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How media has affected body image over the years
Stereotyping and overweight
How media has affected body image over the years
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In modern society, the media has a very big influence on our lives. Whether it be a film, a cartoon, or a television series, it is going to impact our daily life in some way. A nasty habit that the media has started is casting overweight characters as gluttonous eaters, aggressive, overtly funny, bullies, reassuring best friends, or sloppy dressers. This makes society as a whole look negatively at overweight people because of their presumptions. Sadly, those stereotypes have been around for over fifty years and still exist today. To understand what is wrong with the overweight stereotype, one must first understand why being overweight is considered a negative thing. Of course, the negative health-related side effects are a big part of it. Hypertension, type two diabetes, heart disease, stroke, sleep apnea, and respiratory problems are all potentially fatal side effects that come from being overweight. (obesity bad) People have taken this stereotype and twisted it to also imply that obese people are lazy, stupid, sloppy, gross, and a number of other negative things. This is taking an already bad stereotype and emphasizing it to make it seem way worse than it really is. Filmmakers have taken this cliche and ran with it …show more content…
The television series, The Honeymooners, is about Ralph Kramden and his wife Alice, who are still struggling financially fifteen years after the depression. It includes all of Ralph and his best friend Ed Norton’s schemes on how to get rich quick. When Ed was asked how to describe his buddies build, he uses the terms good bone structure, fine frame, and covered with fat. Even his wife gives him a hard time about his weight. In one episode, Alice says “The only thing big that’s close to your heart is your stomach”. (the honeymooners) The whole series has an underlying theme of the struggles of excessive weight and the damages that it can
Christa Kurkjian explains in her paper, Is “Fat” the New “F” Word?, that Carver transforms the social norm of being fat—and ugly—to something of a “saving grace” (Kurkjian 3). However, I have to disagree with Kurkjian on her thesis. I truly do not feel Carver’s intent for Fat is to transform the word “fat,” but to elaborate on how people perceive fat.
In “Cruelty, Civility, and Other Weighty Matters” by Ann Marie Paulin, she was trying to get across a very important message: skinny doesn’t mean happy. The main idea was about how our culture in America encourages obesity because of the food choices they offer, how expensive weight loss pills and exercise bikes is, and etc., yet the culture also is prejudice against these same fat people that they encourage. It’s a constant back and forth in America between what is convenient with the little time we have in between everything we have to do each day and working out to be skinny enough for everyone to not judge you. Ms. Paulin wrote this article for literally everyone, this article was for skinny people to show them like hey, you’re not all
I do believe that the media really depicts what beauty is “supposed to look like,” which is being thin or muscular, but to some people being “fat,” as Smith would put it, is just as beautiful. Personally, I really do not like the word "fat," I prefer the term overweight or the politically correct term “people of size.” Throughout Smith’s article, she refers to “people of size” as “big,” “heavy,” or “fat” people (86-88). She uses all of these snarl words to bring a negative connotation and generalize that people view overweight people this way.
Interest in the social aspects of obesity is nothing new. Jeffrey Sobal has written extensively about the social and psychological consequences of obesity , including the stigmatisation and discrimination of obese and even overweight individuals (Sobal 2004).
In this Golden age of humanity with technology at the fingertips of mankind and world wide global awareness, it's hard to imagine from the comfort of well lit homes, a large population of the human race lives without fresh water and a nourishing daily meal. In the United States of America it has been said of an over abundance of food, though many of the citizens are forced to consume highly processed ready made meals in order to survive due to poverty. These meals are high in fat, sodium and of course, calorie, leaving the consumer with extra weight. This leads to the image of "'merica" with over weight men and women on scooters. While some of this is actually a result of poor self control or a medical issue, many can attribute it to having a very low income and the substance affordable is akin to garage. "Big" a book by some author, chronicles a young women who is very overweight by the design of her home environment. Her mother is disabled, obese and living off the government. She gets a job, goes to fat camp and learns why she can never loose weight. With all of this in mind, not to mention the idolization of stick thin models and actors, its not hard to figure out what the mind of an adolescent will conclude. Weight equals prosperity; being heavy is unsuccessful and ugly, whist-while bones and tight skin stretched over cranium is attractive and desirable. This of course calls Eating disorders to mind; Anorexia nervosa, Blumina, and EDNOS (eating disorder not diagnosed).
