Remember when you used to come home from high school, exhausted and starving? Lunch had been at like 10:30 that morning, and so by the time the afternoon bell rang, your stomach was growling so loudly you had to sit hunched over to dull the gurgles.

Home meant snacks. It might refueling yourself for sports or theater club or smoking stolen cigarettes under a tree while sneering at all organized things. Afternoon snack was an event I looked forward to from kindergarten to twelfth grade.

Hell, I still look forward to it!

Sadly, today’s teenage girls aren’t allowing themselves the joy of snack time – or any meal – at all. A report from the UK’s Independent Online showed that over “a third of 13 to 18-year-old girls” polled for a study indicated they had been on a diet or were currently dieting, and “45 per cent [ate] less than 1,200 calories per day”, which is below the healthy amount for growing women.

About a quarter of the boys in the survey admitted to eating less calories than the daily recommended amount, but girls were the ones worrying researchers most of all. Read More »

If you’re an obese teenage girl, you’re half as likely to go to college as a “normal” teenage girl.

Researchers at the University of Texas-Austin confirmed this hypothesis in a recent study of 11,000 young adults, proving what we’ve all known for years: obesity isn’t just detrimental to one’s physical health.

But why are girls getting the brunt end of this stick?

Even girls of average weight have image problems; obese girls are dangerously subject to a negative self – image. And a negative self – image lessens the desire to be social, to go to college, and to generally succeed in anything either than being overweight, creating a vicious cycle spurred by the obesity epidemic.

Researchers say that obese girls can improve their self – worth by joining clubs or creating close relationships with parents and teachers. God. If I hear “join a club!” as the solution to a pervasive social issue one more time… I just don’t know.

The fact of the matter is, once an epidemic keeps people from attending college, one of the best and most accepting receptacles for everyone from weirdos to clowns to jocks that one will see in a lifetime, the solution cannot be to “join a club.” Read More »