The combination of two rather inane words, body and image, conjures up a far more convoluted description of a biopsychosocial phenomenon. By the definition of dictionary.com, “body: noun: the physical structure and material substance of an animal or plant, living or dead”1 and “image: noun: a physical likeness or representation of a person, animal, or thing, photographed, painted, sculptured, or otherwise made visible.”2 But combine the two dictionary.com produces this definition, “body image: noun: an intellectual or idealized image of what one's body is or should be like that is sometimes misconceived in such mental disorders as anorexia nervosa.”3 Just reading these causes one to ask the question, how did we get to where we are? Where body image is associated with disease and body structure (skinny or fat, trim or obese, etc.) is associated with a person’s ability to control their own actions? In the first chapter of their compilation of articles on body image, Thomas Pruzinsky and Thomas Cash, state, “This vital role of body image means that it has potential to dramatically influence our quality of life. From early childhood on, body image affects our emotion, thoughts & behaviors in everyday life.” (p.7) In this project, we will attempt to answer – what is the situation now, how did we get here, where are we heading currently and where we need to be heading along with how to get there.
A simple Google search of the phrase “Body Image” produces “about 4,190,000” results on the subject. FOUR MILLION?!?!?! And that’s just on Google. That’s not turning to the scholarly work, the indexed journals and mass media articles, the books – both fiction and non-fiction, which address body image, sizeism or fat acceptance. Googling sizeism yields another 20,300 entries and fat acceptance another 382,000 entries. It is safe to assume that this is a topic on the minds of American women, and I would dare to say, women around the world – though their perceptions of ideal may vary, they still feel the pressure of being held up to a socially constructed ideal.
Figure 1: Screen capture of the Google search for “Body Image” 10-6-08.
The sheer volume of information on body image is unmanageable; it dilutes the reality to such a low concentration that pinpointing “what exists” (Bunch, 2005, p.13) is not simple. Charlotte Bunch, in her piece, “Not By Degrees: Feminist Theory and Education,” examines how theory is used to drive action and how the development of theory surrounding social justice issues can make the difference in the success or failure of a movement. In the section of her piece where she expounds upon writing the description section of a theory, she says,
“the choices that we make about interpreting and naming reality provide the basis for the rest of our theory.” (p.13) Sorting through the pieces, I will attempt to put the puzzle together, to describe body image, as it exists today and how we got here.
Social construction of body image is a major factor in the development of children, especially females. In her chapter on Feminist Perspectives in the anthology, “Body Image A Handbook of theory, research and clinical practice” Nita Mary McKinley states, “this construction begins early when girls are praised fore their appearance and learn that they are judged by how they appear to others. (One can understand the power of this norm by trying to congratulate new parents of a baby girl without mentioning her appearance.)” (p. 55) McKinley goes on to say on page 56, “the social construction perspective particularly fits a feminist understanding of women’s lives because it stresses the social context of women’s discontent, rather than the individual pathology. The social context, in which women are defined as objects, to be watched and unattainable body standards are constructed as “normal,” makes the normative negative body experience of women understandable.” The synthesis of McKinley’s chapter is that she believes that changing negative body perception should be a feminist social justice issue because it does not just affect individuals but women as a whole because while women are preoccupied with their appearance, they are unable to contribute to the world fully. Another feminist author who believes that we should fight against cultural stereotypes of the ideal female body is Amy Winter who wrote the 2004 essay, “Feminism and the Politics of Appearance.” In it she states, “Feminism doesn’t value a standard of beauty for women comprised of extreme thinness, regular Caucasian features, smooth hair, young-looking skin without without wrinkles or blemishes, and lack of visible body hair.” (p.16) And she follows that up with, “Feminism values woman as the
subjects of their own lives, not
objects to attract and hold another’s gaze.” (p.16 – emphasis mine)
