Haines's use of personal examples coupled with an understanding of the issues helps her make a case that, whether watching television, reading a magazine, or simply shopping, women confront profound pressure from the media, family and friends. From the very beginning of life little girls are made to believe thin is pretty and fat is ugly, and, as Haines suggests, this pressure to maintain a thin body often comes from parents. Sometimes parents stress weight and do not even realize what they are doing. For example, the other day I was at my aunt's house, and heard her tell her five year old daughter that if she did not quit eating so much junk food she would become fat as a pig. These statements are awful and only diminish young women's self-esteem.
School girls feel that the best way to be accepted is to be skinny.
This trend is evident in most schools, and often damages female students' self-esteem. Most students do not realize that skinny is unattractive, and friends should not judge friends for the way they look, but unfortunately this does happen. I had a best friend in high school who got sucked in by the obsession of an ideal body and became anorexic. The reason she developed an eating disorder was not because she was heavy, but rather because all of her friends were always talking about a new diet or stressing how they wanted to fit in to a certain pants size. At first it did not seem to affect her, but as time went by she began to think she was abnormal for not worrying about what she ate and how she looked.