In my Social Work Masters class on Saturday, our professor talked about a study on Fijian adolescent girls...Researchers tracked young Fijian girls attitudes about body image and eating after being exposed to tv for the first time ever. They tracked them over a long period of time. The results showed that eating behaviours and attitudes changed to being disordered and worriesome about body image following the exposure (go figure!).
I thought about how incredibly sad and also how powerful this study was. It makes me feel sombre about our culture and how far into the glorification of screwed up ideas of beauty we are into...When I think of my generation being exposed since birth, to all sorts of different media outlets, it doesn't surprise nor shock me that we're so consumed with body image crap.
With that being said, on a positive note, I am going to contiue to blog and hopefully inspire other women to join me in being critical and clear on what beauty really means and how to support eachother from allowing our brains to program artifical imagery...
Anyhow, this study is very interesting and very powerful. Check it out.
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/reprint/180/6/509.pdf
Not that its directly applicable to this entry, but an interesting thought on this theme: Many people derive self esteem from achieving goals. Sometimes these goals are surrounding body health, muscle and fitness standards or physique.
ReplyDeleteIs this to be frowned upon? - are they automatically a slave to the pressures? Can one not set a goal and derive self esteem from it without a negative connation of 'pressure made them do it'?
Very, very interesting comment...I think that being male, your experience of pressure in our society regarding body imagine is much different. Astounding numbers of eating disorders amongst women compared to men speaks to that alone.
ReplyDeleteAnd no, for all of the human race I do not believe a healthy lifestyle should be frowned upon. Instead, I want women to know how to be a woman who can separate wanting to be healthy and meeting goals, from size numbers, scale numbers, and stress attached to feeling the need to be a certain size from outward sources.
I think for many men it is much different. You say, "I feel like I've put on weight and I don't like it (the big word here being 'I'), so I am going to change it by setting goals and meeting them"...Meeting them equals higher self esteem for pushing yourself and doing something that makes YOU feel good. It is a self directed, simple process.
For women, however, I feel this picture is often very different. It would be more like, "wow, she's saying she's put on weight and saying she looks fat, does that mean I need to be smaller?...I'll read a magazine to get some healthy tips...oh yes, I do need to lose weight...look at the women in this magazine. I don't look like them."
So yes, that is a very much over simplified version of the process women often go through, but it speaks to what I mean...It is so not about what women really want and feel is best for themselves...It is within the context of the majority of society saying you feel fat, then oh yes, you should lost weight. It is not always a healthy, self directed decision...it is clouded with too much crap on what 'sexy' is.
I am trying to join...
ReplyDeleteJust reflecting back and reading all of these posts...I think it's only fair to add another lens to this discussion...
ReplyDeleteAfter many heated debates (in person) with 'superyoung', I feel compelled to mention that I also see the obesity epidemic in here. I feel that some women (and men, for that matter), who are obese are, in part, because of the dominant messages that skinny is best, and the documented successes that 'beautiful' people are accustomed to without trying in our society (etc, etc), in combo with other traumatic events they have experienced in their lives end up obese (with these pressures, etc, being only part of the issue).
I see it largely as internal oppression, so turned to food to self comfort = eventually becoming obese.
I by no means feel this story or idea fits for all obese women and men; it may not even fit at all for some. I do, however, think the growing numbers of obesity in men and women, at least some, are connected to the dieting-being perfect phenomenon.