The Role Of Self Presentation On An Individual 's Experience

The encouragement to focus on physical appearance has been an all-time buzz in our society, and with it comes the possible significant increase in negative body image. While some of us think that ideal body image are only women's issues, men—turn out—have body image issues too! Just like women, men are bombarded with “perfection” blueprint as well. Media, advertisements, and professional sports create a compelling and toxic mix of messages, assaulting men with ideal body images of young, fit and muscular professional athletes and male models with bulging muscles and six-pack abs. Enough to make an average Joe feels like an average old and fat Joe. This dilemma is what men go through based on Ted Spiker's article, How Men Really Feel About Their Body.

The phrase “social construction” is difficult to define as it encompasses a multitude of elements, but despite that, conventionally, social construction shows ways society has conceptualised expectations and ideals which can be related to specific sociological interested areas, such as the body. Social action has been shown to have an effect on the transformation of a biological individual, although bodies appear to be simply natural - eye colour, body shape, size of feet etc - a deeper context reveals that many social situations and factors contribute to the construction of bodies. How are we to make sense of people’s bodies? Theoretical traditions which highlight socially constructed bodies have been put forward by theorists such as Elias, Foucault, Goffman and Bourdieu, however, an alternative strategy of viewing socially constructed bodies could be to link these apparently contrasting theories together. This essay will focus upon ways in which the body appears to be a social construction, paying particular detail on the length individuals endure to perform socially constructed ideals with reference to gender and class.

“Enhancing Your Body Image” (2015) discusses the impact popular culture has on women strive to have Twiggy’s body and men hope to be the tough guy like Clint Eastwood (p.340). People are willing to alter their appearance physically; for example, people try to lose weight or change their personality by playing sports or instruments to find the sense of belonging. Society has a fascination of trying to belong within a social group.

This transformation exhibits how society changed in its perspective on physical appearance. This marked the beginning of men’s desire for what women had been calling the “perfect” body. Before World War II, money was not lavishly spent on the perfection of the body (Luciano 11). After the return of the soldiers, men had more money as women retained their postwar jobs. With women making substantially larger paychecks, men had the ability to spend more time and money to make themselves look like the models displayed in the media. With the new advertisements by Calvin Klein, such as the Mark Wahlberg, also known as Marky Mark, steamy ads for men’s briefs, the appearance of male bodies has intensified (Luciano 112). More and more men, now with the monetary means of looking good, are trying to achieve perfection with their bodies. They want to have the same bodies as those shown in the advertisements and, at times, will not stop until they have reached that goal (Grogan 95).

In the article “Never Just Pictures,” Susan Bordo acknowledges how the cultural perception of body image of both men and women has been increasing in viciousness exponentially. The societal views of the models in advertisements, on television or in magazines, have proven themselves to be “fabulously” horrific throughout the last few decades. However, an incredible amount of commercial funding, euphemistic language, dietary support groups and other lifestyle changes are merely thought up, created and shipped out door-to-door to virtually all people who cannot simply stand being a kind soul towards others who are apparently suffering, in the medias (blind) eyes. This terrifying phenomenon is especially shocking since there have been articles

Today in modern society, we are driven by social forces. Not only do we strive for human approval and companionship, we also thrive on social media. The media plays such a pivotal role in what we buy, eat, wear, etc. that we are conditioning ourselves to fit the mold for the “perfect” or “ideal” body type. This social construct has been a pressing issue for many years regarding the female physique, but not as much has been said on behalf of men. When confronted with appearance based advertisements, men are more likely to experience muscle dissatisfaction, weight disparities, and anger and/or anxiety toward showing their body in public. This paper will address these facets of the media’s effect on male body image as well as presenting what has been done to address this quietly debilitating issue.

The working class rhetoric about fitness and wellness has been a subject of concern for quite some time. The period when people were shifting their social ideologies in which class and gender were mapped onto bodies in every material condition of life also provided a framework for the recommended change in the society. It is highly relevant to study how people navigate their lives as far as sexuality and gender are concerned (Lee 245). The implications for the gendered sense of self for the middle class can be innovative regarding the methodology employed. The popular culture has represented fat people as revolting and as agents of abhorrence and disgust. In some instances, we can recognize fatness from a political perspective but not necessarily

We already know so much about female body image, as it has been highlighted much more in the media, but the issue is just as visible and existent for men. However, the book is almost 15 years old, so it does not include the evolution of male body image, this century so far, which would be very interesting to read. Since the 90s, we have seen the Internet really coming to life, social media and an increasing level of aggressiveness in advertising aimed towards men, a negative evolution that keeps

