Literary Analysis Of Eve Ensler's The Good Body

There are beauty standards all over the world, but America has one of the most highest and unreachable standard of the all. In the article “Whose Body is This,” the author Katherine Haines reflects the issue on how narrow-minded society, magazine and the rest of media is depicting the perfect body. The ideal body in America is established as skinny, tall, perfect skin, tight body are characteristics that destroyed majority of woman’s self esteem (172). As girls get older and into their teen years, they have been brainwashed to need to look like the unrealistic, and photoshopped models in magazines and advertisements. Girls don’t feel comfortable to be in their own skin, because they were not taught to love themselves for who they are right in the beginning.

The last factor that influences body image is social influences, especially family. In the Essay, Sirena often acknowledges her family’s opinion of her weight. When she lost weight family members made it known that they couldn’t believe it was her and some told her they knew she would eventually grow out of her “baby fat” to become a beautiful woman. Since her weight was fluctuating, her family always had their opinions. Her grandfather offered to pay her a thousand dollars if she lost weight. In this type of setting negative body image is inevitable. Furthermore, at the point in her life where she lost weight people at her school started treating her better. This shows that society only praises wat is identified as the norm.

Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s work, The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, examines how American societal changes are reflected on the female body. Brumberg’s work draws primarily from the diaries of young American girls, giving intimate glimpses into the inner workings of their minds about how they relate to their bodies.

Body image is an important concept in many adolescent and young adult minds. To have a positive body image is to know that you are beautiful. To be beautiful is to reach the standards of beauty in society. However, society is constantly changing those standards as time goes by. Many young men and women strive to reach the positive, even if it means their health, money, and mind. They have the media, such as magazines to thank for these wonderful standards.

It is no secret that women often change their bodies in order to meet the societal expectations that are portrayed in the media. The patriarchy and the male gaze dictate the ideal female which is depicted on television, in movies, and in magazines. Woman most often alter their weight in order to match the small slim physique of models. Weight is one of the main aspects of the female body that the patriarchy controls. Woman are taught by society that their natural body is not beautiful and that they must conform to the societal standard of a thin, size 0 woman in order to accommodate the male gaze. The patriarchy dictates this of a woman in order to maintain male dominance in society. However, these expectations have a negative effect on

Body image has always been a huge part for women in their lives. In the beginning of the essay Bordo gives a great opening with a good description that open your eyes. She speaks about how a young girl standing in the mirror who thinks she is fat when in actuality she is the right size according to her doctor’s chart. The young lady only thinks she fat because of what she sees on TV and how actress, singers, and artist’s bodies looks. With the media it has people thinking

This may seem a basically simple task, though her spin and the overall diction she uses to describe what she sees in the first few sentences suggest what will follow. For example, “…slender body, flawless (and more often than not white) skin; delicate, even facial features enhanced by makeup, carefully coifed hair…” Para 2). She then provides anecdotes from teens regarding their own body image before delving into the beginning of the 20th century, where she draws upon Brumberg’s 1997 book, “The Body Project. An Intimate History of American Girls”; a starting point for the conversation ahead. Lipkin then begins a chronicle of certain diseases associated with poor body image followed by the response of a specific cosmetic branding company. Lipkin closes her article by not providing a clear solution to the problem, but rather reinforcing the idea that women are seen as, “…both bait and targets…” (Para

There are many companies in the world today that put an idea of this perfect female body into the heads of women. These images lead to a faulty standard men hold of women and their bodies and that women strive to become. Margaret Atwood addresses the issue of the way men view the female body by writing her essay in the viewpoints of a male so the reader can better understand how the expectation men have of the female body is unrealistic. First, she uses an allusive comparison to show the male expectation of the female body and how it is objectified as if it were a doll that comes with accessories. Next, she uses an anecdote with defamiliarization to show how the way the father views a Barbie doll and the way it portrays the female body to young girls is hypocritical. Lastly, Margaret Atwood uses insidious diction to talk about how men not only view the female body as a product but how they also use the female body as a product which can be sold amongst businessmen. In The Female Body, Margaret Atwood uses many rhetorical devices to convey how the female body is viewed through the eyes of men.

The physical body has been seen as many things both positive and negative. It can be thought of as the temple which houses the soul or can be seen as entrapping, like a cage of flesh. More often it seems that the body, especially women’s bodies, are looked at in more complicated ways than the bodies of men. As I grew up, it began to feel more and more like my body, and the bodies of other women, did not actually belong to us like we believed. Through my Women’s Studies class I have gained more knowledge on the body as a political object. In this essay I will examine six different articles with the similar theme of women’s bodies, the expression of those bodies and how by using feminism as a political standpoint they gain power and ownership of their bodies.

While in the Women and the Body course, I was able to dissect the images, constraints, and beliefs associated with the woman’s body. The debate over body image originated from patriarchal constraints, deeming that women have to fit into an ideal of womanhood. A woman’s body image is suppose to be a direct link to the man she is with. She should have childbearing hips, a stature that is associated in being motherly, and breasts to breast feed the children. With that it grew into using man made objects to reinforce the patriarchal power about body

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.

A female should not feel insecure with her body when she is comfortable in her own skin, whether or not she weights 130 pounds or 150 pounds at 5’5”. According to Rehab’s study of the evolution of the female figure over one hundred years, “the body shapes of the most admired models have remained consistently slimmer than that of the average American woman.” Due to the significant increase in mass media throughout the twentieth century of the United States, there has been a noteworthy impact on the popular image of women. A woman being dissatisfied with their body is a everyday trend around the world where as

Preview of Main Points: I will begin by explaining how the perfect body image shown in the media is unrealistic, then, I will talk about how the unrealistic images lead to both men and women to have a low self-esteem and eating disorders that develop due to people wanting to look like the images shown in the media. Lastly, I’ll talk about a solution we can do to stop the portrayal of an unrealistic body image.

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

“The Girl I Hate” by Mona Awad tackles the daily problems of a girl who struggles with her body image. From counting calories to enjoying food, as if it is a sin, Awad creates a realistic story that many can relate to. Awad wrote a successful short story due to her ability to appeal to young females emotions, also known as pathos. Awad makes the audience feel a wide array of emotions from guilt to joy. It is easy to both love and hate the nameless main character. The author is successful because she has a purpose for creating the emotions the reader feels. Not only is Awad’s story incredibly relatable, but it is an important story for this day and age when more people are struggling with body confidence than ever.