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Body Image Research Paper

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Our Outrageous Obsession with Herculean Men and Emaciated Women Over the past several years, our society’s collective body image has declined to an all-time low. Throughout history, there has always been some sort of body dissatisfaction and negative body image, but never before has it reached such devastatingly low levels. In its simplest form, body image can be defined as “our views about our bodies” (Durham University). It’s how we feel living inside these bodies we call home. It is one’s concern with his or her weight and physique (Cuban). We spend every moment from when we enter this world until our presence in this world ceases in these bodies, and so many people these days spend this time hating their temple. A question posed often in …show more content…

It was the fat shaming by my mother when I was a child at home. It was the weight bullying, including physical assault, by other kids at school.” (Cuban). Oftentimes, we forget that words have as much weight as they do and how much of an effect they can have on someone. People comment on others’ appearances without truly ever thinking of the consequences that their words can have. Compliments have the potential to fluff a person’s ego for a short time while insults can chip away at a person for days, months, or even years. Brian Cuban was teased about his weight by the people that he was around all the time and by the one person that should have made him feel loved and safe in any situation: his mother. Due to this constant bombardment of ridicule about his weight, Brian’s body image and confidence was corrupted. His positive body image plummeted and never truly recovered and years later, he developed muscle dysmorphia, “a preoccupation or obsession with a small or even non-existent (imagined) bodily ‘defect’ to the level that it results in destructive behaviors such as eating disorders, steroid abuse, plastic surgery abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, and so on.” (Cuban). It was the abuse that Brian faced and the primitive “desire to be accepted by the kids [he] saw every day” (Cuban) that drove him to such a disastrous state of mind. The harsh and cruel words that Brian’s peers and family flung at him on a daily basis weighed so heavily on his heart and brain that he fell into self-destructive tendencies and terribly negative body

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