// ADVOCACY
The TMOOH team is passionate about what we do; we exist to intertwine our deep rooted passion to advocate for healthy body image with a line of work that we love. Our goals are to impact more lives every day that struggle with their body image and equip people like you to share in our advocacy efforts.
In our own lives, we have felt the pressure to change the way we appear to conform to unhealthy ideals and have continually battled with insecurities with our own bodies. Additionally, we have shared in the pain of friends who have suffered from eating disorders and severe body image issues. Seeing what some friends have been forced to overcome and what others are currently going through brought a conviction upon our hearts to act.
It is crazy to see some of the statistics on dieting, eating disorders, and other body image related issues. The trending behavior surrounding self esteem and body image issues is astounding. The average weight of a model is 23% lower than that of an average woman; 20 years ago, the differential was only 8%. This puts tremendous pressure on us to fit into a narrow mold of beauty. To show the severity of this issue we thought to share some revealing statistics:
- Approximately 7 million girls and women struggle with eating disorders
- Approximately 1 million boys and men struggle with eating disorders
- More than 80% of 4th grade girls have been on a fad diet
- The body type portrayed in advertising as the ideal is possessed naturally by less than 5% of females
- 91% of women recently surveyed on a college campus have attempted to control their weight through dieting, 22% dieted “often” or “always”
- 80% of women are dissatisfied with their appearance
- Americans spend over $40 billion on dieting and diet related products each year and 95% of those diets fail
Social Issues Research Centre www.sirc.org
National Eating Disorders Association www.nationaleatingdisorders.org
National Organization for Women (NOW) Foundation http://loveyourbody.nowfoundation.org