Body image remains to be a very controversial topic in today’s society, because of how easy it is to become a hate crime over a small comment on how small or big someone’s body is. Today, it is unavoidable to see the look that it seems society wants us to look. Professor Susan Bordo writes the article, “Never Just Pictures”, describing her investigation between the media and its effects on how people view their bodies. She uses ethos, logos, and pathos to bring in the attention of the people, in order to get her message across to be aware of media and how they portray the ideal body image. Bordo notes the patterns of the different types of models that magazines and commercial ads use, to say that even though they have changed the face of beauty, they never really changed the body of it. And she analyzes the affects that these ads have on how people view their bodies, and alter what the ‘ideal’ body image is. Bordo uses other sources to prove her argument mainly allowing readers to have more reasons to side with her argument. Having reviewed this article, I think that we should publish this article in the Shorthorns, because it will attract the attention of most people, since right now young people still struggle with differentiating between what is a real body and what is a body that has been altered for the likes of what the media likes.

The rules manifest into a bigger issue for women—their views on their body. The views can lead to a female comparing herself to another person, and the judgements of their body furthers a female’s

The book Low Fat Love addresses a variety of sociological issues, one of which is body image (Leavy, 2011). While an individual may hold his or her own personal body image, that image is often shaped by social forces outside the person’s control. That is, standards set by society about gender, also known as gender ideals, influence how individuals view themselves. Gender ideals become internalized through the process of socialization. It is when individuals accept the messages of what it means to be a man or woman in their society and learn the associated norms that they begin to acquire a social identity (Ferrante, 2014).

This world is a flawed one at best and individuals or groups are always being devalued, as some people or groups feel superior to others. Misogyny is a world-wide issue that has existed for years and is still currently going on. Women who do not fit the social standards placed by media in society are scrutinized for not complying with the physique placed for women. Women have been a devalued group in society for quite some time now and it’s difficult to determine when it’ll end due to the degree of society depreciating women’s body types. In the article, “Tennis’s Top Women Balance Body Image with Ambition” Ben Rothenberg discusses how female athletes are scrutinized for their body image because it does not fit into the image society has placed

This report looks to demonstrate my capability in the area's of understanding personal and social issues in society. The research project deals directly with these capabilities as it begs the thoughts about women in society. It asks what women think about their own body but also, how society sees it. I will demonstrate in all eras how women influenced by media and the relevant ‘pin-up girl’ of the time tried to find their own identity closely linked to these role models. Such linkage being mainly through fashion that enhanced the targeted body shapes

(99) Hebdige’s analytical tools are useful to gain understanding of the bodybuilding subculture and how their body image disrupts the “natural” order of our contemporary society. By appropriating the body itself and applying it to an ‘unnatural use’ or, in Hebdige’s words, making the body ‘obviously fabricated’ (101), this subculture is showing the power of ownership over their own bodies in a society that is deeply controlled by the dominant culture. Although the bodybuilding subculture succeeds at using their bodies as a form of deviance from social norms, critical analyses of bodybuilders also suggest that this subculture also ends up reverting to conformity. Since they use their bodies as a form of self-empowerment, they rely on preconceptions of the dominant culture such as gender and social stratification to try to advance in the social

Although, athletes are the role models the boys grow up playing sports but when they do not perform in an excellent or right way they are chided as girls in a away to help them perform better. The language that is in the media attributes and reinforces the dominant discourse that males are stronger than females. (Public research group, 2010). In addition, men are expected to have healthy strong bodies and simultaneously on the other hand isolate and seclude themselves from females as to not care how they look. Men that are obese are subjected through oppression as a result of the factor that they do not fit in the masculine stereotype of a muscle built body. Furthermore, young boys are taught this early and consequently reproduce this discourse to discriminate others in school that do not fit in to Western culture's ideology of masculinity. This discrimination of the obese instills a fear on the youth that to be fat is not ideal and is therefore seen in revulsion and hatred. Nevertheless, the discourse implies that genetics do not play a role and that every male can get this perfect body of masculinity in a sense. Therefore, a man would need to endure the journey for how ever long it takes to achieve this. In contrary, this is not the truth a man may go the gym everyday for a number of years and never achieve this form of masculinity because for their body type and genetics is impossible. Moreover, the stereotypes against overweight men at a first glance