Cultural Pressures to be Thin Essay

     Plato once said, "We behold beauty in the eye of the mind...." What some people consider beauty others may not. From the actresses that are shown on television, movies, models that are in magazines, and the pop stars that create hip and modern music videos, one could be under the impression that to be beautiful you must thin. Actresses such as Jennifer Aniston, Sarah Michelle Gheller, Clarista Flockheart, Courtney Cox and Debra Messing all have staring roles in their own television shows and are all extremely thin. The audiences of these shows being mostly women and adolescent girls, what kind of message about body image are they sending out?

In the society we live in today, what is one of the main problems that faces Americans? Being overweight is a steadily growing issue in our society. What’s even worse is that being skinny has become latest fashion statement. Advertisers have discovered that in today’s market, being skinny sells. The majority of people, especially women, are heavily influenced by the media of what the modern idea of beauty looks like. From day to day, people are swarmed with pictures and advertisements of stick thin actors or models that create an image of what the perfect appearance for people in our society. However, these standards of being stick thin are completely unrealistic. Going on a diet and working out can help you lose weight and become healthier,

It is essential to examine the cause of media’s increased influence on self-estem and body dissatisfaction before debating the possible solutions. First of all, as Geissler indicates in the essay, “We live in a fat-fearing and food moralizing culture where magazines, movies, and a multimillion dollar ‘health’ and diet industry all pump out the message ‘thinner is better’.” (330) The ideal of slender

Millions of teens and adults are faced with eating disorders and negative body images everywhere they go. Celebrities promote unrealistic standards and display what the “acceptable” body is. Because of our stick thin role models we have in the media today much of our society holds their own body image to the unobtainable standards of celebrities. People are bombarded with images of what’s “sexy” instead of what’s healthy (Helmich). In a world based around celebrities and media, shouldn’t they be promoting a healthy body image instead of the negative ones we are being smothered with?

There are no questions to whether the media has influenced the self-consciousness people have on their body or not. Whether it is the front of a magazine cover or in a film or television show, the selection of models or actors are primarily thin or fit leading readers and viewers to worry or want to change the way their body looks. Body image is the way one sees oneself and imagine how one looks. Having a positive body image means that most of the time someone sees themselves accurately, and feels comfortable in their body; negative body image, what the media exemplifies for the majority of the time, is just the opposite. The media uses unrealistic standards of beauty and bodily perfection to drive ordinary people to be dissatisfied with their body image which can result in the search to obtain these unreachable goals.

In the chapter The Adoption and Management of a “Fat” Identity, Douglas Degher and Gerald Hughes analyze how the reality of people that are overweight changes. “Obese people are fat first, and only secondary are seen as possessing ancillary characteristics.”(Degher and Hughes p.265). In today's society being overweight or not having the ideal body being portrayed by the media is usually considered as unhealthy. As a consequence, pharmaceutical drugs are being created daily to help reduce weight, workout dvds are being produced daily, and clothes keeps getting reduced and limited so that overweight people have a hard time finding something that fits them and that they like. In the eyes of countless individuals, being fat is considered deviant

Obesity has become an epidemic across the United States. Americans have continued to gain weight, increasing the amount of people that are considered obese by millions every few years. More and more experts have come to a consensus: weight needs to be addressed and changed in America. Many experts, however, have not found a way to completely solve this problem at large. In the article, “Rethinking Weight”, senior writer Amanda Spake directs attention to the barriers our society has built for obesity treatment. Through this attention, it becomes evident these barriers have developed from the changing ideals in our society. Roberta Seid, a lecturer at the University of Southern California, argues in “Too “Close to the Bone”: The Historical Context for Women’s Obsession with Slenderness” how our body ideals have changed the way our society views obesity. Both authors emphasize the problem our society faces with obesity becoming an epidemic, and how that needs to be changed so our society can live happier and healthier lives. Although both authors are achieving the same point, Spake concludes that obesity has stemmed from pharmaceutical problems and biological factors, while Seid holds that obesity has come from the changing fashion and body ideals in our society. By reading both articles in conjunction, it becomes clear that the root of this problem is our societal issues, obesity has become an epidemic because of the way our society neglects obesity from all aspects.

This article supports the book and its ideas about how we become obsessed with being thin. This article opens up the possibility that some are at more of a risk for body

The question of how the obesity epidemic has evolved over time is best answered by examining the topical literature—not necessarily critical analyses of anti-obesity propaganda, but the propaganda itself. The difference in content is similar to the distinction between primary and secondary sources. Although authors and critics like Deborah Lupton and Natalie Boero can connect concepts between the literature on a wider scale, the actual documents generated by anti-obesity groups and fat advocates provide the best context and examples of the trajectory of the supposed crises in the present day. Here we examine two such documents, one from the Mayo Clinic’s weight loss plan, “My Weight Solutions,” and the other from a writer in support of the fat advocacy movement, Health at Every Size (HAES). Both texts are guidelines for personal health in relation to lifestyle and whether weight plays a role in health; there are similarities between them, as well as stark contrasts. However, it may come as a surprise that there are more similarities than not. Both documents are written with a goal in mind—that is, encouraging readers to engage in healthy lifestyle choices. There is a significant focus on the individual and on realistic behavioral, and therefore psychological, strategies within both documents. Although both documents relate to concepts in Lupton 's Fat and Boero’s Killer Fat, the focus of this analysis will be on the primary documents themselves. The key difference between

