Have you Ever?
Have you ever found yourself unhappy with how you view your body? Have you ever wanted, more than anything, to change the way your body looks? Have you ever compared yourself to the amazingly beautiful people seen in mass media images and felt inadequate? If you answered yes to any, or even all of the question above, keep reading.
First, I want you to know that you are not alone. You are like me and 80% of American women who are dissatisfied with their body (“Beauty At Any Cost” 4). So the question is, how did such a large percentage of American women come to adopt negative body images? Are we among an unfortunate group that was born with an unsatisfactory image of the body? The answer is NO! There is so much more to body image than meets the eye, and my goal here to share some valuable and possibly life changing information on the topic.
American Culture and Mass Media Advertisements
To understand how such a high percentage of American females come to have a negative body image, we must examine our culture and the mass media. This may seem like a strange and complex correlation, but bare with me for the next few paragraphs and I promise it will come together and make perfect sense.
As members of American society, we live in a culture obsessed with consuming. Think of this in terms of everyday life. What do you and/or your family do for fun? The answer likely involves some form of spending money on material goods and/or services (consuming). Our obsession with consumption is not by accident or coincidence. Americans compulsive desire to consume is the result of strategic marketing strategies by the producers of the plethora of goods and services we have to choose from. To promote the selling of their products, producers turn to various forms of mass media for advertisement purposes. Mass media, more often than not, couples the product they are advertising with unbelievably beautiful people and then bombard us with the resulting visual images.
Stay with me and pay close attention; it is the visual images produced by mass media that impact how we view our bodies. Mass media advertise products in a variety of ways, for example; television commercials, magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc. These visual images are literally in every nook and cranny of life and it is a force we cannot escape. Why would we want to escape mass medias visual images you ask? The answer is quite simple. The messages in American mass media relentlessly promote unrealistic and unattainable ideas about beauty and the body, and its’ message is especially harmful to females.
This concept may be better understood by looking at a few media advertisement examples.
Perfume/Cologne Advertisements:
Food Advertisements:
The above images are just a few examples among the numerous advertisements in which the female body is objectified; degraded to equal status of an object, in order to sell products. Now lets examine at these images closer. What do all of these women have in common? They are extraordinarily beautiful and very thin. Because these kinds of images are every where we look in today’s society, we naturally internalize the message.
the messages conveyed in mass media are largely directed at females. Females are, above all else, to be thin and beautiful; “Being beautiful is, in American society, the most important role a woman should fulfill” (Chapman 1).
Stay with me, this is where it gets interesting…
Internalizing Mass Media Messages And Its Impact On Female Body Image
Today, we adopt our ideas about beauty mostly through mass media messages. Yes, both men and women are subject to beauty messages, but they are especially harmful to women; “Women are much more likely than men to be shown with unrealistic standards of physical beauty” (Beauty At Any Cost” 6). In other words, American women are trapped in a popular culture tainted with images of unattainable ideas about beauty and the body.
As women, we are bombarded with images of starved, airbrushed and photo shopped models and we naturally tend to compare ourselves. When compare ourselves to computer generated stick-thin models, more often than not, we come to the conclusion we don’t measure up and body dissatisfaction arises. When we are dissatisfied with the body, the result can be a desire to control its’ appearance. The unfortunate thing in attempting to control the bodies appearance is, a large percentage of women take to extreme, sometimes unhealthy practice to try and achieve the unachievable.
Trying to Achieve Unrealistic Beauty Standards: The Cost
Internalizing American beauty norms has proved to have serious effects on female self-esteem and body image; “Disturbed body image is one of the main precursors for disordered eating and dieting in adolescent and young adult girls” (Sedar 1). Well over half of the women in the United States (80%) admit to being unhappy with their appearance and are trying to lose weight while a whopping 10 million women suffer from an eating disorder (“Beauty At Any Cost” 4). Eating disorders are characterized as compulsive behaviors to control the body’s appearance (Shaw & Lee 229). The most common eating disorders seen today are anorexia nervosa or self-starvation, Bulimia nervosa or binge eating followed by forced vomiting, and compulsive eating or uncontrolled eating (229).
