"Brideorexia"

The Royal Wedding has been the topic of conversion for everyone, especially the media’ in the past months. Everyone questioned the location, decorations, dress, and hair for months. However, the media focused on one particular topic in detail throughout their wedding coverage, Kate Middleton’s weight and her alleged pre-wedding slim down. According to Margaret Hartmann of Jezebel, a popular blog, “Kate is getting a double dose of scrutiny, because she recently became a public figure and a bride-to-be: two roles that apparently make your weight everyone else’s business” (Hartmann).

            After the wedding pictures were published of the royal couple, the British edition of Grazia, a popular weekly magazine, published a shockingly thin picture of Kate Middleton on their cover. Irin Carmon, of Jezebel, believed Grazia was not content or satisfied with Middleton’s supposed “brideorexia.” Her image and her weight did not represent their image and, “ It seems while the graphic designers were designing the cover, they went ahead and took the liberty of slicing at the princess’s already narrow waist"(Irin Carmon). Grazia denied that it enhanced images to make Kate look slimmer; however, with new trends in brideorexia and the importance of women’s looks it is not hard to believe that this “magical slim down” was done by Grazia for the soul purpose of enhancing Kate’s image to represent their perception of how a duchess like Kate should look.  

            This scrutiny of personal image by the media has increases with the huge surge in Internet, blogging, advertisements, and gossip magazines. The media fuels perceptions of how women ought to look, and the media created a perception of how brides should look in their recent coverage of the royal wedding.
         While there is nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight before your wedding day, Dr. Jeffery Sobal, author of the Cornell study, says future-brides “accepting weight loss as an inevitable part of the wedding process is a problem” (Hartmann). Dr. Sobal has discovered that 2000 was the year when the pre-wedding weight loss industry started to boom. There are now reality shows where future-brides compete for plastic surgery and bridal boot camps. These shows give into media and the false importance of image they are trying to instill in future brides and the public.  The media encourages the idea of being the spitting image of what THEY consider the perfect bride.

            Whether Kate Middleton was content with her weight before her wedding day or not, the influence of media’s perception on image has caused brides, like Kate Middleton, to “feel like trying to slim down is just part of the wedding checklist” (Hartmann). The media influence on people’s lives and perceptions is overwhelming and the constant focus on the importance of image is a disgrace to the values and honors that were instilled in our society.