What's Wrong With This Picture?

I was reading up on some local news and the advertisment on the side was for a pink diet patch. The headline read "Want to drop 25 pounds?" and the picture attached to the advertisement was this:

Is anyone else bothered by what this is saying to young girls (and grown women, for that matter) that may have issues with body image? Honestly, if this girl lost 25 pounds she would be nothing, nada, zip.

Shame on this company. I plan on writing a letter to them expressing my disgust at their advertising. It does nothing but play of the low self esteem of so many women these days. If it isn't bad enough that we are constantly faced with "perfect" bodies, hair and skin when we look at magazines and watch TV now we have to worry that a girl this size is still overweight when she obviously isn't. A standard is being set that is not attainable...and all that does is lower self esteem more. It is a vicious cycle.

We have had an outbreak lately at school of girls refusing to eat because they thing they are fat and they need to lose fifteen pounds. Fourteen year old girls who are worried about being fat. It's scary to know that there are so many people who play off those fears and use it to their advantage. And the worst thing is that no one says anything about this type of stuff on television...but cuss a couple of times and have a "wardrobe malfunction" and the whole world is falling apart.

Instead of worrying about the violence and such on television today, maybe people need to turn their attention to what the media is doing to the perceptions of young girls. Everywhere you turn there are stick skinny models and actresses. The average size of women in America? 12.

We need to get out priorities straight. And soon. Because as long as the media is allowed to portray the "norm" as a size zero, six foot tall woman, the future of many girls in America looks very grim.