The Psychological Scar Will Never Fade Away

While one may be tired of hearing women, specifically “feminists”, blame society for all of their problems, Susie Orbach illustrates several valid points concerning obesity and eating disorders in her essay, “Fat as a Feminist Issue”. With her feministic lenses on, Orbach highlights the underlying roots of why obesity and eating disorders are so prominent with the female sex. As said in her essay, “50% of women are estimated to be overweight” (Orbach 201), which is why women should definitely consider Orbach’s view on the obesity epidemic. Orbach argues throughout her piece that the struggle of women being “fat” is actually a response to the culture and social structure in which women are boxed in making it a feminist issue, not a matter of just overeating.

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

According to Ann Marie Paulin in “Cruelty, Civility and Other Weighty Matters”, the mass media are discriminating against overweight people, which creates a society where being fat is looked down upon. Paulin argues that, “the media are notorious for getting things less than accurate” (243), therefore we shouldn’t believe how they depict fat people on tv, magazines and other media sources. The author believes that not all overweight people are like, how the media portrays them, but rather their lifestyle is influenced by the culture we live in. She claimed that, “Sugary or fatty foods are often available in grab and go packages that are so much easier to take to work or eat in the car than making a healthy snack” (245). She believe there are evidence to show that humans are naturally attracted to unhealthy foods, but society continue to manufacture them to make people eat more (243-249). I agree with Paulin about how the media need to stop fat shaming because it’s not only making people feel bad, but it is promoting obesity.

Society today has distorted what a healthy physique actually looks like. It tells you, if you don’t have muscles bulging from under your skin then you are out of shape. And that if you are overweight you are just ugly. Another false concept is that if you are overweight you’re lazy or not self disciplined (Bordo 2). There are so many factors that have to be accounted for when evaluating someone’s weight. To assume that someone is lazy or weak because they are overweight, is ignorant. Many people are deceived into thinking that obesity is terrible like a sin. In her article Susan Bordo gives an example of a study taken where children chose obesity to be more uncomfortable or embarrassing than dismembered hands or facial deformities when shown

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

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

Our culture uses health and wellness with food to divide groups as well. Julier ("The Political Economy of Obesity: The Fat Pay All") discusses how obesity vilifies certain groups and how poverty and obesity have a function in society, serving the industry and the economy. Julier says rhar obesity vilifies women, the poor, and people of color, groups of people that are already marginalized, and the stress of life as a marginalized group can lead to a disordered relationship with food. Americans are incredibly intolerant of individuals who have let themselves go, and get even angrier when those individuals don't do anything about it to get to the socially accepted normal: skinny (Mead "Why Do We Overeat?"). Julier ("The Political Economy of Obesity: The Fat Pay All") gives 13 political, economic, and cultural functions of poverty and obesity, one of them being the idea that when fatness is related to irresponsible behavior, those who aren't fat and stick to the socially constructed normal of thin are able to maintain and create public agenda to control and vilify the obese and overweight.

It’s estimated that nearly 1/3 of people suffer from obesity in North America. Rather than being a part of the solution, the media has a portrayal of what one should and should not look like, what is beautiful and what is not, typically possessing unrealistic standards and showing those that are overweight, as weak-willed individuals, who generally are blue collared individuals. This paper shall discuss obese individuals and how they are portrayed on television or on online streaming programming. Secondly, this paper shall discuss why this group has such a negative portrayal. Third, this paper will discuss what social pressures and production forces shape these portrayals. Finally, this paper will incorporate a media theory and explain what effects it has on the audiences and how obese individuals are typically treated in society.

The pressure to lose weight in today’s society inhibits the personality and health of overweight people while essentially increasing the weight of the people who experience these pressures (Worley 163-167). So reasons Mary Ray Worley in her article, “Fat and Happy: In Defense of Fat Acceptance.” Worley uses her personal experience as well as a small number of facts to dispute why overweight people struggle as they attempt to contribute to society (163-167). In the beginning of her article she references an association of which she is a member, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, to convey the possibilities to advance society when judgement based on size is abandoned (163-164). The association holds a conference every year, and Worley continually refers to the atmosphere at the convention as “another planet,” suggesting that the scarcity of judgment during the convention differed significantly from her everyday experiences (163-164, 167). Applying her encounters to all people of her weight category, she declares that even doctors blame the majority of sicknesses on weight (165). She also proclaims that people should not diet and exercise in order to lose weight, as this triggers loss of motivation without results, but to improve their attitude and mood (166). Referencing Dr. Diane Budd from the convention, she states that attempts to lose weight cause “lasting harmful effects on one’s appetite, metabolism, and self-esteem” (164). While Worley’s unjustifiable

The purpose of this paper is to study the social aspect of obesity and an individual's personal experience of being fat. I understand obesity as a socially and politically meaningful divergence that is analogous to other significant differences based on the body, for example: disability, gender, and ethnicity (ef. Cooper, 1997&1998; Young, 1990). In my research, I approach obesity as a discursive category that is created, produced and reproduced through various social practices, such as: medicine and health care system, school, religion, and the media (e.g. Foucault, 1979).

Issues of dieting, fat, and slenderness are hot topics in our culture. Bordo addresses them from a postmodern, but historical, feminist perspective. In this essay, she attempts to explain the appeal of slenderness in our society; and also, how the ideology of normal our society holds can be mentally and physically damaging for many people.

In “Fat and Happy: In Defense of Fat Acceptance” by Mary Ray Worley, a member of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (or NAAFA), analyzes the stigmatization of fat people in our society. With the use of both personal experiences and facts, Worley portrays the effects of this social stigmatization on fat people, in comparison to the actual realities of the issue.

This essay discusses how social constructions have an effect on obesity and what combination of causes and contributing factors it includes can lead to obesity. `Obesity is the term used to describe someone who is overweight and unhealthy. Obesity shortens life by an average of 10 years. It is very common in the UK and results from a study back in 2014 showed that a whopping 65.3% of men and 58.1% of women are obese here. (UniversityOfBirmingham,2016) Being over weight is generally associated with being lazy and unpleasant. There are a lot of media groups that have influenced our society’s perception on obesity and many factors that lead to the disease. Obesity can be life threatening and can be the start of lethal conditions such as diabetes,

The book Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West by Peter Stearns concentrates on discerning the leading causes of diet culture and why weight has become a popular topic within the general public. He claims that his focus is equally focused on each gender, however the writing makes it clear that the female sex is more affected by weight gain and control and thus involves more information about one gender. About a third of Stearns’ argument incorporates the French diet and its very obvious differences from the American one. Both countries place dramatically dissimilar rankings on the OECD’s list of obesity rates; France sees some of the least obesity, whereas the USA has struggled with some of the highest rates for decades, with today’s rates at an all time high of 33% of citizens self-reporting as obese. Although Stearns does not determine an official beginning to this culture, we can generalize that between the years of 1870 to 1920, fashion, religion and gender roles were changing quickly enough to enhance the change in perspective about obesity and heighten its rates.

Louise Townend in her research concerning the moralizing of obesity addresses the issue across a wide spectrum of categories such as economic, health and social policy. She enumerates the different social contexts of the obesity debate and begins by stating that obesity is no longer a trouble but an epidemic which is now a “significant issue for health and social policy, with major ramifications for general economic productivity across the globe”. (Townend) 2009: 3. She points out obesity is often associated with stigma such as laziness, dirtiness, illness and poverty (Townend, 2009). This connects the problem of obesity with the history of poverty and creates the question of why is laziness connected to obesity? And why does that consequently turn into poverty.