Pressure on Women To Have The Perfect Body

Today young women are greatly influenced by the pressures to have

the ideal body type. In "The Flesh and the Devil" Kim Chernin discusses

how American cultural values and the concept of the ideal body type

influence women. Chernin's attitude towards this is negative, she

believes the thin body types shown in advertising and media lead

women to see themselves as not good enough. She tells how women

strive for the ideal body so much that it has a terrible impact on their

lives (366-373). This is true in many aspects of young women's lives

today and can be seen in everyday society.

In high school is was easy seeing the huge impact our cultural values

have on young women. In the locker room while changing for gym you

can hear a lot about how the girls feel about themselves. Chernin talks

about an experience in a locker room, "The woman in the locker room

who swings out at her image in the mirror, the little girls who are afraid

of the coming of adolescence to their bodies, the woman who admires the

slenderness of the anorexic girl" (368). In the locker room I would hear

conversations where they would say how they thought they were so fat

and ugly and how they were so unhappy about their bodies. Some girls

didn't even want to change in front of the others because they were so

embarrassed of their bodies. Also, they would talk about how they

wanted so desperately to have a body like a certain actress or model.

Another place at school where I saw young women suffering

themselves all because of the need to be thin was at lunch. At lunch

there were girls who would hardly eat a thing and others that didn't eat

at all. When asked why they weren't eating they would say it's because

they ar...

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...t is wrong. Plus, convienatly all the people in the commercials

promoting the product have the ideal body type.

In conclusion, it is clear that the way the ideal female body type is

pushed on young women extremely influences their lives. It causes

them to dislike their own bodies so much they do just about anything to

change themselves. This ideal body type leads women to hurt

themselves trying to obtain it, and it seems the problem in this country

is growing with time. This tremendous problem is recognized by so

many people, so why are we not doing something to try and stop the

pressures put on young women to have perfect bodies?

Bibliography:

Works Cited

Chernin, Kim. "The Flesh and the Devil." The New Millenium Reader. 2nd

ed. Ed. Hirschberg, Stuart and Terry Hirschberg. New Jersey:

Prentice Hall, 2000. 366-373.