Throughout time, the most controversial subject among female’s health has been body image. Society and our culture molds females’s brains into believing that being thin is what will fulfill complete happiness. Being thin means you are more successful, loved, attractive, and overall truly beautiful. Thin women are seen as having an altogether perfect life. However, there is another female figure that is seen as undesirable, hopeless, mainly disliked by most. This type of woman is the curvy or larger female. If one were to go out on the street and gather a group of men and women and show them the thin vs. large female and which one is more attractive, most would say the thinner is. Thus, we deny the larger women because they do not fit societies norms. Thin women are timid to turn into this other that is not widely accepted. To this extent, society and our culture have constructed a monster. Every thin female will admit at least one time in their lives they have been concerned about “getting fat” or “gaining extra weight”. When a thin female detects this, they are apprehensive one is becoming the monstrous other that is the larger female. As mentioned above, the thin female is what society and our culture commends as the definition of beautiful. What everyone notices about the thin female is that she’s most likely beloved, admired by many, envied by most, and effortlessly receives attention from the opposite sex. Yet, thin women bear the burden of psychological pressure to live up to these standards. Females carry this pressure considering it is basically hardwired (unless learning/finding out otherwise) into our heads to be concerned about our appearance. By this means, females do different actions to not become the monsterous la... ... middle of paper ... ...time because females will never be truly satisfied with their body image. Works Cited Cornforth, Tracee. "Are You Afraid Of Getting Fat?." About.com Women's Health. N.p., 9 July 2011. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. . Gio. "Being Skinny Doesn't Mean Being Beautiful." beautiful with brains. N.p., 13 Apr. 2012. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. . Harris, Christie. "Are Women Supposed to be Thin or Curvy?." All Women Stalk. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. . McGill, Mary . "Skinny Versus Curvy: Why Women Can Never Win." Huffpost Lifestyle United Kingdom. N.p., 20 Jan. 2012. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. .
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.
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
Hesse-Biber, Sharlene. “Am I Thin Enough Yet?” Race, Class, and Gender In The United States. Ninth Ed. New York: Worth, 2014. 595-602. Print.
People are born with different facial structures, heights, and shapes. But in our current society, most people imagine the ideal woman to be tall and slender. In the poem “Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale” by Jane Yolen, the speaker expresses her view through parody, foreshadowing, and figurative language that a more full-figured image of a woman’s beauty will someday prevail.
According to Beverly Ballaro, the combination of two trends, the technology-enabled media saturation of the American public, and the promotion by this media of highly unattainable body types, is largely responsible for an epidemic of body image pathologies afflicting American girls and women, as well as an increasing number of boys and men. She also mentions that the media has given certain images for each gender. Generally, for females the body image is extremely thin, and there is an emphasis on large breasts and for males, tall, slender, muscular and toned. For both genders, the most valued and appreciated appearance i...
In the modern US, the topic of women’s beauty standards is an ever-evolving one that has left many with questions. What effect do these standards have on women? Is the “ideal woman” healthy? How does a truly healthy weight compare with society’s ideal? In her article “Too ‘Close to the Bone’: The Historical Context for Women’s Obsession with Slenderness,” University of Southern California lecturer Roberta Seid explored some of these questions. In the first two sections of this article, she explains that the American standard for beauty has become impossibly and dangerously thin. While Seid’s argument argument about America’s standards may appear compelling, the oversimplification of that argument becomes clear when one strips away her loaded diction and realizes how one-sided her beliefs really are.
Orbach, Susie. “Fat as a Feminist Issue.” They Say I Say. Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, Russel Durst. New York. W.W. Norton, 2009. 200-205. Print.
In her serious article, Devastating Beauty, Teal Pfeifer creates an informative composition that discusses how magazine include images of very thin, beautiful women. Pfeifer encourages to boycott these images in order to decrease the negative feelings the magazine consumers have toward themselves and their bodies.
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.
Marano, Hara Estroff. "THE SKINNY SWEEPSTAKES." In the push for achievement, the perfect body is now part of the perfect resume. Deprived of an internal compass, girls compete to be "hottest," turning colleges into incubators of eating disorders. Feb 2008: n. page. Web. 16 Feb. 2014. .
The most fashionable, sought after magazines in any local store are saturated with beautiful, thin women acting as a sexy ornament on the cover. Commercials on TV feature lean, tall women promoting unlimited things from new clothes to as simple as a toothbrush. The media presents an unrealistic body type for girls to look up to, not images we can relate to in everyday life. When walking around in the city, very few people look like the women in commercials, some thin, but nothing similar to the cat walk model. As often as we see these flawless images float across the TV screen or in magazines, it ...
Women are bombarded by images of a thin-ideal body form that is extremely hard, if not impossible, to emulate. Comparing themselves to these women can lead to feelings of inadequacy, depression, and an overall low self-esteem. (Expand on, need a good opening paragraph to grab the reader’s attention)
Models of Rubens, Rembrandt, Gaugin and Matisse were all rounded, plump women.A plump and healthy women was admired as it reflected wealth and success.(14). Where as images of women have become slimmer since the 1950’s according to Jennifer A. (Australian journal of nutrition and dietetics).
In this day and age, hundreds or thousands of women and men are having an ongoing battling against themselves to meet up to society 's standards on body image. Every day people are sacrificing their bodies to strive for the "perfect" figure that would make them feel like they belong in our society. Because of society 's pressure, it has given men and women the immense amount of pressure to achieve these unrealistic goals. Needless to say, women and men are grappling with their inner demons to reach their goal of having the ideal body. In today 's society, men and women both struggle with body issues by the profound impact of social media and a lack of self acceptance; however, it appears that men are struggling more due to having to shield
Throughout history when we think about women in society we think of small and thin. Today's current portrayal of women stereotypes the feminine sex as being everything that most women are not. Because of this depiction, the mentality of women today is to be thin and to look a certain way. There are many challenges with women wanting to be a certain size. They go through physical and mental problems to try and overcome what they are not happy with. In the world, there are people who tell us what size we should be and if we are not that size we are not even worth anything. Because of the way women have been stereotyped in the media, there has been some controversial issues raised regarding the way the world views women. These issues are important because they affect the way we see ourselvescontributing in a negative way to how positive or negative our self image is.