The Importance Of Slenderness

1884 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The influence of media on views of gender

“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.

Show More
Related

  • Is Fat Really A Feminist Issue Analysis

    598 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the article, “Fat Is a Feminist Issue” in They Say I Say, Susie Or Bach claims that women in America are viewing themselves as overweight, and they must have a feminist perspective rather than to blame others for their “failure… to control their weight, control their appetites and control their impulse: ( 449). She also explains her view on the obesity issue with women in the United States. Or Bach demonstrates that most women are seen as beautiful only if they are thin. She also points out that being obese and overeating is much more painful experience for women due to the society having high standards for women and their weight. She seems frustrated with this and explains that women fought to have equal. Women are established into a caretaker role due to the “only known genetic difference” between the sexes: females’ ability to give birth. Not only that woman gives birth and feed their infants, but they are expected to be pleasing, attractive and even sexy. Another part of not only to be attractive, but to fulfill her part as a mother and wife, a...

    Read More

  • Summary Of Fat Acceptance By Cynara Geissler

    772 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Fat Acceptance”: An Argument Lacking Validity Cynara Geisslers’ essay “Fat Acceptance: A Basic Primer,” was published in Geez Magazine in 2010. The focus of the essay is to refute the pressure of society to be thin and promote self-acceptance regardless of size. While this essay touches on many agreeable points, it tends to blow many ideas out of context in an attempt to create a stronger argument. The article takes on a one-sided argument without any appropriate acknowledgement of the opposition, overlooks the risks of ignoring personal health, and has a strong feminist ideology associated towards the essay which tends to make the validity of her argument questionable.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of 'Too Close To The Bone'

    1074 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the article, “Too ‘Close to the Bone’: The Historical Context for Women’s Obsession with Slenderness,” Roberta Seid goes in depth on the emotionally straining and life altering trials women take on to try to portray society’s “ideal” body over time. She delves far into the past, exposing our culture’s ideal body image and the changes it has gone through over time. The article brings to light the struggles of striving to be the perfect woman with the model body. On the other hand, in the article “Rethinking Weight”, author Amanda Spake, details the many differing views of obesity. Spake voices her opinion on the idea that being overweight, and not losing weight, is caused by laziness. “Too Close to the Bone” and “Rethinking Weight” both deliberate about weight issues that are

    Read More

  • Leslie twiggy Hornby

    1283 Words  | 3 Pages

    From Twiggy to Kate Moss, the fashion industry has been attached to idealizing extreme slenderness, encouraging real women to hate their bodies and at extreme, develop anorexia or bulimia. If these models are exemplars of ideal beauty, then the measure for women is that to be beautiful, starvation level is required. It appears that the media and the fashion industry would have the public believe that ultra thinness symbolizes beauty when in reality, the standard represents infertility, and premature death. The public has to realize that Twiggy is different.

    Read More

  • White Washed World

    767 Words  | 2 Pages

    Media is a wide term that covers many information sources including, television, movies, advertisement, books, magazines, and the internet. It is from this wide variety of information that women receive cues about how they should look. The accepted body shape and has been an issue affecting the population probably since the invention of mirrors but the invention of mass media spread it even further. Advertisements have been a particularly potent media influence on women’s body image, which is the subjective idea of one's own physical appearance established by observation and by noting the reactions of others. In the case of media, it acts as a super peer that reflects the ideals of a whole society. Think of all the corsets, girdles, cosmetics, hair straighteners, hair curlers, weight gain pills, and diet pills that have been marketed over the years. The attack on the female form is a marketing technique for certain industries. According to Sharlene Nag...

    Read More

  • The Fat Girl Analysis

    1493 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sociocultural standards of feminine beauty are presented in almost all forms of popular media, revealing women with images that portray for what is considered to be the "ideal body." Such beauty standards for most women are completely unattainable; what is seen on TV Is another story, majority of models are considered to be well below what is known as a healthy weight. Media conveys a practical message using models that are not considered to be healthy and stating that in order for a woman to be considered beautiful, she must be unhealthy, or “thin.” The mindset in today’s society for many women is that you need to be thin, which is all too predominant and for females it makes it more difficult to achieve any level of serenity of their physical appearance. In the American culture, the “ideal body” for a female is represented very negatively, as it has dramatically changed. The number of people who are thin is starting to be the minority, while the people who are overweight/obese is going to other way and is the majority. Andre Dubus, the author of the short story "The Fat Girl," demonstrates each of these traditional behaviors towards the overweight main character, Louise.

    Read More

  • Body Satisfaction: The Influence Of The Peer And Body Dissatisfaction

    629 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ry few also include male adolescents. Which raises the question of whether if a study were to be conducted of a higher number of boys and very few girls, or only boys, would the results differentiate? Would we see a dramatic increase or decrease? A women’s perspective is that the thin ideal is considered beauty and is prevalent in todays society, which motivates their desire to become thinner as they feel they may be seen as more beautiful. This is shown to pressure young girls to take on the risky beahviour’s such as extreme dieting or exercising, as well as purging as a way to get rid of the food consumed. The women’s thin ideal is equivalent to the male ideal, which is muscle gain. These oppose as males less frequently take part in behavior such as purging or starving, but are similarly more prone to over exercising or over eating, which is also a health concern.

