Open your phone, and Kim Kardashian is flaunting her famous curves. Watch a music video, and Nicki Minaj is crawling across the screen seductively. Use Snapchat, and Kylie Jenner’s face and big lips are plastered all over your screen. While this seems harmless, these images create mental and physical problems for young girls.

As girls see these celebrities who have altered bodies due to reconstruction and plastic surgery, their self esteem dwindles. In our current society’s media, there aren’t many examples of celebrities with natural body confidence who are role models to women. There are more who chose to ditch their natural look to boost their self confidence.

In an interview with rapper Cardi B on Vlad TV, she describes her past struggles with low self esteem. She resolved the issue by getting her body altered to achieve an  hourglass figure because of her embarrassment towards her natural thin shape. Another famous celebrity, Kylie Jenner, had a big insecurity. After admitting she had been getting her lips injected, she came out with a story of how when she was younger, a boy told her that her lips were thin. This made Jenner want to go under the knife, but also to appeal to men more, which gives millions of women the wrong message about self acceptance. Jenner then contradicted herself in a Complex Magazine interview, saying “I didn’t want people to think you had to get your lips done to feel good about yourself.” This is easier said than done, because she’s a big influence in today’s media.

Due to celebrities like Cardi B and Kylie Jenner, the number of plastic surgeries done on women in the US increased 115 percent in the last decade, according to plasticsurgery.org. Out of the 1.7 million procedures done in 2015, some of the most common ones were breast augmentation, liposuction, nose reshaping, and tummy tucks. In Michelle Morrison-Valfre’s book, Foundations of Mental Health Care, over 8 million Americans have or currently suffer from an eating disorder, 90 percent of them women. Young girls are affected too. According to a study done by The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, 40 percent of nine to ten year old girls have reported that they have tried losing weight. As young girls, they should be excited to be kids. The last thing they need is to start worrying about their appearance.

It’s heartbreaking to see beautiful girls and women in our society worrying about their bodies and not accepting themselves for who they are. Women in the media need to shine their flashlight of natural beauty through the fog of false charm to lead the rest of our female population to a better future.