U1A7- That’s More Than Just My Opinion Assignment #4 By: Chelsea Holmes Many women around the world are being brainwashed by the appeal of how a woman should looked, based on the media’s perspective. They show women as skinny, chesty, and cane free but when they Photoshop these women, they don’t take into consideration the feelings of women. The media’s idea of a woman’s body image can negatively impact her self-esteem. It can cause them to feel fat and ugly, result to harmful and unhealthy weight loss and it can cause suicide. The media’s idea of how a woman should look causes many women to feel fat and ugly about themselves.
In our society many girls believe that image is everything and strive to become the ‘perfect size zero’. In this generation style is everywhere; magazines, popular clothing brands and t.v shows which all promote size zero models. Models are constantly blamed for setting a bad example for young girls when majority of the models are also feeling the pressure to be perfect by the media and modelling agencies who will not accept models who are not under a healthy weight of size 6/8/10 or above as it as commonly seen as ‘fat’ or ‘plus size’. Many models suffer from anorexia nervosa which is an eating disorder cause by people restricting their food intake because of fear of gaining weight. Those who are suffering from anorexia often view themselves at ‘too fat’ and overweight although majority of them are unhealthily underweight.
Ginia Bellafante spoke in Time Magazine, “if the women’s movement were still useful, it would have something useful to say; it’s dead because it has won” (Bellafante) Progress since the 60’s and 70’s is visible, but statistics verify that women have a long way to go. Domestic violence is a persistent problem; women still fight to maintain reproductive rights, and earn only seventy-five percent of the salary that men receive to perform the same work. Many claim that there is no longer any reason for feminism, despite all this information. Is feminism dead in today’s society? One of the main reasons feminism has lost supporters is that business have worked to over-power the image that represents feminists.
It isn’t fair for a girl to open a magazine and think that the images they see are how they should look. A girl shouldn’t open a magazine and see a pore-less woman with eyes bigger than her wrist and think this is what she should strive for. I remember when I was younger and opening a magazine and seeing these girls and wondering why I was a size 9 pants in grade 7 and these girls who were older than me were a fraction of my size. If I cried that I was too fat and put myself on diets at 11, someone else is, too. The average girl starts her first diet at the age of 9… the average girl is starting her first diet before she is even out of middle school.
It states that many women’s focus is on her wardrobe so they can impress the opposite sex as they feel useless if they fail to impress, they also argue that fashion is a more female dominated area, they show that most of the top fashion designers are male ruled and that Radical Feminists such as Germaine Greer believe that all key societies (including fashion) have been found on patriarchy (ruled by men). They believe that men are the enemy and that they bring out clothes that result in the oppression of women and cause them to be exploited for sexual purposes only. They argue that the fashion industry segregate sexes with many popular singers exposing their body for money, this can be the case for Miley Cyrus; where she obtains money by exposing her body. Feminists view this as them doing this to please men and that women are exploited in this sexual way in order for men to find pleasure. They argue that the fashion industry promotes the women’s expressive role of doing the housework, looking after the children and not going out to work while they are used as a sex tool by the fashion industry making clothing which shows many body parts of women’s bodies such as their legs which males will like to look at.
When we see an obese woman on the street, in a restaurant, or out shopping, we often have an instinctive negative reaction: What's wrong with her that she can't lose weight? Even knowing that some people have a chronic condition or genetic makeup that predisposes them to weight gain, we still criticize them. "People are enraged at fat people because of the very strong Puritan ideal that we should control our desires," says Esther Rothblum, Ph.D., a psychologist and a professor of Women's Studies at San Diego State University, who is an expert on weight discrimination. "They see fat people, especially women, as lazy gluttons who lack self-control." However, those attitudes are so widespread, Rothblum says, that even fat people share them.
Magazines, advertisements and television create and promote stereotypical images of females. Females are represented as sex objects with nurturing, motherly instincts, only focused on beauty, house hold chores, politically and professionally inferior. Males are depicted as the bread winners, career orientated, professional, political and important. This is in stark contrast to the truths of reality, where women in both Australia and America are professionals, and do infact hold numerous powerful positions in the workforce. This shows the immense influence the media has over western cultures, and how this can influence popular understandings of females.
In today’s world, media heavily affects the way we perceive ourselves. The ideal body image that most people perceive nowadays is no longer based on an average but based on how media and society promotes it and that is a body that is highly unattainable for most women. Media promotes size 0 as the ideal body image causing many women judge themselves based on the beauty industry’s standards. Mass media defines the ideal body image by promoting it through the various platforms such as magazines, advertisements, and television and that is extremely immature. One example to prove my point is that the girls on magazine covers are mostly photo shopped to perfection.
In a Dolce and Gabana ad, a women is shown being put down by a male twice her size with three other men eagerly watching .This is degrading for women because it makes it harder for men to take them serious when the media has given them little value in society. It seems as if women’s role in the media is solely to show
Fat as a Feminist Issue Orbach discusses the growing epidemic of obesity that plagues American women, the emotional impacts of overeating, and the societal standard views of obesity. Orbach argues that being “Fat” is a mechanism in which women use to rebel against the standard in how the media portrays women. I believe that Orbachs article touches upon not only the standard in which women must conform to as far as weight appearance, but also all social stereotypes regarding women and their role in society. Orbach states that obesity in women is a challenge to the stereotypes amongst both sexes and that we should view as a sickness. A womans reproductive role in society relegates her to caretaker, mother, nurturer stature in the household, wife, and sex object.