Goodman, E. (1999, May 27). The culture of thin bites Fiji teens. The Boston Globe, A23.

OVERVIEW

A full body was always the Fiji Islanders ideal. Plump was always attractive and admired—until American television came along.

Television came to the island in 1995—so we have a time frame that should provide for a good study. "Suddenly, the girls of rural coastal villages were watching the girls of ‘Melrose Place’ and ‘Beverly Hills 09210,’ not to mention ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘ER.’ "

Within 38 months:

• The number of teenagers at risk for eating disorders more than doubled to 29%.
• The number of high school girls who vomited for weight control went up five times to 15%.
• 74% Of the Fiji teens in the study said they felt "too big or fat" at least some time.
• 62% Said they dieted in the past month.

Ann Becker, an anthropologist and psychologist directed this research for the Harvard University Eating Disorders Center.

No scientific conclusion can be reached from this study, of course. There are too many other causes that must be factored in. Fiji is a culture in transition moving from an agricultural subsistence society to a more urban culture featuring tourism and links with a global economy.

Still, as this writer observes:

You don’t get a much better lab experiment than this. In just 38 months, and with only one channel, a television-free culture that defined a fat person as robust has become a television culture that sees robust as, well, repulsive.

‘Going thin’ is no longer a social disease but the perceived requirement for getting a good job, nice clothes, and fancy cars. As Becker says carefully:

The acute and constant bombardment of certain images in the media are apparently quite influential in how teens experience their bodies...We have a set of vulnerable teens consuming television. There’s a huge disparity between what they see on television and what they look like themselves—that goes not only to clothing, hairstyles, and skin color, but size of bodies.

Goodman somewhat facetiously notes that the great accomplishment of our culture and entertainment industry seems to be our ability to "express insecurity: We can make any woman anywhere feel perfectly rotten about her shape (and) Hollywood hasn’t been exactly eager to acknowledge the connection between image and illness."

Over the past few weeks since Columbine High Massacre (she concludes) we’ve broken through some denial about violence as a teaching tool. It’s pretty clear that boys are literally learning how to hate and harm others.

Maybe we ought to worry a little more about what girls learn: To hate and harm themselves.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DICUSSION

1. What are your reactions to this article and the subject it covers?
2. What do you think about the case of Fiji island teens? Do you hold American television responsible for the increasing rates of low body image and eating disorders?
3. Do you agree with Ellen Goodman and her reflections on this issue?
4. What have you learned out of your own experience?
5. What can youth workers and teachers do about these attitudes and behaviors?

IMPLICATIONS

1. The health and growth of girls and boys should be of supreme concern to any society. Something should be done about all that hinders their growth and diminishes their health.
2. Consumerism drives advertising and the media; it is important to understand and work to curb its extremes.
3. Where the harmful effects of media cannot be corrected, we should give young people the tools they need to ward off its insidious effects.