Weight Obsessed Women Essay Research Paper Weight

Weight Obsessed Women Essay, Research Paper

Weight Obsessed Women

Today.s media places an extreme amount of pressure on women to maintain a slender

figure. Through childhood to adulthood, women are bombarded with images of stick skinny

women, and this is the way almost every woman wants to look. Although there are other factors,

the media is the primary source of the obsession with being thin. Why has this become such a

popular trend. This is what society says is acceptable. It has been proven that these images of

perfect women do affect the normal women who wish to look like that. Shaw and Stein found

that, .Women exposed to pictures of thin models experienced more depression, stress, guilt,

shame, insecurity, and body dissatisfaction than women exposed to photos of average sized

women or control photos. (.Media.s. n. pag.). Now, thanks to the unrealistic expectations put

on women to maintain the perfect shape, eating disorders are on the rise. Then, once they enter

college, the body images of women get even worse. They are on their own now and can eat

whenever and whatever they desire; therefore, college girls gain weight and diet. When they gain

the weight they are willing to do anything to lose it. A person.s body image can also vary

depending on that person.s race. On the surface it may seem that the media is trying to work

through this weight issue, but society already has a prejudice against being too heavy. Every

media influence is shoving in all American girls., womens., and sometimes mens. faces, that thin is

in and fat is out.

The burden of attempting to have the flawless build has been climbing to unrealistic

heights in the past years. In the forty.s, the sexy look for women was to be curvaceous and have

some meat on her bones, however; from the late eighty.s to the ninety.s more emphasis was

placed on having no figure at all. The best body for women today is a waifish body, if you have

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curves you are considered over weight. This damages the self-concept of less than perfect

women. .The increasing pressure to be thin and the unrealistic images portrayed in the mass

media may have a devastating effect on women.s self-perceptions, self esteem, and identity

development. (Heights 603-614). There have been many studies on the weight decline of

Playboy centerfolds and Miss America Pageant contestants over the years. In 1960, the average

Playboy model.s weight was 91% of the population mean. By 1978, it dropped to 84% and

continues to plummet. From 1979 to 1988, 69% of Playboy models and 60% of Miss America

contestants weighed 15% or more below their expected weight, which is criterion for anorexia

(603-614). Who is too blame for this massive self destructive phenomenon. Most of the fault lies

with the media. Children as young as two years old start to see images of perfect women, who

one day they are supposed to look like. Even the dolls and Barbies they play with have flawless

figures. In the forty.s and fifty.s children we seeing more shapely models and actresses, so there

was not the strain on those children of doing anything possible to achieve a so called perfect

figure.

When you turn on the television, do you see many heavy women or men for that matter.

No, the majority of today.s actors and actresses are thin. The fat people are usually the funny

unusual people on sitcoms and daytime shows. The only other place you might find an over

weight person is on a pathetic talk show. When you only see fat women as miserable talk show

guests, then you are thinking if you become over weight you might end up where they are, so you

had better go on a diet. Speaking of diets, a study found diet promotions, nonexistent in 1973,

make up about five percent of television commercials (Berg n. pag.). When doing segments on

weight, producers want to know what the women look like. The producers explanation for this

is, .We do not want to turn off our viewers. (.Fear. n. pag.) You might think that putting real

life people on their program instead of women that are not representative to the bulk of the female

population in the United States today, might raise their ratings. As society gets fatter and fatter,

the media is going to have to start dealing with this issue. They say that they are, but actions

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speak louder than words. Some magazines have dared to write articles on heavier women, but

there are never any pictures. An example of that was in Harper.s Bazaar, they ran an article on a

new model named Wanderful who was 183 pounds and proud of it, but again there were no

pictures. They are saying that it is acceptable to be imperfect, when it really is not (.Review. n.

pag.).

Preteen to teenage girls are especially susceptible to the media.s influence on everything,

not only their size. .Magazines for teenage girls give training in lookism. The emphasis in on

makeup, fashion, weight and how to attract boys, with almo

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