Not so long ago, I had a friend who was smart, kind and good-hearted, funny, and extremely talented. Not too long after we had become friends, I wanted to be like her. But it wasn’t her personality, or even her talent I strived for, it was her flat stomach, her small thighs, and how tiny she was. I admired how light her eyes were, that she had clear pale skin, and long, dirty-blonde hair. She had the looks of a girl that belonged on television, in the magazines, and if she was a bit taller, she’d be on the runways.
I focused on how much I towered over her and how my body was much wider than hers instead of loving my own.
According to the Eating Disorder Foundation, today approximately 80% of women in the U.S. admit to being dissatisfied with their bodies. This dissatisfaction and shame that the majority of American girls and women, at any age, feel when looking at themselves in the mirror can be manifested in a number of harmful ways.
While some women will never go beyond a healthy diet and exercise regimen, others turn to cosmetic surgery and many may fall victim to harmful fad dieting, diet pills or eating disorders such as compulsive overeating, orthorexia, anorexia, and bulimia. The number of cosmetic surgical procedures performed on youth 19 or younger more than tripled from 1997 to 2007. Anorexia is the leading cause of death among all females aged 15-24 in the general public.
It is not a coincidence that women are constantly body-shaming when advertisements, movies, television shows, magazines, clothing stores, and even newscasters, are incessantly bombarding us with images of attractive, perfect-looking people, and often send out the message that physical perfection,which is both FAR from average and unattainable, is what we should all strive for if we want to be successful.
Skinny size-zero model walks the runway
According to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), the average American woman is, a healthy 5’4 and 140 lbs yet those strutting the runway or posing for ads in magazines are underweight at 117 lbs for their very tall 5’11 frame.
With images like this becoming the new normal, girls and women as young as ten start to perceive their body size inaccurately, viewing themselves as grossly overweight when, in reality, they could be in the healthy target weight range for their height, age, bone structure, and physical activity. Yet no matter how hard they strive to have the perfect body weight, they are never “thin enough.” All of this translates to feeling not “pretty enough.” Then, not “good enough.”
With some magazines, such as Marie Claire Australia and Elle France, now flaunting the occasional celebrity without makeup or photoshop on their covers and Seventeen Magazine promising a Body Peace Treaty, as printed in Ann Shoket’s editor’s letter in the magazine’s August issue, many would like to believe that our society has come a long way from its skinny-worshipping and misogynistic ways.
Seventeen Magazine’s Body Peace Treaty in the August 2012 issue
by: Ann Shoket
Not that 14-year old Julia Bluhm’s online petition “call[ing] out Seventeen magazine for its use of Photoshop retouching” was ineffective, because it was. “Her online petition amassed more than [a whopping] 7,000 signatures,” according to Ms. Magazine‘s Spring/Summer 2012 issue. That’s Pretty Amazing (pun intended).
It’s just, advertisements, movies, and television shows are still depicting women as less intelligent and weaker than their male counterparts and often objectified and hyper-sexualized. If they’re meant to be strong and empowered women, they are still hyper-sexualized. And if they’re not hyper-sexualized, they’re considered dowdy and unappealing. It’s all about the woman’s look or their sex-appeal, which is also translated to just their looks altogether.
In our high school feminism class, we recently watched Miss Representation, a documentary narrated by Jennifer Siebel Newsom who was pregnant with a girl and was concerned about the society her child would be raised in. This documentary presented the horrible ways in which women are represented in the media and the ways in which, as a result, women are perceived by men, and how they are perceived by themselves.
According to the documentary, “women in the public eye are more likely to be judged for their appearance and beauty than men. Media often jumps straight to how a female looks rather than their qualifications.”
I can attest to that. I remember reading about Gabby Douglas, the first African-American gymnast to win an all-around Olympic gymnastics gold-medal—and the girl who I had admired throughout the entire Olympic games for her strength and how far she had come—was being scrutinized just because her hair was not straightened. It is sad that her gold medal win meant nothing to the beauty-absorbed tabloids.
When women take a stand for their rights as independent human-beings, who are raising awareness about being preyed upon by the media, who don’t need a man to be happy and successful, who are protesting their reproductive rights, who are forging paths for other women in the government, they are often called “incapable” (in comparison to men), “whores,” or “bitches.”
How is it that, as a nation, we can boast that we are a country built on freedom, yet the “U.S. shamefully lags on the world front for women’s equality, ranking [only] 37th,” according to a Ms.Foundation for Women ad published in the 2012 Spring/Summer issue of Ms.Magazine? It’s truly mind-reeling.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Just looking in the “No Comment” section of Ms. Magazine’s 40th Anniversary issue, I noticed something. Not only are mainstream magazine ads sexualizing, objectifying, and providing images of perfection for women to idolize explicitly through fashion and fragrance advertisements, but ad execs also send these messages through ads for cars and food. This, in my opinion, is the worst kind because it unconsciously instills these negative images in society’s brains through the most everyday of objects.
Sexist Chevy “Fly Solo.” Ad
So what can we do? We may not be able to change advertisers’ and magazine editors’ minds in the short term, but what we can do is promote positive body image ourselves. We can set an example. It is extremely disheartening for me to hear girls and women (including my friends) body-shaming, especially when in my eyes each and every one of them is beautiful.
This dissatisfaction is so commonly accepted that a lot of women who are happy with their looks are ashamed to let others know they are happy with the way they look so they too partake in the body-shaming. We need to change that. By finding peace with our bodies, we can help others find peace with theirs and spark a movement just like SPARK has for young women and girls looking to address these issues through blogging, tweeting, and other media activism.
Another thing we can do as a society is support women and girls’ endeavors and praise their successes. It is already enough that women are always being pitted against each other in the media, but we don’t have to give in to those expectations.
And lastly, we should stop judging other women based on their looks. It just fuels the cycle of body-shaming. It is toxic to ourselves and toxic to other women as well.
