The Importance Of Slenderness

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“Slenderness is equivalent to beauty” has been deeply rooted in most Hong Kong people’s mind for long. This belief penetrates in every corner in Hong Kong and can be easily noticed in daily life. When you are watching movie or TV or reading newspaper, those popular female artists are mostly skinny like Angelababy. There are very few popular artists are fat. When you are shopping, you would discover that clothes in boutiques are seemed to be designed for skinny people, individuals with more bulges can only dream for fitting into those beautiful and fancy clothes one day. When you are walking in the streets, slimming treatment advertisement can be easily found in bus stop, MTR lightbox, billboards etc. It is seemed that the society is exerting pressure on us have to be skinny by different channels, so we are shaped by this norm continuously and inevitably. To Marxist-feminist, female are the subordinates of male, male defined the standard of beauty for female to follow. Female are the sex objects of male so they strive every mean in order to favour male, which results in further reinforce patriarchy (Bordo, 1993) Panopticism provides another answer to why people are so keen to keep fit and avoid becoming fat. Foucault (1975) referred panopticism is the surveillance and social control where individuals adjust their behaviour because of they think there are others are constantly observing and judging them. Therefore, individuals put every effort in keeping bodies fit partly because of they care about of what others think them. In modern societies, the obsession of slenderness is conveyed and reinforced by many social agents, for instance, family, school, peers etc (Thomas & Stice, 2001). It is believed that mass media also plays a s... ... middle of paper ... ...mselves at the same time. Thus, beauty and morality have become equated. For many women, weight is a quick and concrete barometer by which to measure oneself and one’s worth – how well one is doing as a woman. (Rodin et al., 1985, p.290) In this sense, a “good” girl must remain skinny and be in control of her desires, and this pressure is even worse by prejudice against fatness (Thompson et al., 1999). Though mass media should be responsible for this, individuals should also take part of their responsibility as it is not solely the problem created by the mass media. According to Focault (1977) contemporary women can control their body rationally and wisely in spite of the influence of the mass media. Women have their own choice in controlling their bodies, they slim down can be for the sake of health, not merely blindly follow the trend instilled by the mass media.

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