The Impossible Body

      

        There are many bombarding messages both women and men receive about body image. American society seems to be going from extremes. There are images of impossibly skinny girls and then average sized women in ads. As an illustration, there is an example of Victoria's Secret models and Dove models provided. Nevertheless, more times than not many people still fall prey to these negative body images. They develop various disorders. The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) talks about various reasons why women and men both develop eating disorders. They list psychological, interpersonal, biological and social factors that all contribute to the development of disorders.

           I would like to highlight the social reasons behind the developing eating disorders. NEDA lists the social reasons as the following:

• Cultural pressures that glorify "thinness" or muscularity and place value on obtaining the "perfect body"
• Narrow definitions of beauty that include only women and men of specific body weights and shapes
• Cultural norms that value people on the basis of physical appearance and not inner qualities and strengths 
• Stress related to racial, ethnic, size/weight-related or other forms of discrimination or prejudice 

     These particular cultural pressures are especially prominent in the media today. The statistics show the shocking prominence of eating disorders. For example according to NEDA, "In the United States, 20 million women and 10 million men suffer a clinically significant eating disorder at some time in their life, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder." According to The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD) 91% of women surveyed on a college campus had attempted to control their weight through dieting. 22% dieted "often" or "always". The disturbing fact is that only 5% of American females naturally possess the body type portrayed in advertising according to ANAD. Therefore, as girls might try to be like the ideal body type they will never achieve this goal. Instead women and men's self esteems lessen. In addition, ANAD goes on to say that 69% of girls in 5th-12th grade reported that magazine pictures influenced their idea of a perfect body shape. Therefore, as is demonstrated media does play a large role on women's and men's body images. 

        Barker (2012), describes how powerful groups make, maintain, and reproduce ascendant meanings and practices (10). In other words these powerful groups, aka the powers that be in media, dictate what the subordinate groups believe and think is good and bad. If the thin ideal did not exist women and men would not be so obsessed with body image. Nevertheless, media still has a huge impact on what we view as beautiful and good.