Cosmopolitan Part 2

Continuing from my last post about the magazine I found it interesting that in The Beauty Myth it also talked about models and how "the weight of fashion models  plummeted to 23 percent below that of ordinary women and eating disorders rose exponentially" (pg. 11). We actually watched a movie in my English class the other day Killing us Softly 4 and the creator of the film Kean Kilbourne said "They are starting to not use models that are to thin, and some magazines don't use professional models they just use average people". My school newspaper actually wrote an article a few months ago about how common anorexia and bulimia are in my school, and how there are far more people that we would have suspected to be suffering from one of them. One of my best friends was anorexic a few years ago and has forever been scared and obsessed with losing weight and watching what she eats. She has been on multiple diets in the past year and has gone from eating eggs, salads, and rice to eating nothing but fruits and vegetables. She reads things like Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, Vogue, Woman's Fitness and much more and really takes to heart a lot of what she sees in the magazines. There is a line in the Beauty Myth that reminds me of her, "woman would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal" (pg. 10). She constantly looks on the internet to find pictures of the body she wants and continues to pick on herself on a daily basis. She is one of those people who have come subdued by the concept of "thinspiration", and it has really become the only thing she thinks about. I have become her support system, and even though I don't mind being there for her and helping her out it's almost an overwhelming task on my part and she has slowly made life harder for both her and me. I've never really been one of those people that envies the models in magazines and actually takes to heart a lot of advertisements out there. But it gets harder and harder not to look at those things when I am with someone everyday that obsesses over it and constantly talks about losing weight and her eating habits.
I feel like at this point I have lost my friend to the media and there is no way of getting her back.