Women's Body Image

(response to The More You Subtract, The More You Add)


     What are the factors that contribute to women's body image in today's society?  Especially, how does the media perpetuate images of women’s bodies and simultaneously send the message to conform to that impossible standard?  What effect does this have on women's self esteem?

     “our children are… brought up by the mass media.” (Kirk p. 231)

     The mass media takes away our self esteem through unrealistic, over-perfect images (of white and mulatto women, not black) and then sells us products to enhance our self esteem (which is only possible by enhancing how we look), with advertising phrases like “He says the first thing he noticed about you is your great personality…  He lies.” (Kirk p. 232).  Other popular social gendering is that women shouldn’t speak, with advertisements like, “Make a statement without saying a word,” (Kirk p. 235).  Also, women should be small, an add for a collapsible excersize device claims, “Soon, you’ll both be taking up less space,” (Kirk p. 235).  What we find across the board is that women’s confidence is first systematically degraded and then women are offered empowerment through products like hairspray: “Never lose control,” (Kirk p.238) face powder: “An enlightening experience.” (Kirk p.238) girdles: “only victoria’s secret could make control so sensual,” (Kirk p. 238), and hairspray again: “The possibilities are endless.” (Kirk p. 238)

     Overall, we have a whole selection of beauty enhancing products that advertise themselves to those hungry for empowerment, who are women who have taken to heart the over-perfect image of women’s bodies that the media offers and lost their self esteem, and they could really care less about looking perfect.  But because in American society beauty is the thing in the media we equate the most with self-esteem for women, that’s what women tend to seek is physical beauty as the path to "feeling and being free."  It's a typical confuse and distract strategy by the patriarchal system.

     Before television reached Fiji, it was normal to compliment someone by saying “you gained weight” and it was considered a bad thing to be “going thin.”  Within three years after television reached the island, the risk of eating disorders for teens had doubled.  Those girls who were heavy viewers of television were 50% more likely to describe themselves as fat and 30% more likely to diet than those girls who watched television less frequently.” (Kirk p. 234).
     Basically the media distorts women’s body image for profit.  This reading relates to Beauty Within and Without.  The article’s main point was that feminism had created some real gains in women’s rights and also that it is important to prevent the patriarchy from informing the beauty industry about women’s body image.  It also relates to the article Women’s Bodies Women’s Health because the media perpetuates the idea that fat women are necessarily unhealthy, which is not always true.  Female and disabled bodies are portrayed in the media as inferior, women are often frail and half starved and looking away from the camera, while men stand tall and proud.  What we need is healthy body image.  In Big Beauty a fat girl buys a tank-top and at first is too shy to wear it.. When she finally wears it, she finds she feels good about herself and that feeling sexy is ok.  Fat women are taught that they are not sexy by the media, and they are told to have surgeries to nip and tuck, and the rest of the time, women’s value is reduced to the status of their physical body, and used like a seal of approval on products that we should buy. 

     “Dominant U.S. culture often reduces women to bodies, valuing us only as sex objects or as bearers of children.  The advertising industry uses women’s bodies to sell shampoo, soft drinks, beer, tires, cars, fax machines, chain saws, and gun holdsters, as well as concepts of womanliness, manliness, and heteronormativity.” (Kirk p. 208)

     So women are sex objects in modern society.  It makes me wonder, where does it begin?  I mean, I can see that perhaps there are some CEOs of advertising in that wake up in the morning and say to themselves, “How can I degrade women and make them feel less beautiful while using their bodies to sell products” etc.  So there are these evil people in powerful positions I think controlling the status quo of large corporations.  But it must also come down to what happens in the home.  I feel like the problem must be individual men, and a lot of the degradation must occur right there in the home.  So I think there must be a “front line” to feminism, where those women and men in powerful or just oppressive conditions have to fight for all of us who might be getting it comparatively easy – because if the few can have their human rights broken, so can the many.  Think of how much it would rock the boat if a first-lady decided to be pro-feminist!

