Body Image In 'Low Fat Love'

“The Beauty Myth” written by Naomi Wolf is an essay written to present how the advancements of women in social power lead to a societal backlash that lead to a woman’s value being equated to her appearance by both sexes. This devaluation of women has led to a harmful relationship with food and women subjecting themselves to mental and physical torture to be thin. Wolf describes in the 1920s was the first time that women became “preoccupied with dieting and thinness” after receiving the right to vote. In the 1950s, women’s curves were celebrated again because “their minds were occupied in domestic seclusion.” According to Wolf, when women were in male spheres, “that pleasure had to be overridden by an urgent social

This raises the question about gender difference and the concept of body image and prevalence of

"Body image is the perception that a person has of their physical self and the thoughts and feelings that result from that perception.” The American society has been broadcasting a certain type of body,

Today’s culture has placed women across the globe in a position where they are constantly flooded with idealistic images that depict what the media perceives as the “perfect body.” Quite often, young university-attending females, those who are involved in social identity formation, are exposed to numerous forms of media that fabricate various experiences relative to body image. In the past, researchers have surveyed women who are exposed to body-related standards using multiple forms of mass media as a unified entity, which has caused for limitations since each means -such as magazine advertisements- differs in relation to how a thin idealistic image is portrayed. In light of prior research, Harper and Tiggman established that

Beauty standards are portrayed everywhere: on magazines, social media, ads, commercials, and even flaunted among peers. While the ideals are supposed to promote health awareness, fitness motivation, and self love, it unfortunately results in many unfavorable consequences. Women are constantly “penalized for not being beautiful and at the same time are stigmatized, even pathologized, for not feeling beautiful, for having low self-esteem, for engaging in behaviors like dieting and excessive exercising, or for having eating disorders” (Johnston and Taylor 954). Beauty standards are unrealistic and unhealthy to pursue, and misinforms the public on what true beauty is. While not all beauty image ideals promote negative feelings and dissatisfaction, many believe that the negative effects far outweighs any positive effects.

From a young age she watches Sissy manipulate men using her good looks and her mom survive through the struggle of having two kids and husband who did not support. And Evy continue her life when her husband deemed himself a failure and ran away. Francie had the gift of distinguishing the difference when someone was speaking out of ignorance or was purposely rude. Her teacher was ignorant about the reality of the world and the meaning of Francie’s stories but the women who called Johanna names and threw rocks at her knew exactly what they were saying and did not regret it. Furthermore the men in Francie’s life do not pit at each other, characters like Johnny, Uncle Whitman, Steve, Sergeant McShane, Mr. Mcgarrity, while most of them were not strong or perfect characters, and while“ They might hate each other they stuck together against the world and any woman who would ensnare of them” (238) Francie’s observations and personal experiences made such a strong impression for herself and an even stronger one on the reader. She develops into a more intelligent girl and she grows to realize that she shouldn’t be influenced by society as she upset at herself for being embarrassed to smile back when Johanna smiled at her. She grows to understand she must make her own judgments and not listen to others blindly and she promises herself. “’As long as I live I will never have a woman for a friend or ever trust any woman again”

Women and men of this society are generally very concerned with their image and portrayal of themselves to the general public. Some individuals study hard and become very successful and portray themselves as well- educated men and women. Others depend on their personality to get them far in life, and others are so concerned with their physical experience that they often lose the joy that comes from being happy with being who they are. Most individuals, primarily women, are obsessively concerned with their physical appearance and body image. They are mentally affected when their physical appearance is not up to par with the popular look and trends influenced by peers, the media, and environment.

The female body image is highly influenced by the mass media and the media’s portrayal of women, ‘70% of college women say they feel worse about their own looks after reading women’s magazines’ (University of Massachusetts & Stanford University, 2006), the portrayal of women in the media has an unrealistic approach and brings out body dissatisfactions and this results in eating problems and disorders.

