According to the National Eating Disorder Association, the media has a great influence on how a woman's body should look. Every print and television advertisement suggests that the ideal body is extremely thin. However, most women fail to achieve the super slim body favored by the media. The resulting failure leads to negative feelings about oneself and can begin a downward spiral into an eating disorder (National Eating Disorders Association). A particularly disturbing fact is that research has shown that five-year-olds experience body image-related anxiety. At the same time there has been a notable increase in Internet sites dedicated not only to diet, but also to support groups for people with eating disorders. These websites encourage people at risk for eating disorders to start starving themselves or purging (Andrist, 2003). Andrist's article is quite credible. Linda has an RN from the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, a BSN from the University of Maryland, a BS in Nursing from Russell Sage College, a WHNP from the University of Colorado, and a PhD in Sociology from Brandeis University. She currently teaches courses on women and body image at the MGH Institute of Health Professions and received the Institute's Nancy Watts Excellence in Teaching Award in 2007. The award and Linda's extensive training, in addition to her 25 years of teaching experience , contribute to its credibility. The article was very informative and looked at many effects that media has on teenagers. The media mainly focuses on an ideal body image. The media targets teenagers through magazines. Some of the messages that magazines give... middle of paper... The references used in this book helped me analyze what I thought the book could contribute to this article. It provided such an amount of information that I had to be very picky about what I included in this article, and that's only from one chapter. Works Cited Andrist, Linda C. "Multimedia Images, Body Dissatisfaction, and Disordered Eating in Adolescent Women." Adolescent Health March 2003, 28th ed., sec. 2:119-23. Print.Smolak, Linda, Michael P. Levine, and Ruth Striegel-Moore. “The media as context.” The developmental psychopathology of eating disorders: Implications for research, prevention, and treatment. Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1996. 235-53. Print.Strasburger, Victor C., Amy B. Jordan, and Ed Donnerstein. “Health Effects of Media on Children and Adolescents.” Pediatrics 125.4 (2010): 756-67. Ebsco. Network. January 26. 2011.