The media group that retouches images skews the “normal” body image of people through many of its outlets, including models in advertising and magazines, and actors in TV and movie productions. “The average model portrayed in the media is approximately 5’11” and 120 pounds. By contrast, the average American woman is 5’4” and 140 pounds” (Holmstrom, 2004). This statistic shows how the media manipulates consumers into believing that because they are not what the average model looks like, they are not living up to a certain standard which implies that they need to look like that to be beautiful. Another research fact that shows a similar concept is that, “In the United States, 94% of female characters in television programs are thinner than the average American woman, with whom the media frequently associate happiness, desirability, and success in life” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This association of female thinness and happiness, desirability and success makes consumers believe they must achieve this unrealistic thinness to achieve more ultimate goals and fulfillment in life. “The media also explicitly instruct how to attain thin bodies by dieting, exercising, and body-contouring surgery, encouraging female consumers to believe that they can and should be thin” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This idealization of thinness in the media is seen so much, and is extremely harmful to women’s self confidence and is often associated with body image dissatisfaction, which can be a precursor to social anxiety, depression, eating disturbances, and poor self-esteem (Yamamiya et al.,

Many people start with diets, but these diets do not have fast enough results, so they turn to starvation, eating disorders, and extreme workouts. “Among women, internalization of the thin-ideal has been linked to dietary restraint that may precede eating disorders. Among men, internalization of the muscular-ideal has been associated with various strategies to increase muscularity” (Gudnadottir 151). Reaching the goal of society starts off as a simple diet. When the diet does not have fast enough results, things become more extreme. Women start to starve themselves by only eating once a day or only eating salad and not gaining all the nutrients and vitamins their body needs to survive. They call this being “healthy.” Men, on the other hand, begin to increase their serving sizes and go on an all protein diet to try to gain as much muscle mass as possible. This is followed by extreme weight lifting at the gym, and sometimes can lead to the use of steroids. In severe cases, men and women both begin to develop eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and binge eating. Men and women do not realize the toll these extreme measures take on their bodies. They think by becoming this way they are being healthy and improving their overall health, but in reality, they are harming their bodies. “However, these practices could increase the

Since the 1980’s scholars and medical professionals have branded obesity as a disease of epidemic proportions in order to instill fear into the substantial overweight population of America so that they may begin slimming down, whether through professional, unconventional, unreliable, or sometimes unsafe methods. Constant negative portrayal of excess body fat has led society

Today 's society is constantly presented with misrepresentations of the ideal body image through the advertising of diet plans and supplements. Companies in the fitness industry scam people into buying useless products or services by advertising with individuals that have, what the mass media sees as, the 'perfect ' body composition. In addition to getting consumers to buy into a product or service, these companies also aid society with the spreading of this fake idea of what classifies as the perfect body. They portray a body image that is unattainable for most individuals in society, despite how many of those supplements being advertised they buy. The models used in these advertisements, are in most cases, starving themselves, enhanced via illegal substances, or are photo-shopped to the point where even they do not look like the model displayed in the ad. All this has led to many people wanting to strive for that perfect body, that in reality, is impossible to achieve. In order to show the affect these advertisements play in our society, I will be deconstructing multiple ads in the fitness industry, as well as multiple peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles centered around the impact media has on an individual 's self-image.

Basically, the media is doing nothing but using subliminal messages. The way they portray the models in magazines, it only confuses a human’s mind. This makes them believe that they must look like them to be considered beautiful. Often in magazines, when positive values, success, love, and happiness, a thin person is shown. This not only completely lowers a “healthy”, or a plus sized person’s self-esteem, but the media also tries to make it seem as if in order to be happy and successful, a person must be skinny (Piazza). Every day, companies come up with a new beauty product, or a new diet product to leer someone into buying it to make themselves beautiful. New products every day completely sets aside the idea that natural beauty is already beautiful enough. According to the media, though, people need these products to look more humane, or look younger and thinner. The media also using editing and

In today’s society we let the media decide everything in our lives from what clothes we should wear, music we should listen to, and how we should look. One of the biggest problems that both men and women face is body shaming, because the media sets standards for young kids and young adults., they often times try and fit the description of “perfect” which leads these people to either be depressed because they do not look like people want them to look or harm themselves in order to achieve the desired look. The most common ways the media shames both men and women are by celebrities and how they are the “perfect” body, publishing magazines of what is the ideal man and woman, and by the people who believe being “too” fat is bad and being “too” skinny is bad.