Their eating is usually shown as private and as a fulfillment of some deep emotional needs. Commercials will often show women turning to food for solace, especially if they have been emotionally wounded by a man in their lives. Being thin is not enough. One must be firm also. Obtaining the ideal body becomes a matter of self-control.
Thin women are obviously in control, having mastered the intense discipline of dieting and exercise.
It is the fat women who are not in control. Fat has become associated with laziness and a general lack of self-discipline. Two of the most upsetting are that eighty percent of girls between the ages of 8 and 12 are on a diet, and the number one wish of a majority of women and girls is to lose weight. Kilbourne states that media images tell women and girls that acceptance means being painfully and unnaturally thin. The average fashion model, whose image we are bombarded with, weighs less than twenty-three percent than the average American woman.