    Read More

  • Challenging Beauty Standards: A Critique of Patriarchy

    974 Words  | 2 Pages

    When we look into the mirror, we are constantly picking at our insecurities; our stomach, thighs, face, and our body figure. Society has hammered into our brains that there is only one right way of looking. Society disregards that there are many different shapes, sizes, and colors. Then society makes us believe that corporations can shove detrimental products to fix our imperfection. As a consequence, we blame media for putting all the negative ideas into women’s brain. It is not wrong to say that they are in part responsible, but we can’t make this issue go away until we talk about patriarchy. In the article Am I Thin Enough Yet? Hesse-Biber argues that women are constantly concerned about their looks and if they are categorized as “beautiful” by society. These ideas are encouraged by corporations that sell things for us to achieve “beautiful” but the idea is a result of patriarchy. Hesse-Biber suggests that if we want to get rid of these ideas we need to tackle patriarchy before placing all the blame on capitalism.

    Read More

  • Unrealistic Body Images

    1147 Words  | 3 Pages

    Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In our society today, people would rather see what celebrities are up to than what is going on with our health plan. Watching the news makes us aware of the latest trend, new gadget, who’s in rehab, or who has an eating disorder. In the eyes of society, women like Eva Longoria, Kim Kardashian, and Megan Fox are the epitome of perfection. What girl wouldn’t want to look like them? Unfortunately, this includes most of the girls in the US. Through TV shows, commercials, magazines or any form of advertising, the media enforces a certain body type which women emulate. The media has created a puissant social system where everyone must obtain a thin waist and large breasts. As a society, we are so image obsessed with the approval of being thin and disapproval of being overweight, that it is affecting the health of most women. Women much rather try to fit the social acceptance of being thin by focusing on unrealistic body images which causes them to have lower self esteem and are more likely to fall prey to eating disorders, The media has a dangerous influence on the women’s health in the United States.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Feeding Desire Popenoe

    1613 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout the ethnography, “Feeding Desire” written by Rebecca Popenoe, we see one consistent theme that is brought up time and time again – women and the fattening of them to obtain a desired look. From the perspective of a Western third party, the idea of fattening to appear beautiful/appealing seems ridiculous. It simply makes little sense because fattening, is incredibly unhealthy, something that is recognized in Western culture and at the same time we prefer women to be as fit as possible. Looking through the ethnography we see that there are many reasons for fattening being a key factor in making women “an object of desire” (Page.. citation) as stated by Popenoe. We can examine these cases through the work of Popenoe and determine as to how she came to this conclusion.

    Read More

  • Effects of Media on Women’s Body Image

    689 Words  | 2 Pages

    The overwhelming idea of thinness is probably the most predominant and pressuring standard. Tiggeman, Marika writes, “This is not surprising when current societal standards for beauty inordinately emphasize the desirability of thinness, an ideal accepted by most women but impossible for many to achieve.” (1) In another study it is noted that unhealthy attitudes are the norm in term of female body image, “Widespread body dissatisfaction among women and girls, particularly with body shape and weight has been well documented in many studies, so much so that weight has been aptly described as ‘a normative discontent’”. (79) Particularly in adolescent and prepubescent girls are the effects of poor self-image jarring, as the increased level of dis...

    Read More

  • Teenage Girls and Body Image

    1282 Words  | 3 Pages

    The pattern is similar for the portrayal of women on television, magazines, and other parts of the media. The way media represents women are for them to be thin-like models and other women on television to be the high standard of “attractiveness” to others. The advertising involved targets young teenage women and feature these models that are portraying desirable items, and the “norm” is for these women to be slender and beautiful (Vonderen & Kinnally, 2012). Research has been done to prove that media’s pressure on being thin causes women to be depressive and negative feelings about themselves . Women’s view are skewed and perceived incorrectly of what the typical female body should be (Haas, Pawlow, Pettibone & Segrist, 2012).

    Read More

  • Gender Stereotyping: The Negative Impacts Of Gender Stereotypes

    1497 Words  | 3 Pages

    However, it is evident that the media usually presents and sexualizes women who are “young, fit and beautiful” hence probably creating self esteem issues more than confidence especially in younger women who are religious towards the media’s expectations. This stereotype of being a desired body shape only forces women to meet unattainable perfect physical standards (Gill 2015). The media bombards the youth with gender representations and the types of bodies that are deemed to be attractive. Many teenagers all around the world are desperate to lose weight to be “beautiful”.

    Read More

  • Has the Media’s Portrayal of Women Negatively Affected the Body Image of The Wykeham Collegiate Senior School Girls?

    3125 Words  | 7 Pages

    Women and girls seem to be more affected by the mass media than do men and boys. Females frequently compare themselves to others, finding the negative rather than looking at the positive aspects of their own body. The media’s portrayal of the ideal body type impacts the female population far more than males, however, it is not only the mass media that affects women, but also influence of male population has on the female silhouette too.

    Read More

  • Society Is the Problem: The Beauty Standard

    743 Words  | 2 Pages

    Susan Bordo states in her article “Never Just Pictures”, that children grow up knowing that they can never be thin enough. They are thought that being fat is the worst thing ever. The ones responsible for this are the media, celebrities, models, and fashion designers. All of these factors play a big role on the development of the standard and how people view themselves. Everyone at one dreams about being the best they can in any aspect. But to achieve that most believe that one of the big factors is outer beauty. So people look at celebrities and fashion designers, and believe that to be accepted they have to look like them. That’s when they take drastic measures to change their appearance because they’ve been influenced by the Medias idea of “beautiful.” This feeling mostly happens in women but in recent years the gender gap has become smaller. Now men also feel the need to look good because of the media. On the TV, instead of having infomercials ...

    Read More

More about The Importance Of Slenderness

Open Document