Of all the articles that I have read, I took the most interest in this article. I find it fascinating how the media plays such a huge role of how women view their bodies. It is sad that even self-help magazines such as Shape have articles that tell women how to tone their bodies and to not be ashamed of how they naturally look, but then the “trainers” are skinny and healthy looking. I can see how frustrating this would be to a woman who is self-conscious about her body. How can a magazine that promotes healthy thinking about body images be so contradictive with the images it portrays in other articles about famous, skinny models?
Reading this article reminded me of a research paper that I did on Barbie and why they changed the structure of the doll. Makers of Barbie thought that the skinny shape of the doll affected the way young girls viewed their bodies. The previous Barbie’s measurements on a full sized person would have been extreme and very unproportional. The new Barbie doll has more realistic measurements for a normal sized woman.
As a child growing up, I was never insecure about my body because of the way Barbie looked. I admit, I thought she was gorgeous, but never did it make me want to change the way I looked. If the public had such an issue with Barbie and there was a change made, why hasn’t the media changed the way that models look? There are too many women and adolescent girls who have some sort of an eating disorder because of how society portrays how a woman should look with extremely skinny models. How many eating disorders will be enough to make society stop showing skinny young models?
Hi Kallie,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your ideas that all magazine showed extremely skinny models. It looks beautiful in some way, but not healthy. The Chinese girls about my age always say," beautiful girl will never beyond 110 pounds" or" to be thin, or to be die". So I am the larger girl in China, people will say, "if you lost some weights, you will look better". I feel healthy. Should I need to lose weights for looking better?
I completely agree that our society gives us false ideals of what is and is not beautiful. I think I’ve read that same thing about Barbie. I seem to remember that if Barbie’s proportions where on a human being it would be grotesque and freakish looking. Something along those lines. So it is definitely a problem, one that we should try and strengthen our own children against so that they can maintain a positive body image.
ReplyDeleteOn the other side of the coin is obesity. It is a growing epidemic. An increasing segment of our society is becoming sedentary consumers that end up becoming victims to their own laziness. It would be great if we could find a balance between the two.
The question I’ve asked myself is what does having a positive self-image mean? Does it imply that we should drive ourselves to dietary and exercising extremes so that we feel good about ourselves? Or does it imply that we should be content with being slovenly and out of shape? I think that there is a middle ground there, one that should be emphasized, rather than discouraged. Going to the gym, on a run, or eating healthfully should not imply you do not have a unhealthy body image, but rather that you care about your body and keeping it healthy.
Yu- that is amazing to me that "a beautiful girl will never be beyond 110 lbs." An kudos to you- being thin isn't necessary (at least in my mind)- it is being healthy that is important!
ReplyDeleteKallie-
I agree with you- when I was little, I did not have this hope that I would some day look like
Barbie. She was a doll, a very pretty one, but for some reason my mind never told me, 'you need to look like her to be beautiful'. Maybe this was because my family told me that I was beautiful the way I was so I had never had ideals about wanting to change myself. Also, I agree with you about the media. If they make such a big stink about how models are too thin and critisize celebrities for looking waif-thin, then why does this ideal not change. From my perspective, the best looking actresses are the ones who look real. Tyra Banks is a perfect example. As a current size 8 or previous size 16, she looks fantastic and doesn't care who see's her!
After looking through these magazines it is apparent that the media displays a very particular type of women throughout the pages. Although, I don't think it is a good thing as you said driving many women to a low self esteem, eating disorders, etc. I would have to agree with Matt, that there should be a middle ground. Why is the emphasis always on "thinness" and "losing weight," why can't it be on achieving overall health- being physically active, fighting heart disease, diabetes, etc. It would be great if the shift in exercise motivation went from "getting skinny" to "getting HEALTHY."
ReplyDeleteI really like what many of you wrote about putting the emphasis on being HEALTHY rather than being skinny. Matt brought up the notion that many people have become obese. I read somewhere that obesity and anorexia were part of the same economy--in that both are about control. On one extreme, anorexia is about total control by not eating, while obesity occurs when there is complete absence of control. It is interesting that both occur in response to the same mindset.
ReplyDeleteI really liked this post. I am a firm believer of actions speaking louder than words and I feel that magazines are a prime example of this. Some magazines show these skinny "beautiful" women but then say, "be happy with who you are" or "you're perfect just the way you are" but is that really the images they are conveying. People are not stupid. Magazines can write the above comments as much as they want, but if they are writing them while showing pictures of models that are super skinny and "perfect" what are they really saying. I agree that the focus should not be on how skinny one is. It should be on how healthy a person is and that includes body and mind.
ReplyDelete