Susan Bordo's The Globalization Of Eating Images

Society has always been in the mindset of a white cis male, racist and sexist. In the article “The Globalization of Eating Disorders”, by Susan Bordo, talks about how the media portrays women in an impossible light and how women of color are overlook in eating disorders. The article “Saving the Life That Is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist’s Life” by Alice Walker, talks about how women of color are overlook and not taken seriously in literature and how people need good models in life to do and become great things. They both have a common topic of that women of color are often over looked in literature and media and if women of color were truly portrayed in society then girls of all ages could really benefit from it. In Walker’s

She starts off with an imaginary scenario in which the readers probably imagined a young white female to be in the situation and not a girl of different ethnicity. She goes on to explain how in some cultures, that have not been exposed to western media, prize women who are big because it was a sign of healthiness and how that women had food to eat. Bordo uses many cultures as examples to show how being exposed to media has influenced young girls tremendously. One of the examples Bordo uses is in Central Africa where a skinny body was connected with someone having AIDS and where if the bride wasn’t big enough for her wedding she was sent to a fattening farm. When the area was exposed to television shows that viewed women as skinny and beautiful the percentage of girls forming eating disorders to stay skinny had grown by a lot. Bordo goes on to talk about why these images are so powerful, that the images these girls are looking at, are viewed as normal by the “dominant culture” and that’s why girls try to look that way to be accepted as “normal”.

Bordo’s articles tie into each other with the common thread of wrongly portraying women in media and literature especially women of color. What both of these articles have in common is that society needs models that send out a good message. For example, if media portrayed women being of different

To get society out of the racist and sexist mind set schools need to be including stories written by women of different race in the curriculum. If this was included into school curriculum so many girls of different race would come to love who they are and not want to change themselves to become what society says is the “perfect” image. This goes back to Bordo’s essay and how girls view themselves in a negative light because all they have to compare themselves to is the photos of an impossibly skinny body. Bordo uses many examples of how many cultures prize voluptuous bodies instead of slim ones so if media were to use plus sized models or even normal proportioned models then that would send a message to girls that its ok to love your body. If media instead depicted pictures of women being perfect all the time and instead showed pictures of a colored women looking rough after a long day of working hard then it would show other women that it is ok to be imperfect. Many young black girls usually hate how curly their hair is so they try everything in their power to make it straight but if media showed a picture of a, black successful women that had curly hair and loved it, then it would show all the little girls that’s its ok to love your natural