Women have always been attentive to beauty, but over the past two centuries the association between self-worth and appearance has gotten out of control in American culture. 

It's almost impossible to pick up a magazine, watch TV, or go to a movie these days without getting the message that ideal beauty comes in the form of a skinny, successful, energetic, young, white, wealthy, and physically flawless female. And it's not so different for males either! This airbrushed illusion of perfection has become a false reality, and the cultural pressure to conform to this illusion has created within many of us a deep dissatisfaction with our bodies. As a result we feel relentlessly driven to change them at any cost.

In the attempt to alter your size or change your body shape, you can go many extremes, including unhealthy dieting, obessive exercising, starvation, self-induced vomiting, laxative and diuretic abuse, and even plastic surgery. And yet, you're still likely to be dissatisfied!

There are no quick fixes for this dilemma; there are no pills or herbs that will change how you feel about your body and yourself. You can, however, challenge your own beliefs, attitudes, and feelings, and in this way change how you feel about how you look. You can choose to see through the “beautiful illusion” to a more real and satisfying vision of attractiveness.

Surveys on body image show that at least 80 percent of adolescent girls say they "feel bad" about their bodies.  Males experience this self-loathing less than females for many reasons.

One reason is that preoccupation with body image is socialized in girls from the time they are very young. Parents consistently describe their infant daughters as beautiful, soft, and cute and describe their sons in terms of ability, strength and even misbehavior, rather than appearance. 

The media perpetuates this early socialization by upholding the ideal woman as someone who is always beautiful and slim, whereas, in the media, the ideal man is valued more for his physical abilities and his strength of character than his appearance.

Whether you have been aware of them or not, you have undoubtedly received numerous predetermined messages about body image throughout your lifetime from your parents, the media, and even yourself. Maybe you can never erase these messages, but you can alter the way you perceive them.