Laurie was fourteen at age eleven and weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. She went to elementary school being the little girl everyone called fat and never felt the love of any of her peers. Even a counselor at her YMCA after-school program made her an example to other children. The teacher told all the children that he was as big as Laurie. Putting aside all the criticism from his peers and teachers, he found the courage and strength to lose weight. He started doing sit-ups and eating “healthier.” In fact, every day he ate less and less. She went from size fourteen to nine and then from nine to five. All this happened to her between the summer and Christmas. By the following summer Laurie had reached a size double zero. During the following school year, she was called to the nurse's office to be weighed and the scale read ninety-seven pounds. Laurie had become anorexic due to the mentally abused childhood she experienced at the hands of her peers. Every culture has a “perfect body image” that everyone compares their body to. Especially girls mentally think that they have to live up to the models on TV and in magazines. In the United States, the thinner girls are, the more perfect their image is perceived to be. The “perfect body image” has an intriguing background, health and psychological issues, and currently few solutions. Background The history of having an “ideal body” type dates back to colonial times. Jennifer L. Derenne and Eugene V. Beresin have studied the “ideal body” from colonial times to the present. During the colonial period, fertile, physically strong and capable women were valued. This is because women in this period helped to tend to t...... middle of the paper ...... (ed.), Nutrition and well-being from A to Z (Vol. 1, pp. 69-71 ). New York: Macmillan USA reference. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com Drugs (illegal). (2006). In J. Merriman and J. Winter (Eds.), Europe Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction (Vol. 2, pp. 886-891). Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons. Retrieved from http://go.galgroup.com Franco, K. N., Alishahie, M., & Bronson, D. L. (2004). Body image. In S. Loue & M.Sajatovic (Eds.), Encyclopedia of women's health (pp.110-112). New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.comGleason, W. (2006). Free time. In J. Gabler-Hover and R. Sattelmeyer (Eds.), American History Through Literature 1820-1870 (Vol. 2, pp. 639-644). Detriot: The Sons of Charles Scribner. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.comhttp://www.eating.ucdavis.edu/speaking/told/anorexia/a42laurie.html