Weight Obsessed Women Essay Research Paper Weight

Weight Obsessed Women Essay, Research Paper Weight Obsessed Women Today?s media places an extreme amount of pressure on women to maintain a slender figure. Through childhood to adulthood, women are bombarded with images of stick skinny women, and this is the way almost every woman wants to look. Although there are other factors, the media is the primary source of the obsession with being thin. Why has this become such a popular trend? This is what society says is acceptable. It has been proven that these images of perfect women do affect the normal women who wish to look like that. Shaw and Stein found that, ?Women exposed to pictures of thin models experienced more depression, stress, guilt, shame, insecurity, and body dissatisfaction than women exposed to photos of average

sized women or control photos? (?Media?s? n. pag.). Now, thanks to the unrealistic expectations put on women to maintain the perfect shape, eating disorders are on the rise. Then, once they enter college, the body images of women get even worse. They are on their own now and can eat whenever and whatever they desire; therefore, college girls gain weight and diet. When they gain the weight they are willing to do anything to lose it. A person?s body image can also vary depending on that person?s race. On the surface it may seem that the media is trying to work through this weight issue, but society already has a prejudice against being too heavy. Every media influence is shoving in all American girls?, womens?, and sometimes mens? faces, that thin is in and fat is out. The burden

of attempting to have the flawless build has been climbing to unrealistic heights in the past years. In the forty?s, the sexy look for women was to be curvaceous and have some meat on her bones, however; from the late eighty?s to the ninety?s more emphasis was placed on having no figure at all. The best body for women today is a waifish body, if you have Mattis 2 curves you are considered over weight. This damages the self-concept of less than perfect women. ?The increasing pressure to be thin and the unrealistic images portrayed in the mass media may have a devastating effect on women?s self-perceptions, self esteem, and identity development? (Heights 603-614). There have been many studies on the weight decline of Playboy centerfolds and Miss America Pageant contestants over the

years. In 1960, the average Playboy model?s weight was 91% of the population mean. By 1978, it dropped to 84% and continues to plummet. From 1979 to 1988, 69% of Playboy models and 60% of Miss America contestants weighed 15% or more below their expected weight, which is criterion for anorexia (603-614). Who is too blame for this massive self destructive phenomenon? Most of the fault lies with the media. Children as young as two years old start to see images of perfect women, who one day they are supposed to look like. Even the dolls and Barbies they play with have flawless figures. In the forty?s and fifty?s children we seeing more shapely models and actresses, so there was not the strain on those children of doing anything possible to achieve a so called perfect figure. When you

turn on the television, do you see many heavy women or men for that matter? No, the majority of today?s actors and actresses are thin. The fat people are usually the funny unusual people on sitcoms and daytime shows. The only other place you might find an over weight person is on a pathetic talk show. When you only see fat women as miserable talk show guests, then you are thinking if you become over weight you might end up where they are, so you had better go on a diet. Speaking of diets, a study found diet promotions, nonexistent in 1973, make up about five percent of television commercials (Berg n. pag.). When doing segments on weight, producers want to know what the women look like. The producers explanation for this is, ?We do not want to turn off our viewers? (?Fear? n.