Adopting such extreme practices to try and live up to an unrealistic societal standard does not come without negative health implications. Studies show that eating disorders have the highest death rate in comparison to any other mental illness; “A study by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders reported that 5 – 10% of anorexics die within 10 years after contracting the disease; 18-20% of anorexics will be dead after 20 years and only 30 – 40% ever fully recover” (“Eating Disorder Statistics”).
From the statistics presented above, it is obvious compulsive disorders are very serious. Eating disorders do not develop overnight. When a woman comes to adopt a disorder of this type, it is only after a lengthy and conditioned process of prolonged exposure to popular medias ultra-thin standard of beauty; “Ultra-thin models are so prominent that exposure to them becomes unavoidable and chronic, constantly reinforcing a discrepancy for most women and girls between actual size and the ideal body” (Dittmar & Howard 478).
Hang in there, a conclusion is close..
There is Power in Knowledge
If you have ever struggled with body dissatisfaction, you are not alone, but you are at an advantage. If you have made it to this point, you now possess the knowledge of a major causation of body dissatisfaction among women in American society. This is valuable knowledge that many women unfortunately do not have. Unlike a vast majority of people, you now know a leading cause in why so many women are dissatisfied and struggle with how they view their body. Body dissatisfaction is a direct result of over exposure to mass media messages unrealistic portrayals about beauty and the body.
If you find yourself still struggling with body dissatisfaction even after digesting the subject matter presented in this post, I urge you to talk to a loved one or another individual you deem appropriate. I know from personal experience how tough it is to deal with body dissatisfaction and it is even tougher to deal with alone. Confiding in someone and sharing your feelings can make all the difference. You never know what kind of insights you might gain from another perspective.
I also encourage you to utilize your resources. If you are in school or work, many facilities designate individuals to deal with mental health disorders. If you don’t feel you are at a point in which you need to speak with someone, the internet is a great place to search for posts and scholarly articles regarding body dissatisfaction. The more knowledge you have on the subject, the better. There is power in knowledge. Trust me.
In conclusion, none of us are perfect. LOVE YOURSELF!
Work Cited:
“Beauty At Any Cost”. Aug. 2008. Web. 17 July 2014. Chapman, Taylor M. “Women in American Media: A Culture of Misperception.” The International Student Journal 3: 1. Web. 16 July 2014.
“Dolce and Gabbana- They love a bit of gang rape”. JOHN SALMON’S WORLD The everyday ramblings of an everyday bloke. 2013. Photograph. Web. July 29, 2014. http://johnsalmonsworld.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/dolce-and-gabbana-they-love-a-bit-of-gang-rape/
“Eating Disorder Statisitcs”. Department of Mental Health. 2006. Web. 17 July 2014. http://www.state.sc.us/dmh/anorexia/statistics.htm
Howard, Sarah, and H Dittmar. “Professional Hazards? The Impact Of Models’ Body Size On Advertising Effectiveness And Women’s Body-focused Anxiety In Professions That Do And Do Not Emphasize The Cultural Ideal Of Thinness.” British Journal of Social Psychology 43: 478. NCBI. Web. 18 July 2014.
“New Memphis BBQ Burger from Carl’s Jr. Proves Two Meats, And Two Girls Are Better Than One”. 2012. Photograph. Web. July 29, 2014. http://cooldudestuff.com/2012/08/new-memphis-bbq-burger-from-carls-jr-proves-two-meats-and-two-girls-are-better-than-one/
Rohan, Ethel. “Bodies In Bikinis: Are You Buying It?”. The Rumpus. 2012. Photograph. Web. July 29, 2014. http://therumpus.net/2012/06/bodies-in-bikinis-are-you-buying-it/
Sedar, Kasey L. “Female Body Image and the Mass Media: Perspective on How Women Internalize the ideal Beauty Standard”. 2005. Web. July 17, 2014. http://ac-journal.org/journal/pubs/2012/SPRING%202012/McKinnally3.pdf
Shaw, Susan, and Janet Lee. Women’s voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York, New York: Mc-Graw Hill Companies, Inc. 2012. Print.
“Women in Advertisements: A Perspective on Sexual Objectification”. 2013. Photograph. Web. July 28, 2014. http://mvelazqu33.wordpress.com/
Beating Body Image 