Body image still a problem for many women

In our society today, it is difficult to imagine a time when a man would compliment a woman for gaining a few pounds and instead of the woman running away crying, she would smile and say thank you.
Until about the 20th century plump was in and thin was out. The reason for this was that food was always in short supply and most men and women spent their lives just trying to survive. Being overweight was a sign of wealth and prosperity; more pounds meant more money, power and better health.
According to a review on obesity written by Dr. D. Haaslam for the Department of Trade and Industry, 30,000 years ago, art such as Venus of Willendorf and other prehistoric statuettes depicted women that were obviously obese showing the value of fertility and survival.
“Survival of the fittest dictated that individuals who stored energy in the most efficient way would survive the inevitable fast and famine that would follow times of plenty,” Haaslam wrote.
For thousands of years, the elite and powerful in cultures around the world have distinguished themselves from lower social classes through weight and body image and through beauty and fashion trends. Today, however, the standard of beauty is completely reversed.
As technology advanced, the food supply and size of waistlines grew.
“For the first time in our planet’s history, a species no longer lives at the mercy of scarcity,” said William Saleton in an article written for The Washington Post concerning the obesity epidemic. “We have learned to feed ourselves. We have learned so well, in fact, that we’re getting fat. And it’s not just the United States and Europe, it’s the whole world.”
Even though the media is constantly putting the image of thin, beautiful females and perfectly chiseled males on movie and television screens, the Internet, in magazines and newspapers, the majority of Americans are getting larger, not smaller.
Only one percent of the American population is anorexic, according the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese.
Now that everyone is large, being thin is the new body image obsession, the new desired body type.
“Just as tanned skin became a sign of upper-class leisure once we started living most of our lives indoors, thin got popular because it is an external sign of social capital,” said Ken Mondschein, PhD. candidate at Fordham University in an article he wrote concerning body image.
“We now associate extra weight with things that we consider low-class: fast food, dietary ignorance and lack of gym membership. The rich, on the other hand, can shop at Whole Foods, go on the South Beach Diet and cultivate enough Protestant work ethic to deny themselves dessert.”
The obsession with the ideal thin and beautiful lifestyle is affecting everyone, male and female, young and old and many who are not even overweight. Young adults are more likely to develop a negative body image because they are bombarded with media that promotes many unattainable images of perfection.
In a random survey conducted by The Colonnade, 43 out of 50 GCSU students were unhappy with their current body weight. All the students that were surveyed said they felt some pressure from the media to look a certain way.
“Mostly women are affected by negative body image and develop eating disorders,” said Dr. Gregory Jarvie, a professor of psychology at GCSU. “Men are increasingly being diagnosed with eating disorders but there is still more emphasis on physical appearance for women than men. A lot of young women want the type of alpha male that only date girls with the thin ideal body type.”
Just as in the past, body size has been used as a way to measure class and social status. The thin are given the top seats on the ladder of social hierarchy and those outside of that slender ideal are usually left on the bottom. But as societies change, people and their ideals change as well. Many, especially women, are overcoming the pressures to fit into one very narrow view of beauty and accepting more physical diversity.
“I had an eating disorder my senior year of high school,” said Gretchen Debaun, a junior sociology major. “I just got obsessed with the idea of being skinny. Then my roommate my freshman year at GCSU made me stop constantly worrying about how I looked because it wasn’t an issue at all for her. I still would like to get in better shape but I know all I have to do is exercise and eat regular meals, I wouldn’t ever do that to my body again, it’s just not worth it.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Mar 9 2007. Filed under Perspectives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry