Source+11+Fact(s)

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 * 1) Research reveals that girls as young as five become concerned about their weight after viewing images of figures with unrealistic, thin bodies.
 * 2) Dr. Halliwell said that it was clear that the pressure to be thin starts younger than we had supposed. "We found that when the children were exposed to these images of Barbie, they reported more negative attitudes about their appearance," said Halliwell, a lecturer based at the university's Centre for Appearance Research. "Quite strikingly, when they were looking at the control images (the neural pictures) there wasn't a difference between the way they thought they looked and the way they wanted to look."
 * 3) after the children viewed the Barbie pictures, they wanted to be slimmer, making it apparent that the ideal body shape no longer bears any relationship to what doctors consider healthy.
 * 4) The fact is that were an average woman to mirror the proportions of a Barbie doll, she would need to grow 17 inches in height and have a body shape found in less than one in 100,000 women.
 * 5) Researchers concluded that early exposure to unrealistic pictures of too thin body shapes may damage a girl's body image. This, in turn, leads to the increased risk of [|eating disorders] with cycles of weight gain and [|loss].