Women and Diet Pills, Part 3

Walk down the checkout aisle at the grocery story. Turn on the television for
ten minutes. Flip through a fashion magazine, or look at the advertisements
hanging in storefronts. It's pretty clear what a beautiful North American young
woman is supposed to look like. She's supposed to be tall and thin with perfect
skin, voluptuous breasts, and long, flowing hair.

But how many women do you know who actually look like this? The truth is that
the female body you see on the front of that fashion magazine is an
unattainable ideal. You may think that woman is simply blessed with rare
genes. She probably is, but her beauty secret goes much further than that.
She also has the benefit of dieticians, personal trainers, and makeup artists.
Her job is to look good, so a huge portion of her time (and a great deal of
money) is devoted to developing this image. Even with all this help, however,
this woman will still never look as good walking down the street as she does on
the cover of the magazine. That's because her beauty is not just the product of
good genes, starvation, hard work, and talented artists. She has also been
photographed under special lights and carefully planned conditions. After that
photograph was taken, it went through an elaborate design process that
included airbrushing and computer enhancement to minimize or eliminate any
remaining "flaws" and to "improve" parts of the body. Like so much of what you
will read inside that magazine, the picture on its cover is a work of fiction.

The look many women struggle so hard to obtain is unrealistic. All over North
America, women and girls hate their bodies and spend a great amount of
money trying to achieve something that only exists in pictures. The abuse of
OTC drugs are just one of the dangers to which they may be vulnerable—but
this is nevertheless a very real and potent danger.

<<Part 1

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