The way people behave and think is the final product of socialization. From birth we are moulded to become the person we are today and therefore the sexualisation and objectification of women through modern media has a subsequent impact on female body image. This is especially insidious because of the media’s ability to create culture rather than reflect it.

Researchers Emily Balcetis, Shana Cole, Marie B. Chelberg, and Mark Alicke, in their study titled “Searching Out the Ideal: Awareness of Ideal Body Standards Predicts Lower Global Self-esteem in Women” aim to determine “whether awareness of the thin ideal has long-range and immediate consequences for self-evaluations, namely young women’s global self-esteem”. The question is interesting because it aims to find a direct correlation between society’s standard of beauty, most profoundly portrayed though the media, and women’s increasingly dropping levels of self-esteem as related to body-image. The article states that, from 1972, the number of women in the United States who feel dissatisfied with their body’s increased from 23% to 56% and the research question aims to establish the medias role in this astonishing increase (Balcetis, Cole, Chelberg, & Alicke, 2013, p. 1). The researchers hypothesized firstly, that “general, self-reported awareness of ideal body standards would correlate with baseline levels of self-esteem” (Balcetis, Cole, Chelberg, & Alicke, 2013, p. 3). And secondly, “that self-esteem would fluctuate in accordance with the ideal body standards that women are confronted with when they orient attention to and become aware of ideal body information” (Balcetis, Cole, Chelberg, & Alicke, 2013, p. 3). To determine this, the researchers tracked changing levels of self-esteem based on exposure to ideal body

Quick Write September 12th, chapter 5, What Beauty Sickness Does to Women I included the author's message “when Taffy writes that last sentence explaining how a woman's body is everyone’s business but her own, she means that a women knows the ‘ideals’ or ‘norms’ of a perfect body for a woman and she is constantly changing it or alternating it in order to please everyone around her… it is brought up how one study showed that when college women spent just a few minutes viewing a magazine advertisements that featured idealized images of women, their body shame increased”. My understanding of body image has really changed my perspective because I learned if I am constantly thinking about what others think about my body then I will never be happy. I

Body image expectations cause disorders in women. These expectations cause mental disorders as well as physical. The problems include: “depression, anorexia, bulimia nervosa, and physique anxiety” (Breines et. al 433-434). All of these

We are constantly surrounded by images of the “perfect” woman. She is tall, thin and beautiful. She rarely looks older than 25, has a flawless body, and her hair and clothes are always perfect. She is not human. She is often shown in pieces – a stomach, a pair of legs, a beautifully made up eye or mouth. Our culture judges women, and women judge themselves, against this standard. It is forgotten that “beauty pornography”, as Wolf says, focuses on underweight models that are usually 15 to 20 years old. Flaws, wrinkles and other problems are airbrushed out of the picture.

Society creates a standard of beauty for women that often changes along with society due to a new perspective on what it means to be beautiful in our culture. These standards for beauty create what our society believes makes a woman desirable, attractive, perfect, and overall beautiful.  Which then enforces unhealthy and unrealistic beauty ideals that negatively affect women's self-image and their body image because society has attributed beauty to self worth. The result is with the ever changing standards of beauty means women use various ways to alter their bodies and appearance by clothing, makeup, hair, dieting, exercising, and even taking extreme measures to perfect their looks through surgery.

When she was younger, she would flip through her sister’s magazines. She came to the realization that being skinny was attractive and appealing. She comprehended the fact that no one had the same appearance as her. They were lighter, had blonde flowy hair, and an hourglass figure. Looking at herself, she realized that she looked nothing like them. Looking back at the magazine she wondered, Is that what is desirable? Body image is how you see yourself in your head. A positive body image can improve your self-acceptance and self-esteem. A negative image can lead to feelings of depression and isolation. Many women want to rectify their body to have a “favorable” image. Body image has a detrimental influence on women because the media depicts an unrealistic body as ideal, women become susceptible to eating disorders, and women alter their body with cosmetic surgery.