UW-Platteville’s Boxes and Walls effectively revealed human struggles through powerful displays. The Body Image room revealed that 42 percent of elementary students first through third grade want to be thinner, 51 percent of 9 and 10-year-olds feel better about themselves if they are on a diet, and 80 percent of 10-year-olds fear being fat. And the ideal media body type is achievable by less than 5 percent of the female population.

Women have dozens of conflicting messages flung at them every day, most about sexuality and body image: Be sexy but virginal, be slutty but classy, be skinny but not. It’s like Ludacris sings in one of his songs, “I want a lady in the street but a freak in the bed.”

This starts at a young age. Miley Cyrus dresses in low-cut tops and shorts that resemble denim panties and dances provocatively on trucks and swings. Girls then assume that it is desirable and necessary. At the same time, they may have parents pounding into their heads that “nice girls don’t like sex” and “boys only want one thing and nobody will ever love you if you give it to them”. The result? Confusion that can permanently damage the way women view themselves, their romantic partners and sex in general.

It continues into adulthood. Women in magazines and commercials are made-up and airbrushed to a standard beyond what anyone can look like. Their breasts balloon outward in two symmetrical spheres, their moles and blemishes are digitally removed, and their waists curve into hips and buttocks without a hint of love-handles, dimples or cellulite.

This standard extends into pornography. A woman sees her husband drooling over the latest edition of Playboy when she is fitting into a normal size 6 jeans and is criticized when she frets over feeling fat. Men may love going to strip-clubs, but they do not want their daughters or wives to look and act that way and they do not respect strippers and female porn stars. A businessman who does not hire a woman because a Google search reveals a topless photo has probably gone to strip clubs and watched porn. He retains a clean and spotless record for using and paying for strippers and porn, but the women he uses get relegated to the bottom of the social ladder.

And what about regular movies? Women and girls see female actors whose importance to a film lies foremost in their appearance; their actual acting and performance is often secondary. When is the last time you heard one of your male friends say, “I love Jessica Alba because she is such a talented actress”?

My point is not to martyrize women or bash men. It is to point out that these conflicting messages are translating into real, everyday problems that most people either complain are exaggerated, unimportant or flat-out fabricated. Any society where over half of the pre-teen little girls want to starve their still-developing bodies of enough nutrients has a tremendous problem. If you are a woman, or if you have a daughter, sister, girlfriend, wife or female friend, this is something that needs to alarm, disgust, horrify and worry you, and be something that you want to change.