The many celebrities like Miley Cyrus and magazines who all try to portray their idea of a woman, alter and distort their perception of womanhood. These girls wear overtly sexual and suggestive clothing and opening act promiscuously in their interactions, forced to go through extreme diets, wear large amounts of make-up and even modify their bodies through surgeries all due to the cumulative pressures of friends, family and their developed self-confidence issues to become this counterfeit ideal. These girls wear uncomfortable heels, constricting clothing and skimpy outfits to hyper sexualize themselves. This is what they believe it takes to become fun, sexy and a desirable woman in today’ society. They go out, drink, “grind” and “twerk” (different forms of highly sexual dancing), and hook up with random guys.
I believe that Orbach’s article is written in way that is responds to all of the social stereotypes that plague women in general, not only larger women. Yet, with this wide scope she manages to narrow her thoughts down to fat women. I completely disagree with the Orbach in the selection “Fat is a Feminist Issue.” When I graduated from high school and got my first job, I was going through a lot of stress and I didn’t care about my health. I didn’t care what I ate or how
Society’s perception throughout history has put extremely unhealthy looking women in the media spotlight as the ideal image of beauty. “The desire to fit the cultural ideal of thinness drives many women to diet severely. In some vulnerable young women, this leads to bingeing and purging or self-starvation,” says Terence Wilson a psychologist at Rutgers University (Smolack). “The general public seems to have an unhealthy obsession with celebrities. The media is constantly bombarding us with images of celebrities with extremely thin bodies.
The slender, “beautiful” women are regarded as influential, successful, and erotic. This being said, it is very much so based on facts and reason, also known as logos, in the aspect that real life is often viewed this way. Throughout Elementary school up to High school, no one wanted to be best friends with “the fat kid”. As the world already knows, girls and women in general seem to stress over their physical appearance and have been especially concerned about weight for many years now. The emotional effect media has on a woman’s mindset, or ethos, could very well send her overboard into what is commonly known as an eating disorder.
In spite of the international awareness about this problem and the declared willingness of the states to fight gender-violence, young girls and women continue to serve as the target of violence. Authors Kim Gandy, Leonard Pitts, and Erica Goode go beyond the surface of the problems and explore the shocking reality behind violence against women, utilizing statics and real life accounts to submerge the reader into the uncomfortable reality of the society women live in today. Overall, the most effective articles of the whole unit utilize pathos and logos, presenting daunting statics and facts as well as real examples to create an effective and convincing argument for the reader. Some arguments rely solely on the appeal to the emotion, they and tend to use very selective sources of examples that society considers unacceptable, to raise anger and frustration to gain the support of the reader. Applying facts and statistics, objective articles used logos to
Many fashion companies use models that are plain, have “flaws”, “moles in unbeautiful places”, and unmade up faces in their ads unlike the heroin chic images. Bordo noticed the industry maneuvering into accepting diversity, but then noticed the lack of change in body types. She agreed with the direction of the ad campaigns, but disagreed on how the concept of body image is still not changing. People need to be realistic that not everyone’s body is built the same, and the media needs to stop trying to brainwash and be real. Susan Bordo is constantly writing about body image and how the media influences eating disorders because she has done her research and knows what she is talking about.
This is an example of how our society associates thinness with beauty and adds all kind of negative connections to being overweight. The standards applied to Britney Spears and other celebrities come from our social constructions of what it means to be beautiful. As a society we decide what is positive and what is negative, and what is meaningful and valuable to us, and thus we construct reality. These sets of values are filtered into our everyday life and affect us when we interact with others, read a magazine, and even when we browse the Internet. These images have a very strong effect on teenage girls because they are at a stage where they are trying to develop their sense of self and personal identity.
Insatiable Appetites or Medical Anomalies Albert D. Lehmkuhl Front Range Community College Abstract Although I found the condition of these women interesting, especially with society norms considering the more tragic asexual ailment women have being an inability to reach gratification, I was left with many unanswered questions and even more doubt. The questions I am left with would give more foundation to the syndrome and make it easier to relate, or even gain just a low level understanding of how life altering it is. Upon a retrospective of the video, and the paper I have written the biggest question I keep coming to is why is there little to no medical information about this syndrome, especially as detrimental as it seems to be to these three women. Insatiable Appetites or Medical Anomalies The video, “A Hundred Orgasms a Day”, was enlightening to the plight of women who suffer through a disorder quite uncommon among the female population. I found it interesting that when it comes to women's sexuality, the cultural focus tends to be on those who do not have the ability to, or easily can orgasm.
The Media’s Influence on Teenage Body Image In today’s society, teenage girls are constantly being pushed and pulled into a million detrimental directions thanks to the media. With television, magazines, cell phones, and computers, women are constantly faced with advertisements and suggestions from the media. It is becoming impossible to avoid them, because they practically are everywhere we turn. Advertisements for make-up, hair products, and clothing are among the few that are the most influential to adolescent girls. They tend to feature flawless faces and very thin models.
Women are exposed to televised and print media at an early age. They are told by society: their peers, co-workers and elders that you are to remain desirable, feminine and ready for a man. According to Eating Disorder Statistics and Research, “Eating disorders are a daily struggle for 10 million females and 1 million males in the United States.” The pandemic of body image issues among women is damaging for the representation of feminine values in our American society, which ultimately leads to an increase in male-influenced misogyny. Many people claim that the battle against a negative body image is an exclusive problem for women, but many studies have found that teenaged males and male adults struggle with body image issues, but in many different ways. While women focus on ways to get thin, men with muscle dysmorphia - an disorder characterized by a negative body image and an obsessive desire to have a muscular physique (a common eating disorder among males) try and find ways to gain muscle.