Introduction
The society recognizes the value of a human body. However, the perceptions of various individuals about their bodies do not have a direct effect and correspondence to the standards of the society. Peoples’ body aesthetics feelings and attractiveness of sexual appearance constitutes to what is defined by Wainwright and Grogan as ‘body image.’ The report analysis suggests that there exists a strong feeling of body shape dissatisfaction among men and women at above teenage age (Kimmel et al., 17). The best reason that emerges from the various comments is that, dissatisfaction comes as a result of poor dieting habits. This has a greater impact to women especially. Of all women that shared their opinions, about ninety percent have failed trying better diet routines. This has greatly affected their body balance to what many consider as ‘thin adorable’ bodies.
Although diet contributes the larger part of the causes of body shape dissatisfaction, other causes includes: culture pressures, media, norms and beliefs concerning correct and incorrect size of the body. Cultural pressures that tasks women with unrealistic way of living makes the life of a woman very difficult to bear. As a result women undergo a learning process of how and what it entails to be a woman. Throughout their life span, women try as much as possible to impress the society and the entire environment in which they live. As early as from 8 years of age, girls begin to experience physical changes of shape and size of their bodies. This gradually increases towards the adolescent age and further to the age of womanhood. Research shows that at these stages, the body size challenge become severe and more intolerable. This mainly contributes to the women’s struggle to fit in the cultural expectations so that they can be accepted by the society (Kimmel et al., 21). For example, the society largely accepts slim and small sized women. They consider them as the real ideal take of femininity. Therefore, regardless of their age, women with physically big bodies are often looked down upon by the larger society. This perception reduces their aggregate chance to utilize and showcase their capabilities. They therefore end up leading a miserable life, a situation that is out of their control.
Pressures on women are both quantitatively and qualitatively different compared to that on men. Various aspects that accompany their way of living, such as fashion and the modern lifestyle subjects a woman to more expectations than that expected from men. Here, media becomes the key source of all the pressure. It is evident that magazines and television programs that aim teenage aged ladies to present the real taste of attractiveness show aggregate slim images. This means that, thinness is the real criterion to value the extent of a woman’s beauty. Going by this, heavy and obese ladies get confused on what the next step to do and how they can fall in this bracket. Some of them even decide to undergo frequent surgeries in order to impress. Media influence on the positive image of a woman has by far grown to uncontrollable situation. For example, most of television news presenters are uniformly thin. The soap programs played on these televisions show relatively slim ladies. This suggests that huge ladies have no chance close enough for the society to consider them beautiful. On the other hand, men encounter body shape problems but of less magnitude in comparison with their counterparts. This is because, from the findings of the research, majority of men live with aggregate less environmental pressures. Men working at same positions as women, for instance, television presenters, model and so forth, get little response in terms of body attractiveness. They therefore do not face much heat of pressure and live comfortably.
According to the findings, white girls lead the other girls from other races in the fight to lose weight. The number of Asian and black girls who want to lose weight is very minimal (Low et al., 23). This difference emerges as a result of the norms and beliefs from the backgrounds and societies they come from. In Africa and Asia, losing some weight is not mandatory for a woman to be attractive. This ideology is much different in the western countries. However, a slim woman is a beautiful woman. This is the general ideal stand and perception about women from all nations across the world. Being the standard measure of beautifulness, young women begin to learn about the ideal slim acceptability status at a very young age. The research shows that this happens from as early as eight years old girls. Contrarily, this idea has been received on both a positive and negative note the modern society. Though it seems young ladies find it hard to challenge the predominant cultural perceptions of femininity, mature women easily cope with the situation. They live comfortably despite not being slim. Even some very popular magazines have turned the attention to fat women who do not conform to the general cultural ideal of femininity but lead a happy life. Very soon, the real image of a woman and the definition of ideal femininity will favor all women regardless of their history and geographical backgrounds.
Works Cited
Kimmel, Michael S, and Amy Aronson. The Gendered Society Reader. N.p. Oxford University press, 2011. Print.
Low, Jacqueline, and Claudia Malacrida. Sociology of the Body: A Reader. Don Mills, Ont: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.
