For quite a long time, the concern on the body weight and body image was seen as a preserve for the Western girls and women, who were well up and probably at the college level. These people exhibited eating disorders since they wanted to get the perfect body shape and attain what is considered as the ideal body weight (Bordo 203). This phenomenon, however, has changed and the habit has spread to different races, nationalities and even genders. Nowadays, it is not a wonder that even the African women, who liked being plump and voluminous, have all of a sudden become bulimic and anorexic all in the name of wanting to gain the perfect body (Bordo 204).
The advertisers seem to have the same mindset, but they go a step further in encouraging the women to strive and get this body figure or shape. For instance, most of the advertisers and the mass media show the slender woman as the ideal one. The media does the same and even the cover girls in fashion magazines are deemed to be slim. In other words, the world goes for the ‘slim is good’ notion (Bordo 250). These advertisements look so convincing that women in areas reached by the advertisements and the TV shows end up striving to lose weight.
The rhetoric purpose of the above avenues is that they try to paint what the global definition of beauty and perfection is. As such, the women from all over the world, disregarding their culture or familial values, al go out in search of the perfect body and figure. In the long run, there is the spread of the eating disorders as they avoid food or try to expel that which they have already eaten, all in a bid to look good. In general, they have led to the globalization of eating disorders.
Work Cited
Bordo, Susan. The Globalization of Eating Disorders. California: University of California Press, 2004.
