The Mother Daughter Relationship and Self-Image Essay

The author of this article begins her analysis of the rise in eating disorders by acknowledging America’s obsession with being the ideal weight. From an extremely young age, American children are being taught that women in movies and on the covers of magazines possess the ideal figure. The author states “Children are being taught…being fat is the worst thing one can be” (Bordo 1). This is disturbing to say the least. There many attributes worse than being overweight: dishonest, cruel, and murderous to name a few. Bordo also uses an example in the first paragraph of her essay that is appalling. Alicia Silverstone, the lead role in Clueless, was completely bombarded with insults about her weight, though she had only gained a few pounds since her starring role. The advertisers did

Nearly all girls in their teenage years detest their bodies and diet enthusiastically. The focus of the book Fat Talk leads the person who is reading or the one conducting investigation to think of the survival of girls, providing approaches into how their parents have a discussion with them regarding their transforming bodies. Black girls always have a high regard for their mother’s powers in insisting on taking the right diets while on the other side white girls portray their mothers individual fat chat, fathers painful teasing and the manner in which their mothers at times go on a diet together to flee the family irritation, loose thighs as well as full hips. Most girls evade meals to avoid weight increase that their parents find wrong.

In her article, Peggy Orenstein touches on how females develop skewed body standards from the media and others around them at a young age. Parents start to worry about their daughter’s body image even if they fall within “the female body standards” based on how others may view them. Children as young as Kindergarten start to gain a sense of “fat phobia” meaning they are afraid of either becoming fat or fatter people. She also writes about ways parents can help combat the body expectations put on daughters, like stressing what a daughter’s body can do, praising accomplishments, getting her involved in a sports team, and volunteering. She incorporates the idea that to children, physical appearance is becoming more prevalent than ones’ characteristics. On page 3 of “Fear of Fatness,” Orenstein mentions how the phases of life are becoming blurred: girls are trying to look like adult women, and adult women are trying to look more like young girls. One of the last things that Orenstein makes clear in her article is that

Once upon a time, women were celebrated for their curves. Weight was a symbol of wealth and fertility in a woman. During this time, women were subjugated to being a housewife and nothing more. As time and society progressed, a woman’s prison became her body and no longer her home. Women had the freedom to vote, work, play, but could no longer be fat. This new beauty standard of thinness affects women in many ways. In “Add Cake, Subtract Self Esteem” written by Caroline Knapp, she describes her own personal experience on how this impossible standard affects women’s eating which leads to eating disorders and an unhealthy relationship with food. In “The Beauty Myth” written by Naomi Wolf, she describes the mental effects on women from a

Orenstein acknowledges how Ava, though fat, still embraces her life. Ava is beginning to see the reality that fat is criticized; nonetheless, she handles the comments in a healthy manner for her age. Ava is not the only one facing this obstacle. Individuals have started to acknowledge how young girls, in multiple countries, are reacting in damaging ways to the effects of this so-called fat epidemic. Many are questioning where it comes from. Within the school they attend, among friends they associate with, or media they view, Orenstein points out potential sources that may have caused children to feel conflicted about their weight. She emphasizes about the importance of parents praising their children for what they achieve rather than how they look. However, this advice is easier said than done, because as Orenstein addresses, the world often perceives women for their appearance over other characteristics they may embody. We come to wonder how girls went from caring about bettering themselves and their minds, to obsessing over physical appearance. Orenstein emphasizes the importance of this topic with Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s work on comparing the thoughts of girls that lived in separate centuries. In doing so, one can see how drastically thoughts shifted from internal self-worth to external self-image. Orenstein concludes with the idea

The article Never Just Pictures, written by Susan Bordo, is about how the media’s usage of images of beautiful people with no body fat or imperfections cause the youth to develop eating disorders, and feel insecure about their own image. Susan begins by telling us about how the media targeted the nineteen year old star of Clueless, Alicia Silverstone, when she attended an award show a little bit heavier then the public was used to. She says that we are led to believe that “fat is the devil” and that having any excess fat is bad. She claims commercials and ads staring people with ideal bodies embed the idea that being fat is bad in our minds. One way she proves this is she uses a study that asked ten and eleven

The United States is said to be suffering from an obesity epidemic, and studies show African American women suffer from higher rates of being overweight or obese than Caucasian women. African American women are pressured by their culture to be self-accepting of their bodies that God gave them, and in their culture beauty is not only measured by weight, but by other personal features. Many Black women believe that the ‘thin ideal’ is for White women because they describe being heavier as sexy and having curves. With Black women being self-accepting of their bodies, many perceive themselves weighing less than they do in reality compared to White women who typically visualize themselves heavier than they are. It is also shown that for African

