From high school to homemaker and through childhood to career, women across all ages and cultural boundaries are struggling with the same thing: trying to lose weight. While weight issues affect both men and women, in recent years it has been women who are at the center of the weight loss frenzy.Inch-Aweigh.com says that the average American woman is 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 140 pounds while the average American model is 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 117 pounds. The fitness website also says that most fashion models are thinner than 98 percent of American women.
While the motivation may be driven by either health or appearance, in recent years the definition of beauty has become synonymous with the definition of skinny, says Dustie Thomas, a young woman who says she has struggled with her weight all of her life.
"The media is the reason that weight has become such a big issue," says Thomas, 23, assistant manager at Subway in Athens, Tenn. "If you turn on the television all you see are tiny little women showing off their money, power and celebrity. Of course every woman wants to be gorgeously thin because the media shows us that that's what it takes to make it. If you want to be somebody you've got to be skinny."
Women will go to great lengths to lose weight says Kasey Blankenship, 19, a sophomore at Radford University in Virginia. "Society has set a standard that women think they have to follow to be beautiful. If that means surgery or starving yourself, if women want it, they do whatever it takes to achieve that perfect body. I am guilty myself of looking at someone and wishing that I was like her or was her size."
Although celebrities are at the direct center of the thin craze, even they are struggling to keep up with society's expectations says Blankenship. In March of this year, The Oprah Winfrey Show featured actress Valerie Bertinelli who has lost 47 pounds in the last two years while doing the Jenny Craig program.
Bertinelli spoke to Oprah about her lifelong obsession with fluctuating weight.
"I have obsessed about my weight in some sort of way all of my life," she says. "I used to write in my journal what I weighed every day."
Identifying with Bertinelli's weight struggles, Amanda Carroll from Decatur, Tenn., sees her weight as a battle that she has been fighting all of her life.
"I've been chubby since about first grade, says Carroll, 27. "It was after I started high school that I began to pack on the pounds. I figured it was the lack of exercise and unhealthy school lunches."
Emotions played a bit part in Carroll's weight struggles she says. "During my freshmen year in high school, I slimmed down to 145 pounds. However, I gained over 75 pounds from age 16 to 18 after a bad breakup. Looking back, I think it was emotional eating and a defense mechanism to make sure I didn't get close to anyone else."
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Women struggle with weight, the pressure to be thin
