Soaps, Music Videos Linked to Teens' Body Image

Desperate Housewives and other TV soap operas may help make adolescent girls desperate for a thinness few can healthily achieve, new Australian research suggests.

The study of nearly 1,500 8th-to-11th graders also found that boys who watched music videos were at higher risk of developing the emerging male version of body-obsession -- a drive toward lean, hyper-muscular physiques.

It's not really new news.

Generally, the body type is set by the rich; When poor people were skinny, plump was the rage, now that they're underweight, thin is in.

And while it's sad enough that most everyone is either chasing a goal they can't reach, or given up altogether and become couch potatoes, to see the age at which this body unhappiness drop year after year is saddening.

When you're bombarded with a mythical idea of what the cool people are all day and night, it's hard not to size yourself up, find yourself lacking, and let the insecurity circus come to town.

I guess it makes me hate TV even more, because it seems to be so effective at being a delivery system for lies and stupidity. Just being entertainment isn't enough; it's got to make you feel bad about yourself.

It'd be nice to be able to shake every TV viewer and scream, "This is all bullshit! Not even the people who look like this on TV look like this!!"

But then I'd have to turn off the TV and get up off my duff to do it....