Dangerous new apple tempts today's teens

Just one bite, that is all it takes, and Snow White falls to the ground. Dead.

We are being shown an apple, perfectly round and succulent. You get stuck into it and are trapped forever.

The media is the apple and we are instantly trapped by its poison.

Poison that most adolescents imbibe for three to four hours each day.

Each image shown tortures innocent minds into thinking that ideal beauty is extreme thinness.

Whatever happened to accepting others for who they are and not what size they wear?

How are adolescents meant to grasp that in the face of what the media serve up?

One study shows that over the course of 20 years articles about fitness or exercise plans have become 74 per cent focused on using exercise as a way to become more attractive, rather than as a way to stay fit and healthy.

Fifty-one per cent of magazines are also telling readers to eat less fat, burn more calories and to lose more weight even, if it is completely unnecessary.

The poisoned messages of the media are said to play a major role in the rise of eating disorders among adolescents over the past 50 years.

Just 30 years ago models were only eight per cent thinner than the average woman.

But lately models have become a horrifying 23 per cent thinner than women who are a healthy weight.

Personally I would like to see a more diverse range of body shapes and sizes on the runway, magazines, billboards and on our television screens.

If the media turned the poisoned messages back into candy, focusing on positive health and having high self-esteem, more adolescents would be satisfied with their bodies, therefore ending the outrage of eating disorders all over the world.

Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all mental illness.

With a staggering 52 per cent of people dieting before the age of 14, it is obvious many people run the risk of a serious eating disorder, with only about a 25 per cent chance of making a full recovery.

Yet the media go around teaching about weight loss and diets.

Why not teach viewers about having a balanced diet and the consequences of excessive dieting and compulsive exercise?

The media need to go back to entertaining instead of poisoning and destroying the bodies of their audience.

Even though it is obvious that the media is a corrupt poisoned apple, poisoning the minds of young viewers all over the world, it is also clear that they are not going to go back to the original, innocent themes of Disney fairytales and superheroes.

As the adults of the future, we can make a difference by turning the poisoned apple back into a candy toffee-apple that no one can wait to sink their teeth into.

Renata Grandao, Year 10, Sancta Maria College