The other day, I read an article by Cristen Conger in Bitch magazine that absolutely blew me away: “Isn’t He Lovely: For Boys and Their Bodies, Average is the New Ripped,” which you can read here.

The article cited a study that revealed not only that today’s young boys don’t feel as pressured to mirror the stereotypical media images they are exposed to, but that they basically think these images are a joke.

This research was performed on a small group of young boys – 32 of them, to be exact, in ages ranging from 13-15. Despite these minimal numbers, let’s just assume for a moment that these boys speak for the majority of young boys out there.

The article stated that the boys viewed images of men with highly muscled, sculpted bodies as unnatural and as caricatures (perhaps think Arnold Schwarzenegger pre-Conan). They also believed that being overly concerned with physical looks was a vain, strictly feminine trait.

Why is it that young girls – and so many women – don’t see it the same way?

It’s a fact that girls and boys are socialized differently. Girls grow up learning, from a very young age, that their appearance is extremely important. They are told that if they’re not pretty enough or thin enough, no one will love them. Boys are taught (or at least more of them) that their character is more important than their looks (even if parents are teaching different values our culture is not). This crucial distinction between boys and girls is what makes life in a male or female body so different.

If only young girls would learn to view the images that they see on TV and magazine covers in the same unaffected way. Bulimia and anorexia rates would drop. Incidence of depression and anxiety would drop dramatically. Mental and physical health would soar. Sadly, most females of all ages buy into the delusion that if they look a certain way, their lives will be perfect. Even girls with an extra 10 pounds on them believe that they are hideously fat and ugly.

Why have we allowed our young daughters and ourselves to buy into this destructive myth? Is it really too late to turn things around? Has the media become an uncontrollable monster?

I would like to think not, but every time I turn on the TV and see another diet commercial, or see a thin young girl drinking diet soda, I cringe.

Ladies, it’s easy to blame the media for the pressure it puts on us to look a certain way, but we need to take some of the responsibility as well. A lot of us are vain and superficial and we need to get over it. It’s that very weakness that has given the media an open door and allowed it to become the incredibly powerful monster that it is.

Until we stop buying into the myth and realizing that our characters are more important than the size of our bodies, nothing will change. And we’ll continue passing that diseased legacy on to our daughters.

How do you see the influence of the media on our youth as affecting their understanding of themselves?

Want a great tip for reducing the damaging impact the media has on your self-image? Then click HERE!

Gabriela Falarz is a blogger, freelance writer and editor, and size acceptance activist. She is a plus-sized woman who believes all large people deserve to be happy, celebrate their beauty and fight for their rights. She is a regular columnist for Large in Charge magazine. She also regularly blogs about fat-related issues in her blog Celebreight Yourself. She lives in Toronto and can be reached by email at gabrielafalarz@gmail.com.