Examples Of Body Blame Is Socially Constructed Deviance

Focus on appearance is at an all-time high in American culture increasing the potential for negative body image. Poor body image increases the risk for extreme weight/body control behaviors. Researchers have found that increased preoccupation with appearance and body dissatisfaction put people at greater risk for engaging in dangerous practices to control weight and size. Extreme dieting, exercise compulsion, laxative abuse, vomiting, smoking and use of anabolic steroids have all been associated with negative body image. ("Body Image," 2012).

In the essay “The Globalization of Eating Disorders” by Susan Bordo speaks about eating disorders. In society today appearance is a huge factor. Even though appearance has always been a major thing but now day’s people take it to the extreme when trying to have a certain body image. Now day’s people think beauty is whatever is on the outside, instead of the inside and the outside. Most people go on crazy strict diets, surgery and some go through starvation in order to become a certain body size. Eating disorders are becoming more in effect now and not just in the United States , but happens to be going worldwide and not only with just the women, but now with men as well. Within the essay Bordo’s explains about how the body image, media, and culture influence the standard of the beauty leads to eating disorder. Another factor is family that causes someone to form an eating disorder. Those four factors are the main key roles that play apart on how eating disorders are being used.

Body Dissatisfaction, a common perception shared by female and male alike, has proven to have a large socioculture affect on the current society. Researcher account for this penomenon through the concept of assimilation and comparison. In John Cloud’s ssay “Never Too Buff”, he emphasizes the effect of sociomedia on Individual’s internalization of body image, including its risk factors; such as steriod uses and obssessive compulsive disorders. Where as Cynara Geissler, in her essay ”Fat Acceptance: A basic Primer”, promotes fat acceptance as a social and corporeal justice principle, advocating the population to retaliate against capitalist diet culture and media. But is social media solely responsible for this culture phenomenon? or is it also related to the environment and individuals around us.

Societal pressure also comes in the form of body shaming, which is defined as the criticism of another person’s body shape or appearance. According to a 2016 study, there is correlation between body shaming, body dissatisfaction, and eating disorders, all of which happen to be most prevalent in young women (Mustapic p. 447). In recent years, body shaming has become a huge problem due to the popularity of social media platforms. Women of all shapes and sizes are ridiculed on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and other sites for not conforming to societal normalities. The 2016 study also assessed eating disorders in relation to age and body mass index (BMI) of participants (Mustapic p. 449). Age did not have much effect on the data, which is unsurprising due to the fact that all participants were close in age. What is more surprising, however, is that BMI also had little effect on the data. One would think that women with greater BMIs would

“Body shaming someone describes how mean the society can be to troll someone on their physical appearance” (Jain). Body-shaming people affects their self-esteem. People think it is normal to criticize the body of others because they are accustomed to do it every day, that sometimes they do not even realize it. Society body shames others all the time, instead of helping them feel secure and happy with their bodies. They want other people to look the way they want to be look at. Body shaming is affecting people physically and mentally.

In Bill Moyers interview with Margaret Atwood, she states “When societies come under stress these kinds of things happen. People start looking around for essentially human sacrifices” (?). A scapegoat is a person or a group of people who are punished for the mistakes of others. In the history of our society, scapegoats have been both necessary and important. The reason for this is because it unites people and can be seen as a temporary solution to problems that a society may be facing. Is it easier to get rid of individuals or groups of people than it is to solve the underlying problem? History shows that it is common for scapegoating to be used especially under stressful situations. Psychologically uncomfortable feelings such as anger, frustration, envy, guilt, and fear are projected onto another person or group. This is the human ego at work.

The video that Dr. Cohan shared was really insightful and very informative.Eating disorders and bodty image has been an issue in our society for a very long time. A lot of points were made by Dr. Cohan to help her audience understand obesity and body image in relation to the sociology view of things. For most of us, our body is very private. It's something that we cherish and respect and take care of. It is our home and our responsibility is to take care for it. But like Dr. Cohan pointed out, as private as our body is to us it is actually a public issue that relates to social structure. She states that the body is socially and culturally constructed. I can agree with this statement. Society and different cultural aspects definitely influence and determine the decisions we make in regards to our body and body image. I found it interesting in knowing the different ways a body could be viewed, in terms of how it can be percieved, valued, and treated. The way Milian King suggested that the body becomes a sight for asserting, imposing, performing, challenging, and destabilizing categories of gender, race ethnicity, and sexuality. On a day to day basis, one doesn't think of all the ways the image of a body is broken down, but when it is brought to light in this way, it is true.

