BLOG POST #4

         From past and present topics that we have discussed, women’s bodies are highly undervalued in this society. In the past, we discussed that women’s bodies are objectified by the others, but also objectified by themselves. This starts at a very young age, because of what the media shows, and what we see. Women’s bodies are limited to the policies, legislation, and barriers given in the US, and one example that I am going to talk about is the average body size that women should have. The message about women’s body size is being sent from everywhere and every moment. The world is telling the women not to be satisfied with their bodies, or hate your own body.

As reading the article Pretty Unnecessary, I was surprised that we are categorizing the women’s bodies as ‘beautiful’ or ‘not beautiful’ intentionally or even unintentionally. The author of the article stated that people are relating beauty with body positivity too much that they sound like one thing. Nowadays, women are told that no matter how they look, they are beautiful. The message, “everyone is beautiful” spreads the assumption that being beautiful is the most important thing for women. The full article can be read here. However, we also get the opposite message from the media about women and their body. In Wykes and Gunther’s reading, they found a critical fact in their research of the body image in TV programs. Only 7 percent of the women showed in media were above average weight, and this statistic suggested that ‘women remain significantly undersized on television.

As reading the media and the body image, another influencer of the body is you. From the Wykes and Gunther’s reading, the authors included short statistics from observer supplement in 2003. The statistic that showed the restriction of their bodies and they are: “people are judging their own bodies harshly than those of others”, and “about 60 percent felt obese people are responsible for their own predicament”. From the media, we are always facing the body shapes those are considered to be ‘perfect’ and ‘skinny’. As women see and read those advertisements from the media, they restrict their own agency over their bodies because they do not have the same body as the models represented in media. Their self-esteem gets lowered, and they judge and criticize themselves in bad ways that they choose unhealthy or dangerous decisions to change their bodies. In the article Pretty Unnecessary, the author wrote about “Dove Real Beauty Campaign” and the campaign was about drawing based on two different perspectives. One perspective was about her and another was the stranger looking at the woman who described herself. In the end, the two drawings were shown at the same time and the stranger’s description came out more beautifully than the description of her own. This advertisement gave a good message that women should be confident in herself, and try not to get affected by the media.

Dove real beauty sketch

However, on this Dove campaign, even though the overall message that the campaign tried to give was that ‘you should be confident in yourself and you should love yourself, the people who were in the campaign were mostly white and had thin bodies. Meaning that you can see the campaign is only for white and thin people. Dove ads try to give positive messages, but they usually take out more important things, and more discussions can be read in this article. The problem with media and the women is also the same. We do not see the similar people in television or social networking; we only see celebrities and beautiful people on media that we want to be like them. From the readings, I realized that many of the ads and even in the media enforce us to be thin from such young ages. 

skinny body shown in media

Objectifying the women’s bodies starts at the very young ages, and the influences come from the everywhere, such as the media and the people around you. The sexual advertisements always show you the products with sexualized women’s bodies, or popular television shows have beautiful and skinny women competing with one another. In class, I was shocked that young girls in elementary schools do not eat because they want to lose weight. As I thought about it, they are influenced by the media, but also they are influenced by their friends. At that age, they want to follow another, and media influences are very dangerous because of that. As the women age, the body image and misrepresentation criticize them even more. From the Wykes and Gunther’s reading, they said,” The argument that the media causes eating disorders assumes not merely that media representations misrepresent but that they also inscribe, directing women to 'train, shape and modify their bodies to conform to what, very clearly, are impossible ideals'”(206). Consuming media every day and everywhere, we are unconsciously trained to think that we want the bodies, fashions, and faces like the women in the screen. 

-Haelee Lee