Bordo's Body Image Distortion Syndrome

Bordo’s primary target audience are females, teenagers and possibly even advertising companies, where she too, creates an effective argument. Bordo claims we are influenced by media to believe that it is imperative to achieve the “slender ideal body” and reflects on how dieting has become normalized. She states “In the late nineteenth century, by contrast, the practices of body management begin to be middle-class preoccupations, and concern with diet becomes attached to the pursuit of an idealized physical body weight or shape” (Bordo 484). Bordo discusses the associations that have been created regarding body weight.

Everyday females are exposed to how media views the female body, whether in a work place, television ads, and magazines. Women tend to judge themselves on how they look just to make sure there keeping up with what society see as an idyllic women, when women are exposed to this idea that they have to keep a perfect image just to keep up with media, it teaches women that they do not have the right look because they feel as if they don’t add up to societies expectations of what women should look like, it makes them thing there not acceptable to society. This can cause huge impacts on a women self-appearance and self-respect dramatically. Women who become obsessed about their body image can be at high risk of developing anorexia or already have

Body images and the ensuing and inevitable body shaming, has grown to become a pressing problem impacting the Canadian youth. With overweight rates at 65% and 30% for adults and children, respectively, one may see weight loss as the necessary solution to solve all body images stigmas. On the contrary, eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are climbing steadily amongst today’s Canadian youth. (Derene & Beresin, 2006). With such drastic sides of the spectrum, many have pointed toward different potential reasons for this trend however, a key determinant that must be tackled in the role the media play’s in the lives of today’s youth.

Every individual cares about how they appear to others; their shape and in this informal, narrative essay titled Chicken-Hips, Canadian journalist and producer Catherine Pigott tells her story on her trip to Gambia and her body appearance. In this compelling essay the thesis is implicit and the implied thesis is about how women are judged differently on their appearance in different parts of the world, as various cultures and individuals have a different perception on what ideal beauty is. In this essay Pigott writes about her trip to Africa specifically Gambia and how upon arriving there she was judged to be too slim for a woman. She goes on to write about how she would be judged differently back home by mentioning “in my county we deny ourselves

In today’s modern culture, almost all forms of popular media play a significant role in bombarding young people, particularly young females, with what happens to be society’s idea of the “ideal body”. This ideal is displayed all throughout different media platforms such as magazine adds, television and social media – the idea of feminine beauty being strictly a flawless thin model. The images the media displays send a distinct message that in order to be beautiful you must look a certain way. This ideal creates and puts pressure on the young female population viewing these images to attempt and be obsessed with obtaining this “ideal body”. In the process of doing so this unrealistic image causes body dissatisfaction, lack of self-confidence

Then in 1995 the introduction of the Television was brought to Fiji and would soon and forever change the way teenage girls and women would view themselves and each other. The riveting article “Culture of the thin bites Fiji Teens” brought to life the impact made by television on the island, formally without body image issues and the resulting problems the teens and women on the island would face. The author Ellen Goodman places blame on the negative images of women on Western and television influence.

Signs of losing weight were an indication of social problems. As the Fiji natives was invaded by television, they saw how other societies to care of their bodies Fiji lost

This constant fixation on physical perfection has created unreasonable beauty standards for women, ones we cannot possibly achieve on our own. Such standards permeate all forms of popular media, particularly fashion magazines and advertisements. Women are bombarded with the notion that we must be thin in order to be desirable. These images project an

“In the past, eating disorders were generally considered to be confined to young white females from middle-to-upper class families living in Western societies” (Caradas 112). Both studies exploit the false stereotypes associated with eating disorders and culture. Both parties believe that non Western cultures are being influenced by the “slim is beautiful” idea. Each view points out the false misconception that non Western cultures traditional ideas of being thick is related to health is protecting them from eating disorders. Studies prove all ethnicities have shown concern towards body shape and eating attitudes in recent years around the

In “The Globalization of Eating Disorders”, written by Susan Bordo in 2003, the author declares that eating and body disorders have increased rapidly throughout the entire globe. Susan Bordo, attended Carleton University as well as the State University of New York, is a modern feminist philosopher who is very well known for her contributions to the field of cultural studies, especially in ‘body studies’ which grants her the credibility to discuss this rising global issue (www.wikipedia.org, 2015). She was correspondingly a professor of English and Women Studies at the University of Kentucky which gives her the authority to write this article. “The Globalization of Eating Disorders” is written as a preface to her Pulitzer Price-nominated book “Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body” which was similarly written in 2003. Through the use of many logical arguments and evidence, Bordo successfully manages to convince her audience that the media, body images and culture have severely influenced the ‘so-called’ trending standard of beauty and how it leads to eating disorders across the world.

From an early age, we are exposed to the western culture of the “thin-ideal” and that looks matter (Shapiro 9). Images on modern television spend countless hours telling us to lose weight, be thin and beautiful. Often, television portrays the thin women as successful and powerful whereas the overweight characters are portrayed as “lazy” and the one with no friends (“The Media”). Furthermore, most images we see on the media are heavily edited and airbrushed

society.” (Harrison, "The Relationship between Media Consumption and Eating Disorders"). They are trying to make us feel like we are not part of this aesthetic model so we force ourselves to somehow look like a doll so that we can fit into society, “media trends may indeed be linked to the idealization of thinness and, thus, to the development of eating disorders in media consumers” (Harrison, "The Relationship between Media Consumption and Eating Disorders"). Magazines, television, newspaper always try to find way to get into young and adult mind to idolize this types of bodies and their products become more popular to reach this stereotypes.

Magazines, TV, music, books, and movies help one make decisions and take action whether consciously or subconsciously. This large sphere of influence, however, is not always beneficial for those who suffer victim to these forms of public entertainment. The medias version of beauty, shames those who are considered overweight and scares almost everyone into thinking that being thin is the only way to be pretty. Jolene Hart emphasis how important beauty is in the American culture in her book Eat Pretty: Nutrition for Beauty, Inside and Out: “There’s a multi-billion-dollar industry built on helping us achieve greater physical beauty” (Hart 33). By creating this manipulated and untrue image of beauty, the American culture encourages eating disorders like anorexia (undereating) and sustains obesity (overeating).

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a psychological disorder revolving around body-image and self-perception. Body dysmorphic disorder is also known as a somatoform disorder. People with body dysmorphic disorder are preoccupied with an imagined or slight defect in their appearance. Even if to others the defect is minor or nonexistent, people with body dysmorphic disorder can spend hours thinking about their perceived flaw or flaws. The thoughts they have can cause them severe emotional distress, and they can interfere with the person’s daily life.

In Hesse-Biber’s article she shows, “They are barraged with messages from beauty magazines and TV, and from classmates and parents and doctors, about the value of thinness and the liability of obesity. Many of them, by virtue of being female, white, and middle class, are already primed to join the cult of thinness” (Hesse-Biber 769). Doctors, classmates, media, and family members have an everyday impact on the people around them. These people influence a person’s body image and weight. The media especially negatively influences white middle class females.