chaired girls with a need for dental work. The impresssionable reader is presented with a goal of flawlessness, which can only be achieved through the use of products such as those mentioned above. Ideal female beauty takes time, energy, and money, and the body - looked at as an object - becomes a constant fix-up job. As the seasons, and trends, change the young woman fights a constant battle to disguise herself through endless purchase.

With an aim to change her appearance or "fix" her body parts that need work, it is no surprise that one out of every five college women have or have had an eating disorder. Eighty percent think they are "overweight." Television and magazine advertisements present young women with an unspoken goal of thinness, and consequently, sexiness. Stick-thin models such as Kate Moss came under attack from family groups for glorifying the "emaciated" look. However, perhaps these groups should gear their attacks toward the clothing and cosmetic companies. They are the ones who promote the image of a pale, stick-thin, heroine addict. While Kate Moss may not be able to control her high metabolism, Calvin Klein can control his urges to present the trendy models of today as long, thin, and rapidly wasting-away images. As for showing their "uncontrollably" sexy sides, the women in Calvin Klein ads are almost always scantily clad, and positioned in provacative poses. Pressed up against the white-gray walls, model Milla stradles the leg of her counterpart, Joel. He wears a simple, tight, black and short-sleeved shirt with matching jeans, as he succumbs to her "powers." Meanwhile, Milla wears a high-slit slip with a tight, strappy tank-top. The message? Calvin Klein's Escape will make you irresistable and sexually primed, whatever the circumstances. Models become content people who have healthy and adventurous sex lives, and who reading would not like to livesuch a lifestyle? According to many ads, women are always sexually ready, available, and waiting for a victim.

Girls as young as eight years old discuss dieting and watching what they eat. While health is an important topic for children to be aware of, calorie counting is not. Children learn behaviors such as calorie counting through role models of all sorts. Unfortunately, the advertisements littering television and magazines can be two very influential sources. When advertisers go to the extreme to present innocence as eroticism, the effect can be even more damaging. The images suggest that innocence is alluring, if not provacative. Young girls see this as beauty within reach and sometimes choose to make it their goal. These advertisements send the message that passiveness and powerlessness are desirable things. They also present ideas of a life where a man will rescue and "liberate" these women from a less-than-satisfying home life. However, does liberation involve dressing like a little girl and waiting for "daddy" to come home?

Until young woman's magazines stop displaying models as images of "perfection" for a young girl to aim at, it proves hard for a girl to escape the trap her society builds. While it could prove impossible to completely avoid these sorts of images that affect our daughters, the best thing that can be done is providing reassurance - that which comes from real role models. Children and young girls need to be told and realize that diversity is a beautiful thing, and that nothing in them must be "fixed." Real role models need to take back their roles as important voices to a growing girl. If girls are provided with love and support for who they are, perhaps the all-too high statistics of personal dissatisfaction will take a downward turn for the first time in years. And perhaps we could take those magazines geared toward fixing "teenage ailments," and subscribe to worthwhile hobby or special-interest magazines such as Sports Illustratedor Hiking World.

Originally penned: October 3, 1997