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Body image and its effects
Societal Expectations And Media Influences Of Body Image Essay
Body image and its effects
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Women are told that in order to get anywhere in life they must constantly worry about their outer appearance. In Jennifer Weiner’s article, “When Can Women Stop Trying to Look Perfect?” she delves deeply into how today’s society women’s worth is based on how they look. Weiner believes that women who do not meet the standards of beauty do not have as many opportunities. Weiner opens with the fact that most popular magazines only feature women under the age 60. Vogue’s recent issue “Age” included a 90 year old runner. People’s issue “World’s Most Beautiful” included a 75 year old woman. Weiner considers those instances exceptions. Weiner makes a jab at how older women cease to exist in the media by saying, “Maybe they turn 60 and go marching Children of the Corn style, into the racks at Nordstrom, never to be seen again.” Then she calls how only younger women being popular models is discrimination. After ridiculing magazines with only the younger generation in it Weiner talks about the hope that women have to reach the end. She calls it the age finish line. The age finish line is the age or point where women are allowed to stop caring so much about their looks. Weiner calls it women’s life …show more content…
When you are a more heavy set person or have a noticeable flaw it gets pointed out daily, especially if you are a woman. I agree with Weiners point about Weight Watchers. She says that Weight Watchers basically tells you to be your beautiful self, only if you are thin. This is a huge self-esteem killer. Being a heavy set girl myself, I have come to learn that I will always have the mentality of a fat kid. I’ve lost nearly 30 pounds over the past year. Normally this would boost someone’s self esteem but due to how society has treated fat people it will always be ingrained in my head. I will always worry that I am still that fat
When we look into the mirror, we are constantly picking at our insecurities; our stomach, thighs, face, and our body figure. Society has hammered into our brains that there is only one right way of looking. Society disregards that there are many different shapes, sizes, and colors. Then society makes us believe that corporations can shove detrimental products to fix our imperfection. As a consequence, we blame media for putting all the negative ideas into women’s brain. It is not wrong to say that they are in part responsible, but we can’t make this issue go away until we talk about patriarchy. In the article Am I Thin Enough Yet? Hesse-Biber argues that women are constantly concerned about their looks and if they are categorized as “beautiful” by society. These ideas are encouraged by corporations that sell things for us to achieve “beautiful” but the idea is a result of patriarchy. Hesse-Biber suggests that if we want to get rid of these ideas we need to tackle patriarchy before placing all the blame on capitalism.
We hear sayings everyday such as “Looks don’t matter; beauty is only skin-deep”, yet we live in a decade that contradicts this very notion. If looks don’t matter, then why are so many women harming themselves because they are not satisfied with how they look? If looks don’t matter, then why is the media using airbrushing to hide any flaws that one has? This is because with the media establishing unattainable standards for body perfection, American Women have taken drastic measures to live up to these impractical societal expectations. “The ‘body image’ construct tends to comprise a mixture of self-perceptions, ideas and feelings about one’s physical attributes. It is linked to self-esteem and to the individual’s emotional stability” (Wykes 2). As portrayed throughout all aspects of our media, whether it is through the television, Internet, or social media, we are exploited to a look that we wish we could have; a toned body, long legs, and nicely delineated six-pack abs. Our society promotes a body image that is “beautiful” and a far cry from the average woman’s size 12, not 2. The effects are overwhelming and we need to make more suitable changes as a way to help women not feel the need to live up to these unrealistic standards that have been self-imposed throughout our society.
