Fat Is A Feminist Issue Summary

In the article “Fat Is a Feminist Issue”, Susie Orbach claims that being fat and the impulsion to overeat are serious and painful experiences of the women involved. Women’s appearance are socially constructed and largely by males. I agree that it is intense of women being fat in our society and women become “feminine” through other people’s assumptions and expectations.
Orbach is surly right about the society is putting too much pressure on women being fat, because women are expected to strive for beauty, a beauty is defined by men’s of what they would like women to be. There are different ideals of feminist beauty at different times and different places. Women’s bodies are manipulated by these ideal beauty and encouraged to be passive

objects, their bodies are displayed and emphasized. As Susie Orbach herself writes, “the woman’s body is not her own.” Women are supposed to “disguise more animal aspects of their body” which men found unacceptable, according to French feminist Simone de Beauvoir. Like shaving body hairs. Women are constrained by other people’s visions of what they should look like and how they should live.
Young girls are especially adhering to gender expectations of an ideal image of beauty for women. Which leads many young women to be disturbed by their body image, to be conventionally beautiful, to diet, to worry about makeup, to wear jewelry, and to wear clothes and shoes which will frequently constrain their movement. Many young women develop a distorted image of themselves, therefore, many develop eating disorders by purging themselves of food and spend tons of money on beauty products.
These gender stereotypes are occurred since we were born. In families, our parents may encourage us to play with toys that are identified with our sex, such as boys should play with toy cars and girls should play with dolls. Peers also strongly influence our gender socialization. Our relationship with our peers shapes our patterns of interactions. Media in various forms delivers strong gender stereotypes. Although some changes have been made recent years, women now are more likely to be shown as in professional jobs and work outside of home, but it is still usual to see depicted as sex objects through televisions and movies. Our culture also promotes a narrow image of beauty for women, it might be vary from different races or ethnicities but thinness for women is almost the common gender expectations in all culture.
However, these social pressure on women are still resistible. As Susie Orbach suggested at the end of her article, being fat is one way of expressing a rebellion against the pressure to look and act in a certain way. Women are free to reject these stereotypes of beauty and sexual attractiveness, though, it will not be easy and we still have a long way to go to become more equal.