In her essay, “The Globalization of Eating Disorders,” Susan Bordo informs her audience of the growing trends in eating disorders. Through her argument, Bordo illustrates the cruel identity of body-image distortion syndrome while she searches for a solution to the eating-disorder problem by looking to its birthplace in culture. Making use of several examples and scenarios, facts and statistics, and appeals to pathos and logos to construct her argument, Bordo shows a strong intent on eradicating the growing crisis in a reasonably sound argument.

Entertainment bends the society’s values towards pro-fitness and fat-shaming which creates a hierarchy. Fat-shaming in the society’s entertainment is very available and prominent. People can watch the

Often, people of all ages, race, and gender catch themselves gazing into mirrors for hours, blaming themselves for the way they look, not realizing that the media is actually the one to blame for many people’s body image. Body image is the way people see themselves, or how they assume other people see them. It is not likely to see a plus sized model in a magazine or a model on the runway with blemishes on her face. A person’s negative perception of their own body is not because they think it is wrong to look and be healthy; it is because the media is telling them that being a size 2 with flawless skin is healthy and beautiful.

In the case of child birthing, a scapegoat has been created through technology that discourages women from wanting to have close to a natural birth as possible with the mindset of “giving birth is hard but satisfying work that women are completely capable of performing” (MacDonald, 372). In the case of cosmetic surgery in Venezuela, the media has commercialized a certain depiction of a beautiful person and that affects the way the women view themselves as cosmetic surgery is seen to “maintain mental equilibrium and improve one’s self-esteem” (Gulbas, 197) and causes others to bully individuals that do not fit the depiction. This weighs heavily on an individual that an up-rise is now seen with men wanted to enhance their body also. Finally in the case of fat shame, the invention of BMI created by a certain group determines if you are considered skinny or fat is a “scientific uncertainty” (Greenhalgh,

Feminist fat acceptance movement attempts to equate fat stigma with other forms of oppression (racism, classism, ableism, ageism, etc.) due to the political importance of these single fights (Chastain, 2015). In fact, fat individuals are as diverse as any other group of people such as fat queer people, fat people with disabilities, fat black people or fat indigenous people (Chastain, 2015). Indeed, also fat women have been exposed to various oppressions and rigorous beauty standards (James, 2013), medicalized discourses (Afful & Ricciardelli, 2015), political expectations and health public narratives that condemn large bodies (Friedman, 2012).

Using the same principle, decoding the words “victim of beauty” leaves me associated to the power of appearance and it’s ability to injure. According to the philologist and literary historian Roger Fowler “meanings of the words in a language are the community’s established knowledge”. It is common knowledge that “victim” refers to someone who has been harmed, injured or killed, however a deeper meaning is found when the word is associated to the psychological injuries rather than the physical. Currently, men are beginning to experience, just as much as women, the increasing social and cultural pressure to meet the ideology of unachievable image of natural beauty and that results in a feeling of anxiety and rise in eating disorders, already vastly present amongst the female generation. Nevertheless, aside from the pressure created by the current visual culture it can be interpreted that victims, of the construction of a specific standard of beauty and attractiveness, are also all mistreated people who fail to meet this ideology besides the people struggling to maintain their formerly natural beauty and aiming to reach their utmost level of perfection. Language takes part in producing identities and the creation of identity related to words such as “obese” has harmed and rejected a vast number of people from society due to their fabricated identity upon their physical appearance. This rejection can lead to serious health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease,

Sociology of the body examines how our modern world affects our physical and symbolic bodies. Institutional forces play a major role in the changes that our physical and symbolic bodies go through. In fact, sociology of the body can be seen through our health, body image, and sexuality. Many people spend countless hours unsatisfied with their appearance, and some actually believe that it actually affects how people view themselves as human beings. However, people really only remember you how your treat them. The most important category within the sociology of the body is health and illness. Without health, our body wouldn’t function normally. In addition, a growing number of people feel ashamed about their bodies and tend to diet too often

Body-Shaming is known as criticizing or humiliating someone by making impolite comments on an individual's body shape or size. Body-shaming is a subject that has been recently brought to light with the use of social media; many celebrities have talked about body-shaming along with quite a few other individuals who have even went out to do social experiments. Generations and generations have passed and as the years go by, the problems only seems to get worse. Comments like “you should put more meat on your bones” and “you should go on a diet” are both equally demeaning and overused. It shouldn’t matter what someone’s body size or shape is to anyone as long as that person is happy and content with himself or herself. Almost everyone has