Many times women do not actually perceive themselves in their own right but rather are reflecting the ways that others perceive them. Linda Jackson talks about this in her chapter in the anthology “Body Image,” when she describes the concept of “the looking-glass self.” (p.14) In this phenomenon, one sees themselves and their perceived self-worth based on the way that others view and perceive them. To this extent, these “others” can come in many forms, family, friends, and the mass media are the most common ‘mirrors’. This is especially true with adolescent girls, who’s “body attitude can be part of a family overemphasis on body image as a core aspect of self-esteem.” (Maine, 2008, p.6) Girls often look up to their mothers and other female role models to determine how to act regarding their body. If mom is modeling behavior that is body negative (saying things like, ‘I’m too fat’ or ‘can’t eat chocolate because I’ll get fat’ and other seemingly innocent self-teasing), then it is more likely that daughter will display the same behaviors. Sometimes even to an extreme, as “disordered eating has become the third most chronic illness in adolescence.” (Graydon, 2008, p.19) But this body negativity in adolescent girls comes from their friends as well. Levine and Smolak, in their chapter of the “Body Image” anthology, state, “there is evidence that girls who are best friends & who are part of friendship groups have similar levels of body image concerns, drive for thinness and dietary restraint.” (p.81)
Teaching our young women about healthy body image and feeling great about the skin, hair, shape, etc. they were born with is a critical issue in the fight against negative body image issues. There are several programs being created and implemented currently to help change these perceptions for adolescent girls and women. The Girl Scouts of America have a program “Uniquely ME!” that is a four part series with lessons and activities planned for girls of different developmental age groups:
- 8-10-year-olds: uniquely ME! The Way To Be
- 11-14-year-olds: uniquely ME! Inside & Out
- 11-14-year-olds: uniquely ME! The Real Deal
- 14-17-year-olds: Mirror, Mirror: Discover Your Inner Beauty
http://www.girlscouts.org/program/program_opportunities/leadership/uniquelyme.asp (accessed 10/12/08)
This program is co-sponsored by Dove who in 2004 launched the Campaign for Real Beauty to “serve as a starting point for societal change and act as a catalyst for widening the definition of beauty.” (DOVE Campaign for Real Beauty:
http://www.dove.us/#/CFRB/arti_cfrb.aspx[cp-documentid=7049726]/ (accessed 10-12-08) Both of these efforts are noble and are a beginning in fighting the mass onslaught of images in the media everyday that reinforce the thin ideal for women. However, as Graydon points out, “Reflecting the cynical self-interest of the industry at large, its (Dove’s) parent company Unilever also markets products like SlimFast and Fair and Lovely, a skin-whitening agent.” (p.19) So, no one is perfect but at least Dove, as a major part of a multi-national corporation, is taking a step in the right direction to combat mass media’s reinforcement of the thin ideal for women, even if their parent company is not.
Marika Tiggemann, in her chapter in the “Body Image” anthology, states, “There is no doubt that current societal standard for female beauty inordinately emphasize the desirability of thinness – and thinness at a level that is impossible for most women to achieve by healthy means.” (p. 91) According to her research, there are three ways in which media affect women’s body image. On the first level, there is social comparison where women compare their own bodies to those media images of the “thin ideal,” which according to Linda Smolak, “appears to be a factor by very early elementary school.” (p.69) At the second level, as described by Tiggemann, is internalization of the “thin ideal,” where it becomes the internally accepted reference point against which to judge oneself. And last, is the investment in appearance for self-evaluation where women accept the cultural schema that thinness and attractiveness are vital for success & happiness making one’s self-worth equated with one’s self-perceived attractiveness. (p.92) As you can imagine, this wrecks havoc not only on women’s body image but on their general self-esteem as well. If you believe that embodying the cultural norm of the ideal female body is the only way to be successful and happy and yet the ideal is so far out of the reach of the majority of women, it’s no wonder that women suffer more from body image and self-esteem issues! As Graydon says, “Indeed, the more time we spend immersed in contemporary media, the more likely we are to obsess about our appearance or develop disordered eating behavior.” And this is reinforced by Maggie Wykes and Barrie Gunter in their book “The Media & Body Image,” on page 207, “The thin message is neither singular nor sudden. Nor is it merely a modern mass media construction. Rather, the mass media reinforce and reproduce thinness within a whole history of cultural constructions of femininity which make it acceptable to audiences and sellable to advertisers.”