We should aware disadvantages of stereotypes about fat. Stereotypes about fat become awful disturb for us than others. Author says stereotypes about fat makes they loss their confident and become antisocial. They just stay in their room and do anything here. They fear to going out, doing some outdoor activities, and mocked just because they fat. It makes them obsession to becoming thinner. They will do everything to makes them thinner without thinking the consequences. They can’t avoid their self from digestion diseases like constipation, low blood preassure, mal-nutrition, and maag. (Yeni Irawan, 2015) The worst disease that can attack them is anorexia. Anorexia is a disease that make people lose their appetite but for most people anorexia is not a disease but a lifestyle. If they get continual burned, they become depression and can do something that not sense like as suicide. We can loss our lovely friends or see them just because they have different
The article Weight Bias in the Media: A Review of Recent Research by Rheanna N. Ata and J. Kevin Thompson was about how the media tends to stigmatize overweight people. There are two terms that come out in literature very often weight bias and stigmatization. In a culture that seems to emphasize thinness, weight bias has become a form of prejudice that seems to be widely accepted by many people. The media has a lot of influence on the beliefs, attitudes, and social norms that deal with weight. The media tends to stereotype obese characters and idealizes body types. Usually in the media body types for males and females are different, females are always shown to be thin, while males are portrayed as muscular and in good shape. In cartoons characters
In today’s society, people are too focused on how celebrities look and their bodies. Children consume multiple types of media such as the computer and television, so they see celebrities very often. Many obese children develop low self-esteem due to this. In the article titled “The Effects of Childhood Obesity” by Lauren Marcus, she states, “Society, culture and the media send children powerful messages about body weight and shape ideals. For girls, these include the ‘thin ideal’ and an urging to diet and exercise. Messages to boys emphasize a muscular, ‘buff’ body and pressure to body build up…” (10). The media affects children that are obese because it makes them think they should look a certain way. The media portrays a body image that is almost unrealistic to any type of children especially that are obese; girls especially want to look like models or celebrities. The media is very powerful; the media can easily mentally affect children because they compare themselves to celebrities and models. Children also do not realize that celebrities are not perfect because most of the time their bodies are photoshopped. In an interview, Sarah Larson, a dietition states, “The average teenagers watches at least 500 hours of commercials not including social media”. So many children view television, and get depressed because they do not look like the celebrities. Also, on television, fast food restaurants ads are being promoted which causes children to want fast
Unfortunately, Fat people are often depicted in comical ways on television and in movies. Other characters make fun of the person who is fat in the films. Because people make fun of these characters, they are often depicted as first as having low self-esteem. There is usually one character that is finding enough to appreciate the person who is fat. Sadly, most films do not have a fat character.
Physical beauty is constructed by the society that we live in. We are socialized from a very young age to aspire to become what our culture deems ideal. Living in the United States, as in many other Western cultures, we are expected to be well-educated, maintain middle-class or upper-class status, be employed as well as maintain a physical standard of beauty. Although beauty is relative to each culture, it is obvious that we as Americans, especially women, are expected to be maintain a youthful appearance, wear cosmetics and fashionable clothes, but most importantly: not to be overweight. Our society is socially constructed to expect certain physical features to be the norm, anything outside this is considered deviant. Obesity is defined as outside the norms of our culture's aesthetic norms (Gros). “People who do not match idealized or normative expectations of the body are subjected to stigmatization” (Heckert 32). Obesity is a physical deviance; it is one that is an overwhelming problem in our society as we are always judged daily, by our appearance. Those who do not conform to the standards of beauty, especially when it comes to weight, are stigmatized and suffer at the hands of a society that labels them as deviants.
In the article, Fat and Happy?, author Hillel Schwartz states that "fatness is fine" (Schwartz 179). Schwartz puts the blame on kindergarten teachers, the coaches, the friends, and physicians. He also says that doctors and physicians play on their fears to try to get obese people to lose weight. She explains that the victims are the obese people who are ridiculed for being obese. She also explains how it would be like in a fat society. She also points out how dieting is cannibalism. He uses emotional appeal to draw in his audience; however, He misses out on the medical and factual side of the situation.
This is because of the many stereotypes that overweight and obese individuals face. Some of those are that they were once fat kids, they do not have any sexual interactions, they do not exercise, they do not diet, and they only eat fast food. Other overweight and obese stereotypes are they are uncontrollable eaters, they are not healthy, they make poor employees, they are stupid, and they smell. When looking at an individual that you know that may appear to be overweight or obese, you do not see them as those stereotypes. In fact, those stereotypes only applies to few of those that are overweight and obese. For example, a fellow Georgia Gwinnett College student who happens to be obese is hardworking young individual that is graduating with a history degree, and is getting married this
Being over weight is not a crime. People have often talked about people who are being fat, and thinking of them as an alien or even a freak. Obese people are just the same as you and me. All of us think the same, there is some stuff that we cannot change, and all we could do is to just live with it. Obese people cannot live their lives worry about what people think about them, they just live normal. Obese people are like g...
Obesity and overweight have became a global problem in the last decade, according to the World Health Organization back in 2005 approximately 1.6 billion adults over the of age 15 were overweight, at least 400 million adults were obese and at least 20 million children under the age of 5 years were overweight. Experts believe if the current trends continue by 2015 approximately 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese. The scale of the obesity problem has a number of serious consequences for individuals and government health systems. Obesity is a concern because of its implications for the health of an individual as it increases the risk of many diseases and health conditions. Being obese means having so much body fat that your health is in danger. However, being fat is simply not an opinion. Having too much body fat can lead to many diseases. Obesity and overweight have become a global problem in the last decade.
...zine articles and television ads without understanding that appearances are altered and modified. They take on false role models and assume all people should be a certain way. With this in mind, obesity should be overcome to remain in good physical condition and lead a healthy life, not to follow trends that can get out of control.