Body Image

Well the topic for this week is body image. This semester I’m taking an intro to Women’s Studies class and it is very interesting. Although the reading takes forever, I do find some of the readings very interesting! Some of these things I had never, ever thought about.
So let’s face it, everybody has some issue with their body, girl or boy. Some boys may want to be bigger while girls probably aim to be smaller. Anybody who says that they don’t have any issue with their body is lying (in my opinion). Don’t get me wrong, there are some very, very arrogant people out there. But even the most arrogant have some issues with themselves. I blame this obsession with looks on a culture that is almost completely dominated by white males. These few men are indirectly making decisions about our bodies. They decide who is “pretty” and “acceptable” by deciding who they’re going to put in magazines, commercials, movies, & television ads. And since there is a lack of people of color in mainstream society’s media, people of color are forced to subscribe to the same stereotypes. I know this for a fact because when I was a kid I used to want to be white. That was all I had seen on television and that’s what I thought was right. It goes back to the old phrase “white is right.” I didn’t appreciate my own culture because I had never seen it outside of my family & friends. I thought that since my life didn’t mirror what I saw on television, that it was somehow wrong. But as I grew older, I found out that wasn’t true. I LOVE BEING BLACK. I love my culture, I love the language, I love the pride, I love the people, I love the food, I love the body shapes, and I love everything in the world about being African American. But I’m sure many other people out there spend a lot of time wanting to be like the women they see in magazines.
I’m not going to lie; there are things about my body that I wish I could change. But it’s comforting to know that not everybody is perfect. Even Beyonce (who looks SO good!) is probably insecure about one thing (I have no idea why though). Some women go to the extreme to look like models, even though “only about 5% of the female population in our society weighs the average fashion model’s weight given her height.” These women turn to eating disorders or plastic surgery. One big example of plastic surgery that’s all over the tabloids now is Heidi Montag. She went through all of this plastic surgery to change her face & her cup size. In my opinion, she looks way worse than she did before. I just do not support these extreme measures to fix something like looks. I think these things do more harm to your body then they do good. They carry major risks. Eating disorders along with plastic surgery can kill you!
So what can we do to fix it? We as a society need to stop judging people by the way they look, but I know that’s not going to happen. What we can do is demand that the media relay images of what real women look like, not just 5% of the population. This lets people know that the way they look is fine. It will teach them to love themselves! That’s the saddest part that some people don’t love who they are. “There's more to life than being really, really, really good looking”
Good night!