In American society today, it is not difficult to notice a ubiquitous struggle between people and ideals of the human body, a fact that has not escaped the notice of junior Eva Bublick. On the covers of tabloid magazines, ultra-skinny starlets pout, showing how everybody should look. In conversation, people wage war with one another on the appearance of a “real” man or “real” woman. On social media, “thinspiration” boards are abound, often promoting eating disorders and supplements for users to attain the current body obsession—smaller waistlines, visible collarbones, thigh gaps.

The latter is only the most recent in a never-ending line of trends, yet its popularity reflects a disturbing issue in self-image nationwide. The ABC News article “‘Thigh Gap’: New Teen Body Obsession?” states that 80 percent of girls are unhappy with their bodies by the time they turn 17 years old, a figure that only grows with the increasing popularity of social media.

As a model for the Helen Wells Agency, Bublick said she especially notices a cultural fixation on body ideals but tries not to be influenced by it.

She said, “I don’t see it as much locally, but I know a lot of professional models, runway stuff, take drugs and starve themselves to get thigh gaps. They become really unhealthy because of it.”

Aside from in the modeling business, according to Bublick, the obsession with thinness is visible among normal teenagers in social media.

“I looked on Instagram for the hashtag ‘thigh gap,’ and (I saw) hashtag ‘thigh gap,’ hashtag ‘I’m fat.’ It was sad how people see themselves as fat when they’re unhealthily thin. Looking at that hashtag, I wanted to go up to everyone and be like, ‘You are skinny.,” she said. “I think a lot of it has to do with (“thinspiration” accounts) on Instagram. They see other people, and they’re like, ‘I need to be skinny to look that pretty.’”

Flavius Duncan, CEO of Designer Fitness, said his job in helping people “create a functional body” extends to working with models for the Helen Wells Agency. In his work, he said he has encountered people who seek to lose weight in unhealthy ways.

“I make sure (people) understand the unhealthy side of it as far as heart rate, their overall aftermath, their health risk factors. You will only have a temporary fix if you are able to achieve that goal by using those measures. They’re a cheap way out, which means you more or less ruin your whole mindset of being able to go the right way, getting it done the right way, the quality behind that by cutting back on eating certain things you eat that generate a healthy lifestyle,” he said. “They are not going to be able to sustain that for long bouts without having physical damage. I tell them not to risk trying it because you never know what the outcomes might be, psychologically and physiologically.”

According to Duncan, unhealthy body image influences teenagers to take unhealthy measures in changing their bodies because of society’s desire for “quick fixes.”

“Everybody has to do things at a quick level now,” he said. “Every time (people) turn on the television, somebody is doing some kind of makeover that has manipulation in there: what they see every day, what they have access to every day with the tummy tuck, the stars on television, the things they’ve done to have quick fixes. No one has given them the truth behind it, so they go for quick fixes. People want things right away. It’s the way the world has evolved.”

Personal trainer Sondra Smith said the solution to the “quick-fix” mentality is to adjust step by step for gradual results.

“(I help people) through changing their lifestyle, through changing their eating habits—if they have emotional eating, closet eating—the choices they’re making, the portion control, first getting their eating under control in a proper way to get them the success they want. Then we set small goals together, and we accomplish those, and then we move on to the next one through eating healthy and exercise,” she said.

Hard work, according to Bublick, is also vital to having good results in a person’s health.

“If you want to be thin, you have to do it in a healthy way. Losing weight in a healthy way is good for your body, and it makes you feel good. It gets you better results, longer-lasting results,” she said. “I feel like people just need to be the best version of themselves and the healthiest version of themselves and not try to be something they’re not.”

Duncan said he agrees that to be successful in maintaining a healthy body image, people must put in work.

“(Hard work) is a thing of the past. It’s a diamond that most people are not willing to dig for. They want to see the surface side of it. They don’t want to go through the real ingredients of it, making healthier choices, so they go to the extreme. They put those kinds of unrealistic goals and time to achieve, something that will take a year, six months, nine months to fall off, they want it done in six weeks. They want it right now. ‘Is there something I can do to get it right now?’ Those things create an intensity that’s out of control,” he said.

But, he added, a healthy body image begins with a healthy self-esteem.

“It starts with the self-esteem issue, because self-esteem is all you have. Don’t let things pile up. If you do just a little bit of adjusting in increments—‘I’ve just got to go to the gym for 45 minutes’—it’s simple. It’s like dishes. I don’t wait until the dishes pile up at the end and then do them all at once. If you don’t clean them today, tomorrow’s going to be really, really bad,” Duncan said. “There are two people you look at. One, you see in the morning, and you wake up and say, ‘What are you going to do with that?’ One, you look at before you go to sleep at night; ‘What did I not do today?’ Those are the kinds of things you have to carry each and every day. In the end, it’s you. In the beginning, it’s you. If you don’t do it now, your later will be your everlasting. The point of no return starts at self-esteem.”