Reflecting Body Images from American Culture - 1470 Words

Sara Brown 12-7-05 Eng 101 MW Isbell J Reflecting Body Images from American Culture Currently in America Culture there is a prevailing desire to become thin. Between five per cent and ten per cent of girls and women (i.e. five-ten million people) and one million boys and men suffer from eating disorders, including anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, or other associated dietary conditions. (http://www.annecollins.com/eating-disorders/statistics.htm) So many people are influenced by the media that it transforms their own self image into unrealistic ideas leading many adolescent females and some males to eating disorders. Our society is driven for individual control thus forming the judgment that fatness is a loss of self-control†¦show more content†¦(Stearns Pg. 72) Dieting soon became natural for women and the sexuality was less modest. Obese women were becoming ridiculed for being overweight, literature aimed at the very groups being insulted, women were the clear targets. Are you aware that fatness has destroyed your sex appeal and made you look olde r, somewhat like a buffoon whom people are inclined not to take seriously in any area or on any level.(Stearn Pg. 83, 16) Entries such as this were written in books such as Murray Siegel (1971), Think Thin or Glamour, Glucose and Glands by Frank J. Wilson (1956). This time period was also when women were stepping into the workforce with great strides and if the woman was over weight, she was looked upon as unreliable and lazy. (Stearns) Women became an object of mockery, an example of no self-discipline and social failures if they were not thin. From the mid nineteen hundreds to present times the media has greatly influenced societys acceptance on body image. Even today, women are still mocked for being obese. Heavier women are a continued target in todays society by magazines containing headlines such as How to lose weight. and How to be skinner. 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