In the essay “What Meets the Eye”, Daniel Akst explains scientific facts about the beauty of men and women matters to people. He argues that attractive individuals receive attention, great social status, marries, and gets paid more on a job. One can disagree with Akst’s argument because anyone with the skills and knowledge, despite the appearance, can gain a decent relationship and can get paid well. Akst looks at beauty as if it can lead individuals to an amazing and successful life, but he is wrong. Nancy Mairs’ and Alice Walker’s views on beauty are explained internally and through self-confidence. Both women’s and Akst’s arguments on beauty share some similarities and differences in many ways, and an
A person will speak or act negative about their body when they have a negative image of themselves. You can see low self-esteem in someone who has a negative body image. This happens in this film when Janis, Damien, and Cady give Regina these bars that Cady’s mom used to feed the children in Africa to help them gain weight. Regina was looking to loose weight so that she could fit perfectly into her dress for homecoming (she needed to be queen.) Once she started gaining weight she was uncomfortable in the only clothes that fit her and had to wear sweatpants. Her best friends started pointing it out and you could see her frustration with the weight gain. She was now uncomfortable in her own skin. This happens to women all the time. Especially women in high school and college, our bodies are constantly changing and that can be very tough on our personal body image thoughts. I know I have gained weight in the past year but have tried to keep a level head and just head to the gym more. I think that this class has shown that body image is only negative if you let other things influence you negatively. It’s all about our own personal thoughts and we need to make those
Our society is entirely based on looks and how “the perfect women should be”. To be pretty you are expected to have the perfect body with the perfect face and hair. You could never cut your hair short because you would be considered a dyke. If you’re makeup isn’t perfect you are considered ugly and if you don’t have the “hourglass figure” you are considered fat and overweight. “Despite higher global self-esteem, women do not feel good about their appearance. This disconnect can be attributed, at least in part, to concerns about body image.” (@PsychToday, paragraph 4) Our society and social media is so caught up on how every woman should look that our own judgment has been clouded and we always believe we need to look and act that way. “The truth is that women’s insecurity about their appearance is driven by competition with other women.”(@PsychToday, paragraph 16) All we do nowadays is compare ourselves to others and that’s not how it should be. You are considered to be a “whore” such as Eve if you sleep around, so women are afraid to do it. You are considered to be “weak” if you stay at home and can’t support yourself, such as Lori. Our world is so caught up in people thinking that they need to be a certain way in order to impress themselves and others. Why do women shave their legs? Why do woman dye their hair? Why do woman get spray tans? Everything we do has to do with our appearance in order to impress
The message that is being transported to young girls through the mass media, and from a very early age, is that they are only valued if they look perfect and desirable. At hand it's rarely a matter of what they can do and rather a matter of what they can do for men and, indirectly, a matter of how they look. What the activist author, speaker and filmmaker Jean Kilbourne argues is that no matter what a woman does, and no matter her social or political impact on society, her value will still rest on how she looks (Miss Representation 1:58).
Melissa Nelson, a dental assistant in Iowa, experienced her workplace to be a place where she was judged by her looks and not by her skill level. She was fired because her boss thought that she was too attractive and too threatening to his marriage. Therefore, she was fired for her appearance, not because she did something wrong (Kimmel). An article in The Washington Post expresses beauty’s role in work perfectly: just like goldilocks’ porridge, you can’t be too unattractive or too beautiful, you have to be just right (Rampell). Ms. Nelson’s experience is proof that beauty is not all it’s cracked up to be at
Ladimer, Bethany. "Reconciling Femininity an Aging." Colette, Beauvoir, and Duras: Age and Women Writers. Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 1999.
Everyone dreams of being “perfect”, but what they don’t know is that they are perfect. One just has to see within themselves. Everyone is uniquely and secretly beautiful, but that gets taken away because it is not what society wants. What society wants is for women’s self-esteem to be broken so that they can be morphed into a product of someone else's idea of perfect. In “Barbie Doll” Piercy argues that the pressures put on women by society affect their self-esteem. No one needs to change who they are for anyone. If anyone wants to change, they should change for themselves! Being you is all that really matters. The key to beauty is confidence. Something that everyone should keep in mind is that, don’t let someone change who you are, to become what they need; otherwise you don’t need them in your
The models and celebrities in the media that set the standard for what women should look like are thinner than 90-95 percent of the American female population (Seid p.6). This is an unrealistic portrayal of what the human body should look like when compared to most women’s genetic makeup. Women’s self-image, their social and economic success, and even their survival can still be determined largely by their beauty (Seid p.5). Men on the other hand seem to have it a little easier when it comes to looks. Their self-image is largely determined by what they accomplish in life and not by whether or not they meet the social standard for looks. Modern clothing and fashion require women to show off their bodies more in tight clothes and by showing more skin than in the past. According to Roberta Seid ...
