Shedding light to distorted body image

Unable to fit the Barbie doll model, many college students find it difficult to be fully satisfied with their outward appearances.
The Women’s Resource Center and GCSU’s Counseling Services have recently created a group to combat this problem and to help give women and men a healthier way to think about themselves. “The Good Body” group meets Monday’s at 12:30 in the Women’s Resource Center to discuss the body image problem. One of the founders of the group, Jennifer Strole, defines body image as “a person’s mental evaluation of their body.”

This definition may seem unimportant, but the other extreme of an unhealthy body image is an eating disorder. After being bombarded by images of Barbie dolls, perfect looking models and size zero movie stars from birth; suffering from a body image problem has become the norm among the college population.

“Negative body image has a large impact on a person’s self esteem.” Jennifer Graham-Stephens, coordinator of the Women’s Resource Center says, “When you think poorly of the way your body looks you kind of generalize that negative thinking to your whole self.”

If a body image problem gets severe enough it may turn into something more dangerous. Larger problems like eating disorders are something that these women, by starting up the body image group, are trying to prevent.

The media is often seen as the biggest factor in the increasing numbers that suffer from poor body image. With cover stories such as “Play your way slim,” “Lose weight without dieting,” “The Beauty Diet,” and “39 Ways to Get Gorgeous Fast,” women are being hit left and right with false beauty perceptions and unreachable expectations for themselves.

Dance minor Bethany Deskins often feels the pressure society places on college students to look just like these women.

“I feel like the media plays a big role in how girls perceive themselves. From a young age girls are surrounded by photos in magazines and newspapers and shows on TV that convey messages of which body types are ‘more acceptable’ in society,” Deskins says, “Whether subconsciously or consciously, every girl struggles with being comfortable in their own skin at some point in their lives.”

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is an organization trying to change this way of thinking. In a study done by the Dove Campaign, 68 percent of women say they believe “the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most women can never achieve.”

The Barbie doll image that has been engrained into so many little girls’ minds has seriously distorted their perceptions on beauty. Due to the expansion of the media and the popularity of television and magazines, young girls have little choice but to be affected by these women. Sophomore Abby Bryant strongly disagrees with the adverse affects the media has on young girls.

“I think the media impacts the way girls see themselves so much because they just want to be like these perfect women, who in reality, are airbrushed and altered in Photoshop until they don’t even exist as real people anymore,” Bryant says.

The Dove Campaign says that today, 63 percent of women feel that they are supposed to be more attractive than their mother’s generation. It also says that 70 percent of 9-year-old girls are dieting in some way because of the way they have been taught to see themselves.

“In the mid- 1990′s, the average age of onset for a body image problem for women was 14 and now it’s about age eight” Strole says.

According to the Dove Campaign, “only 2 percent of women around the world describe themselves as beautiful.” These facts are not at all shocking for Jennifer Graham-Stephens, coordinator of the Women’s Resource Center, who often sees women come in who struggle with body image.

“Body image is one of the things that every woman struggles with there’s at least one part of our body that we probably don’t like.” Graham-Stephens says, “But we should love our bodies just as they are and feel comfortable in our own skin.”

Despite the emphasis on women and the media’s impact on them, men also feel this pressure to live up to unrealistic expectations.

“There are physique standard for men just like with women, especially with today’s ‘tough guy standards.’ It’s so hard to recreate the rippling muscle types of Steven Seagal or Superman.” Sophomore Benjamin Elliott says, “This inability to create a similar figure pressures a man’s outlook on himself. All guys want to look like a hero and with this comes these tough standards.”

Of the programs held by the Women’s Resource Center, the ones that concern body image are typically the most heavily attended. This just emphasizes that body image is a major factor in the day to day lives of everyone, whether they be male, female, students, faculty or staff.

“Everybody struggles with body image, it may not be apparent but all people have something they don’t like about themselves.” Graham-Stephens says.

Groups such as “The Good Body” and the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty are both steps in the right direction toward restructuring the way women and men see themselves.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 3 2008. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry