Now ask yourself, how much time and money have you spent trying to live up to cultural ideal of female beauty? Every year Americans spend over $40 billion on dieting. People put massive life energy into studying latest diet, planning menus, agonizing over food choices, depriving themselves, and doing forms of exercise they don't even enjoy. There is so much more to life than endless quest to make body look like cultural beauty ideal.

It doesn't have to be that way. Before dieting craze began, people defined themselves much more by who they were and what they did in world. They spent their life energies enriching world around them instead of spending their time trying to look beautiful. They focused on their family, their community, and their unique talents.

The underweight beauty ideal of today is a complete invention of media machine. Nature never intended women to look like teenage boys with large breasts, but relentless media depiction of this body type powerfully defines it as ultimate in beauty.

Without starvation and plastic surgery, it's impossible for 99% of women to achieve this ideal. So we learn to dislike our naturally gorgeous bodies and try desperately to change them. The toxic body messages we are deluged with every day cause eating disorders and widespread unhappiness.

53% of 13 year-old girls and 80% of adult women spend every day disliking their bodies. It doesn't have to be this way. People naturally have all sorts of different body shapes and sizes. We don't have to let media continue to define just one type of beauty as ideal. We don't have to let them continue to ruin countless lives in their quest for more profits.

The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) Media Watchdog program is working to change toxic media message. You can help by joining free program and monitoring magazines, television, and radio. Keep track of what you see then send your positive and negative findings to NEDA.