A major way in which they express this negative self-perception is to restrain their diets or binge-eat (Eating Disorders Review, 2007, 5). Many cultures idealize robust women and practice feasting as a common social practice. However, women feel pressured by the stick-thin images they see on Western-influenced television advertisements to lose weight or look more conventionally attractive by Western standards. They feel torn between participating in their traditional custom and looking like the women they see idealized in the media. They feel guilt and embarrassment about overeating but participate in it as part of the cultural norm. (Becker, 2003, 430)

Black culture has always been the more voluptuous curves in women, yet those women were considered cornbread fed and the ones who weren’t blessed with these assets, didn’t go out their way for unethical surgical practices. The social media negative influence on African American women growing up within the 21st century has made it seem the simple life is depending on the curves of your body, instead the knowledge of your mind and the power in your beliefs. Proper parenting is started at home, yet with social networks being such a part of our children’s lives, the media is also in the homes. In the process of the media influence, I believe the importance of the media understanding the black culture and the expectations of a woman’s curves also cause many medical issues that we are associated with, such as: Type I and II diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. With overweight being accepted in most black families homes, the media and social networks should deter as much as possible from promoting the oversexed woman is the ideal woman. The effect social networks has on the children coming behind us is powerful and I believe the power of the media should be used more effectively.

The subject of this article are young girls, mainly who are in their teenage years, but also the parents of teenage girls. However, anyone can be impacted and learn from this article. This article questions why society drills the idea of thinness into the minds of people, and every reader can take a different stance and have a different opinion on the issue. Some people may take a stance and say that individuals, themselves, are the only influence on their body image. However, others may take the stance and say that society, as a whole, has a huge influence on an individual and their body image. The author of this article, Erica Goode, includes many quotes from parents of teenage girls, who feel as if they need to go to extreme measures to fit in with society. In this case, the author is creating the stance that society plays a role when it comes to influencing an individual. Goode also provides many

For young girls and women in America, an unattainable standard of beauty is set. This ideal image of beauty even comes equipped with a specific ratio of female anatomical measurements. A 36-inch bust, 24-inch waist, and 36-inch hips. Women go to great lengths to achieve this thin yet curvaceous physique, from eating disorders, to diet pills to plastic surgery. Despite human efforts, for most, these goals are unattainable because we cannot change the physical ratios of our bodies on the skeletal level. This is something that does not come along with the “thin is in” message, so instead our country has nearly half of its females from ages 6-8 stating in studies that they would like to be slimmer. We are programming our children to believe that beauty is outward and is achieved through being aesthetically pleasing instead of educationally enriched and of sound

Eleven million women in the United States suffer from eating disorders- either self-induced semi-starvation (anorexia nervosa) or a cycle of bingeing and purging with laxatives, self-induced vomiting, or excessive exercise (bulimia nervosa) (Dunn, 1992). Many eating disorder specialists agree that chronic dieting is a direct consequence of the social pressure on American females to achieve a nearly impossible thinness. The media has been denounced for upholding and perhaps even creating the emaciated standard of beauty by which females are taught from childhood to judge the worth of their own bodies (Stephens & Hill, 1994). To explore the broader context of this controversial issue, this paper draws upon several aspects on how the media

Ethnicities that are heavily influenced by culture can have an effect on the outlook of their children’s weight. It is evident that there is a certain aesthetic that some ethnicities tend to lean towards when it comes to body image. They may not feel concerned with an overweight child because their culture prefers their children with more fat on their bodies. The Maternal and Child Health

Now that it has been proven that the thin ideal is being pushed on children, children as young as 5, one should know the possible consequences of its exposure. When children are constantly being shown one certain ideal, it will soon become internalized, which leads to behaviors that often go unnoticed by parents. While these behaviors may seem harmless at first, they can be part of a bigger unhealthier problem. A study was done where young girls played with dolls with different body proportions, and then were given snacks to eat, this was the result, “they ate less food when they played with the thin dolls than when they played with the average sized

“Parental behavioral patterns concerning shopping, cooking, eating and exercise have an important influence on a child’s energy, balance and ultimately their weight” said diet specialist, Anne Collins (“Childhood Obesity Facts”). Childhood obesity has more than tripled since the 1980’s (“Childhood Obesity Facts”). Childhood obesity often leads to obesity as an adult which can put a person at greater risks dealing with the heart, diabetes, and many other obese related diseases. People want to blame the schools and today’s technology for childhood obesity, in reality, the responsibility lies in the hands of their parents.