     Since we’re not all in that position it’s important to make changes in small ways.  We all have to be an activist when the time comes for us to stand up for our rights.  If I met someone who I judged to be sexist, who I thought had an attitude about women, that would probably make me prickly and I would probably hash out my women’s studies knowledge against his women’s stereotypes.  Viva la revolution!

     In Letting Justice Flow, a disabled woman pees the bible garden of a university because the president refused to build her a bathroom.  When she threatened to involve the media (they’re not all bad), she finally got satisfaction.  We don’t always choose to be on the frontlines – but activism, in small and large ways, is always important.  What I’ve learned is that the micro, meso, macro, and global levels are all different manifestations of individual human behavior.  So if small changes can take place at a personal level, sometimes those can cascade to greater levels of change.  Change sometimes starts in the home or just with the dissuasion of sexist humour in the right situation.

     In Yay for Hairy Women we learned about a girl who generally felt good about having hairy legs – and when she shaved concentric circles in them, everybody at school sort of realized that they being prejudice against her was stupid.  I think she made a good point.  But what I realized is that the media is one factor contributing to women’s body image – but there are social factors too, where interpersonal behaviors can encourage someone to feel good about themselves.  The girl in this story mentioned that her mother didn’t shave her legs and that she had a babysitter that set the stage for her rebelliousness by saying “Yay for hairy women!” and encouraging her not to shave.  So the media is a factor, but there are also interpersonal factors at work that can overcome the media’s over-perfect images.

     As part of this weeks blog entry, I sat at a coffee shop and observed for signs of societal symbolic body-image conditioning.  I noticed that some women were wearing sweaters that only came halfway down their backs, because the popular fashion perpetuated by the media is for sweaters to be “cute and short,” not “effective and warm.”  I also noticed that several women were wearing perfumes and the men weren’t, and it’s not like women smell bad.  The media however gives them self-esteem messages about using those products.  In the orient small feet were the popular self-esteem solution and they would bind their feet with cloth to prevent growth.  I also noticed the chairs were not fit for a sizeable person.  There weren’t even multiple sizes of chairs available for different sized people.  Indeed, we live in a “one size fits all” society.  Some women also wore high heels – evidence of an attempt to conform to the acceptable height norm.  I also noticed that all the women had pierced ears and very few men did, or if they did, they were not wearing earrings.  I think this is an attempt to conform to the idea that women should decorate themselves at all times with shiny things as they are portrayed this way in the media, with excessively expensive jewelry and accessories.  Most women wore makeup, some women wore so much makeup and had even partially shaved and redrawn their eyebrows, while men engaged in no such activity.  Make-up is a socially gendered activity, and it’s mostly perpetuated by the advertising and makeup industry.  It’s a great example of how the media uses over-perfect images of bodies to sap self esteem in women, and then products are offered that “cure the problem.”
     Before I finish, I wanted to add that the article If Men Could Menstruate was a general article highlighting how the patriarchy hides it's mechinations behind "logic".  Indeed, the advertising industry appears logical.  If women want to look better, show them a pretty model and tell them what make up the model used.  It's just a system of logic meant to help women.  Wrong - logic is a face for the degredation of women in this case.  The patriarchy uses the idea of logic to conceal the horrors of an industry that systematically demeans women and disguises it as something else, even innocent captalism.  Is any captalism ever innocent?

     In conclusion, overthrow capitalism.  But since I don't know what to replace it with, let's just tackle the smaller issue.  In the short run we need some kind of national advertising health agency that can help us transform television into a healthier media.  As it is, television is pretty sick, it transforms women’s body image and self esteem, and it needs to stop.  And television isn’t the only problem – it’s all forms of media. Internet, radio, newspaper, anywhere that symbols occur in human communication.  Human’s are learning creatures, we learn from everything we experience, and when we’re exposed to lots of misinformation, inevitably more or less of it will get through.  So we need to address sexism, classism, racism, and all the problems that are fed by media misrepresentation.