Shed Your Weight Problem Here

I remember the first time I picked up a Cosmopolitan magazine. The secrets to being beautiful, and sexy I was sure lay in the 200 pages under the provocative cover. While I may have learned how to "speak dirty in 3 foreign languages" and giggled at embarrassing stories, I never found the ultimate secrets in fashion magazines. While they still tempt me at airports, and I rely on them for elliptical trash reading, I now know that the secret to happiness, and beauty does not lay in their monthly pages. The truth of the matter is that sometimes these magazines do more harm than help.

The media doesn't cause eating disorders but they send out the clear message that you should be thin. They keep showing or telling us only thin women's bodies are beautiful and sexually desirable. That you won't find a boyfriend until you have a perfectly flat stomach. Tempt that once you're thin you will be confident, successful, healthy and happy.Let's have a little wake up call: You're life isn't going to suddenly become perfect if you lose 10 lbs. You can't and shouldn't be happy with yourself unless your body looks exactly like the thin ideal.

The fact of the matter is that happiness and being comfortable with your body doesn't sell. The "beauty" and diet industries make more than $45 billion every year.Media is a business, and in order to continue to generate revenue they have to keep us in a state of unhappiness, constantly looking to the newest "quick fix" diet or beauty product.

Things are being shook up in Canada with the National Eating Disorder Information Centre Campaign to Cast Responsibly and Retouch Minimally.
On bus stops in Toronto they have an interactive ad campaign-"shed your weight problem" by dumping your beauty magazines.
While this isn't all we have to do to "Shed our weight problem" it's a step in the right direction
Not in Toronto?
"Like" the campaign on Facebook
Sign the petition to fashion leaders and marketers to broaden their definitions of "beauty"

What do you think of beauty magazines? Do they help or harm your self esteem?