Susan Bordo The Globalization Of Eating Disorders

What is beautiful? According to “The Oxford Dictionary” beautiful is pleasing the senses or mind aesthetically, but who decides what is beautiful? Do we decide for ourselves what we find beautiful, or attractive? Or does the media decide for us? Depicting “perfect” women, with the “perfect” waistline, or “ideal” men with the “ideal” muscles; making celebrities even wishing to look like themselves. Susan Bordo, author of “The Globalization of Eating Disorders” stresses the dangers and effects media has on women and men globally, putting out “false normals” that can only be reached by photoshop, or body modifications.

According to Bordo, the spread of American, British and Australian media has caused the spread of eating disorders and poor

self-perspective to cultures that have celebrated voluptuous women in the past. These cultures have now put aside their old beliefs, that a skinny body meant poverty, sickness and death, and replaced it with “slim is beautiful,” and have even fasted or induced vomiting to meet these standards. I believe that media does change how we see ourselves, but in a world that is so captious, it hard to define what the media standard of perfect really is. There are so many depictions of the ideal body: really curvy, slightly curvy, slim. The trends have changed since this article was written, curves are more acceptable, with Kim Kardashian being a new desired body, but only if those curves are your bum or your bosom. To today’s standard the words “beautiful” and “sexy” can be used interchangeably.
Although curves seem to be more coveted, virtually all models are still perilously slim, weighing 23% less than the average women. Bordo makes a point that almost all models that participate and win in beauty pageants, such as the Miss World pageant, are thin, she supports this statement with an example from Nigeria; for years, Nigeria sent its local version of beautiful to the Miss World pageant, and for years, the contestants did very poorly- until, Agbani Darego, a skinny, light-skinned beauty, was entered, and won the Miss World pageant, the first Black African to do so. “Now, Nigerian teens fast and exercise, trying to become “lepa”- a popular slang term for thin,” Bordo addresses, showing the effect the win caused.