One way to combat this, suggested by many of the sources I’ve quoted already, is to limit one’s exposure to mass media. However, that can be near impossible when images of scantily clad women hocking perfume or underwear scream at you from the billboards along the highway or the headlines on the latest celebrity rag mag proclaim the woes of weight gain to you from the grocery store line. The advertisements and even articles that implant those ideals into our psyches are pervasive not only in print media but online and on television as well. If you follow this link, it will take you to a series of short films which showcase the onslaught of images which produce the negative body image discussed in this paper.
http://www.dove.us/#/features/videos/default.aspx[cp-documentid=7049560]/These films were produced by Dove as part of the Campaign for Real Beauty and I think they do a great job of expressing the ways in which media sneak into our lives and build those ideals of thinness for women. But, the tides are turning, Sarah Grogan says in her book “Body Image Understanding Body Dissatisfaction in Men, Women, and Children,” her “interview work suggests that women in particular are cynical about media portrayal of the ‘ideal body,’ and want to see more realistic images of women in the media.” (p.203)
Tiggemann also offers up, “an alternative strategy [to limiting media exposure] is to equip young people with media literacy skills that make them resistant to media images.” (parentheses & text mine) (p.97) Media literacy skills consist of understanding the who, what, when, where, why and how of the media industry. It’s helping them to realize that some of the images they are presented with are not real; they have been airbrushed and reshaped to help perpetuate the thin ideal. Tiggeman also makes the point that we should begin, as Dove has started, to utilize mass media to promote positive body images. She says, “Large-scale, media-based interventions promoting healthy body image have the potential to reach farther & have greater impact than other methods.” (p.97) If we were able to effectively change the way women view their bodies through changing the ‘ideal’ female body type, then we could free up the brain power and time women spend conforming their bodies to an ideal and use it to further other social justice work. And Graydon offers up that not only should we boycott companies who disseminate unhealthy images but also we should “let the manufacturers, advertisers, publishers and programmers know that they’re losing business by behaving in unethical and destructive ways.” (p.19)
I think Wykes and Gunter do the best job of summarizing the body image issues that women face on a daily basis. They say on page 221 of their book, “Girls are now expected to ‘do it all’ in competition with men, yet culture that seems only to measure feminine success according to looks – it is perhaps testimony to the strength and imagination of women that they survive the onslaught, and an awful testimony to our culture that for some the thin aesthetic is a death sentence.”
Footnotes1. body. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved October 06, 2008, from Dictionary.com website:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/body2. IMAGE. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved October 06, 2008, from Dictionary.com website:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/IMAGE3. Body Image. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved October 06, 2008, from Dictionary.com website:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Body Image
BibliographyBunch, Charlotte. 2005. Not by Degrees: Feminist Theory and Education. In Feminist Theory: A Reader (2nd edition) by Kolmar, Wendy K. and Frances Bartkowski, Boston: McGraw Hill.
Cash, Thomas and Pruzinski, Thomas. 2004. Understanding Body Images Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. In Body Image A Handbook of Theory, Research, & Clinical Practice edited by Cash, Thomas F. and Pruzinsky, Thomas, New York and London: The Guilford Press.
DOVE Campaign for Real Beauty:
http://www.dove.us/#/CFRB/arti_cfrb.aspx[cp-documentid=7049726]/ (accessed 10-12-08)
Girl Scouts of America – Uniquely Me! Website:
http://www.girlscouts.org/program/program_opportunities/leadership/uniquelyme.asp (accessed 10/12/08)
Graydon, Shari. 2008. How the Media Keeps Us Hung Up on Body Image. Herizons. (Summer): 19.
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