Objectification Of Women In American Culture

Imagine you were a woman. How much pain are you willing to go trough I order to meet the social standards of society? Would you try plastic surgery, starving yourself, or shove things down your throat? Women have become so self-aware of their physical appearance to the extent where they are willing to do any means necessary to receive their desired figure.

In society, women relate to friends, models and actresses which are actually people who are in the industry portraying the ‘ideal body.’ Women think too much about what others think of them instead of just caring about themselves. They also choose to take the unhealthy approach and gain all these bad habits to obtain the ‘ultimate’ body image of this ‘ideal woman’ society has created.

This is a big problem in today?s society because it has been found that sexual objectification contributes to mental health problem such as; eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and sexual dysfunction. Woman would eventually self-objectify and will judge their body according to how media is portraying the? perfect attitude? ?perfect body? basically the ?perfect woman? most of the time it is something that cannot be attained. If a woman cannot value herself for how she naturally is then men will not be able to value them and therefore creating an endless cycle of woman sexual objectification, since my book was about woman sexual objectification this does not mean man have it easy, there is still a lot of sexual objectification towards men.

Even after all the trouble women go through to look according to society’s norms, people still catch every small thing that is not perfect to society. According to Lois Tyson, “she is objectified…defined only by her difference from male norms and values, defined by what she (allegedly) lacks…” (92). Women are unmistakably different from men biologically; so why is it such a shock when she has a small part of her skin showing, just because it is her breast or any other ‘forbidden’ areas? If a woman shows her butt cheeks it is disgraceful, but if a man shows his butt cheeks, it is hot. It is the same body part just of difference sexes, yet society has labeled it differently for each sex. Women objectification should not be seen as her fault, because like every woman around her, she is doing what she has to to stay comfortable.

to the socioculteral models of body image and disorder eating, body dissatisfaction can develop when women repeatedly compare their own appearance to the appearance of

If every woman has the same idea of beauty, then they all have goal that they work to achieve (Ferrante, 2014, p. 28). Nonetheless, this underscores the fact that women come in a variety of shapes and sizes, which make achieving this goal difficult, if not impossible (Ferrante, 2014, pp. 201-202; Shaw & Lee, 2011, p. ?). So, while having gender ideals in a society was likely meant to promote social order, it in turn created another form of disruption. This unintended disruption, or latent dysfunction, is what can be recognized as poor body image. Not only does poor body image foster insecurity within an individual, it causes women have hostility towards each other.

Today’s culture has accredited women to focusing on their bodies as a strategy that sanctions them to determine how well others will treat them (Knoblock-Westerwick & Crane, 2012). A meta-analysis conducted by Festinger and Botta, discussed social comparison theory which revolved around the paradigm that individuals made mental judgments in relation to their own qualities and compared them to others (image one below discusses the process of social comparison based on various factors). It was found that college-going females who were more appearance driven were more likely to suffer from body image dissatisfaction since they often compared themselves to those who were better off. Further studies indicated that students frequently conformed to such appearance related expectations to gain approval of peers (Ferreday, 2011)(Knoblock-Westerwick &

Basically, the word "objectification" is used only in relation to advertising that is not quite right. This phenomenon is quite extensive, and if try to enumerate all

Images of female bodies are everywhere. Women, and their bodies, sell everything from food to cars. Women's magazines are full of articles urging women to fit a certain mold. While standing in a grocery store line you can see all different magazines promoting fashion, weight loss, and the latest diet. Although the magazines differ, they all seemingly convey the same idea: if you have the perfect body image you can have it all…the perfect marriage, loving children, great sex, and a rewarding career. The media, whether TV, print, or Internet advertising, seems to play a huge role in influencing women of all ages; from adolescence and teens, to women in their twenties and thirties, as well as

These objectification trends are on the rise and are creating a low self-image for our young children. This will continue to spiral downward as they mature into grown women.

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.

Objectification is a word that has many negative connotations. Nussbaum identifies objectification “as a pejorative term, connoting a way of speaking, thinking, and acting that the speaker finds morally or socially objectionable, usually, though not always, in the sexual realm.” Nussbaum’s definition is vague, like many of her other works, and places the connotation of the word itself into the “speaker’s” own hands. While it is good to allow wiggle room for concepts, an act which allows them to be more universal for the general public as a whole, because of the long-standing connotations associated with objectification, I believe that the word itself already implies something “morally or socially objectionable,” and the speaker’s own

The experimental investigation held by (Yamamiya, 2005-2008) observed 123 young college women’s behaviors before and after the exposure to these images. The results of the research indicated that relative to a control group, the exposure to thin and beautiful media images negatively influenced the state body image of participants with high internalization levels. In the study, Sex Roles by (Harper & Tiggemann, 2008), objectification theory by (Fredrickson & Roberts, Psychology of Women Quarterly, 1997) emphasizes that experiences of sexual objectification socialize women to engage in self-objectification. The study (Harper & Tiggemann, 2008) used an experimental investigation to examine the effects of media images on self-objectification of women. A total number of 90 Australian female undergraduates aged from 18 to 35 were randomly chosen to view images of a thin-ideal woman. Participants are reported with greater state self-objectification, weight-related appearance anxiety, negative mood and body dissatisfaction. The results demonstrate that self-objectification can be stimulated in women without direct focusing attention on their own

It 's not a mystery that society 's ideals of beauty have a drastic and frightening effect on women. Popular culture frequently tells society, what is supposed to recognize and accept as beauty, and even though beauty is a concept that differs on all cultures and modifies over time, society continues to set great importance on what beautiful means and the significance of achieving it; consequently, most women aspire to achieve beauty, occasionally without measuring the consequences on their emotional or physical being. Unrealistic beauty standards are causing tremendous damage to society, a growing crisis where popular culture conveys the message that external beauty is the most significant characteristic women can have. The approval of prototypes where women are presented as a beautiful object or the winner of a beauty contest by evaluating mostly their physical attractiveness creates a faulty society, causing numerous negative effects; however, some of the most apparent consequences young and adult women encounter by beauty standards, can manifest as body dissatisfaction, eating disorders that put women’s life in danger, professional disadvantage, and economic difficulty.