Everywhere one looks today, one will notice that our culture places a very high value on women being thin. Many will argue that today’s fashion models have “filled out” compared to the times past; however the evidence of this is really hard to see. Our society admires men for what they accomplish and what they achieve. Women are usually evaluated by and accepted for how they look, regardless of what they do. A woman can be incredibly successful and still find that her beauty or lack of it will have more to do with her acceptance than what she is able to accomplish. “From the time they are tiny children, most females are taught that beauty is the supreme objective in life” (Claude-Pierre, p18). The peer pressure for girls in school to be skinny is often far greater than for boys to make a team. When it is spring, young girls begin thinking “How am I going to look in my bathing suit? I better take off a few more pounds.”
In the media there are people who view women a certain way, and if we don't hold to the standard that we are not as good as other women who are the size the media says we have to be. In an article it said that "Large women in America are to all intents and purposes invisible in today's thinness-obsessed culture. A big women is neither seen nor heard, and is defined purely in terms of her weight and other people's prejudice." (Goodman par 1) This is a hard thing for women that a heavier to understand because they want the person to think that they are heard. This plays into the way that they think and the way that women look at their bodies. You can see this happening with different types of televisions shows, which put on the show thinner women. "Practically the only television programming that addresses her directly consists of weight-loss ads, the message: lose weight. You're not real women unless you're thin (Goodman)". It is hard to think that this statement could be true, but
From a young age, women are taught that to be successful and happy, they must reach a certain standard of beauty first. Rather than grow up thinking that the most important asset a woman can have is her self, young girls are taught through advertisements that their value rests on their appearance. This is an immense social issue. Today, being a successful woman means wearing a sexy outfit that shows just the right amount of cleavage and curve. It means turning heads everywhere she goes- men looking after her in lust, women looking after her in envy.
I would like to begin with the fact that women have always been known to dedicate their time to beauty. Those who are devoted to their appearance most often believe that beauty brings power, popularity, and success. Women believe this, because they grow up reading magazines that picture beautiful women in successful environments; not to mention they are popular models and world famous individuals. Beautiful women are no longer just a priority for most advertising, but we have become a walking target for the working class employers. It is documented that better-looking attorneys earn more than others after five years of practice, which was an effect that grew with experience (Biddle, 172). We cannot overlook the fact that it is always the most popular and most beautiful girl who becomes homecoming-queen or prom-queen. While these are possible positive effects of the "beauty myth," the negative results of female devotion to beauty undercut this value. These effects are that it costs a lot of money, it costs a lot of time, and in the long run, it costs a lot of pain.
Body-shaming can have a negative impact on a person's physical and mental health. They can end up with so many body issues. As teenagers, they can become self-conscious and have self-esteem issues. Mentally it may make the person feel ashamed and like there is something wrong with them (Loughlin, 2017). People also need to realize that skinny shaming is just as hurtful as fat shaming (Gies, 2017). Also, some skinny people can’t help that they are naturally thin it’s in their genetics. For example, I was born with a thin body type and eat whatever I want. It is very difficult for me to gain weight no matter how hard I try. The critical comments being made about a person’s body can lead to a development of eating disorders that can even be fatal (“Anorexia Nervosa”, 2015). So before you tell someone to go eat more remember that that person may be battling a serious illness like anorexia or bulimia and anorexia disorder has the highest mortality rate of any of the psychiatric illness (“Anorexia Nervosa”,