I have often observed the media's inundation of images of men and women, and particular emotions that are instilled regarding body types. For example, women with larger body types are vilified as unattractive, while there seems to be a direct correlation between thinness and attractiveness with women. There exists, however, a double standard, as men's body types are not given as negative a stigma. The author's point about the media's role in the establishment of these attitudes is very much an accurate and dangerous aspect of our culture; the perpetuation of increasingly high standards of beauty and acceptability leads to significant problems with depression and misplaced priorities for many people.
The idea of beauty and how it is proliferated in media and culture is incredibly calculated, on the part of economic interests and the fashion industry. By assigning value judgments to those who do not look like those who use their products, they can make people feel a moral obligation to maintain that appearance, because that is purported as the ideal. The overemphasis on particular body types (skinny as opposed to fat, tall over short, etc.) as the only acceptable type for modeling or photo shoots makes those who are sensitive about their appearance feel unworthy or less valued than those that do. Since, in many cases, these are conditions that cannot be changed, this has tremendous negative effects on people's self-esteem and self-worth.
Our preoccupation with physical appearance has many downsides; people go to great lengths to look the way fashion and pop culture wants them to look. Many women develop eating disorders in order to drop weight and become skinny, instead of allowing themselves to be at a healthy weight for their body type, and maintaining proper nutrition. This leads to high rates of anorexia and bulimia among teenage and young adult women, who seek to look the best they can at the expense of their health. These women do not feel actualized or validated as individuals unless they look like the fashion industry says they look - this demonstrates the incredible hold media portrayals of the ideal have on us. There are few women figures who manage to subvert these expectations, maintaining success and strength despite divisions of class and social expectations; Roseanne Barr, with her blue-collar sitcom Roseanne, is one example of a woman who manages to break stereotypes and become a positive role model for radical feminism that eschews traditional body ideals for women (Ehrenreich, 1990).
Men, on the other hand, have a much more complicated and lenient set of social pressures towards weight and looks. While there is a recent influx of social pressure to look like supermodels now, there is still a much greater level of accessibility and acceptance for men who are overweight. For example, many network television sitcoms feature the genre staple of the lovable but overweight husband and the inexplicably-attractive and devoted wife. These media portrayals make it much easier for a man to be fat and valued than for a woman.
In conclusion, the media has an incredible hold on our perceptions of ourselves, often to the detriment of women more than men (due to ingrained social privilege and increased pressure for women to be beautiful for men). Men are more recently falling into this trap as well, but their ideal social pressures often involve being 'in shape' as opposed to being 'thin'; therefore, the pressure is to be healthier and more active, whereas women are often forced to starve themselves to achieve the waifish social standards that the fashion and advertising industries set up for women.
Works Cited
Ehrenreich, Barbara. "The Wretched of the Hearth: The Undainty Feminism of Roseanne Barr." The New Republic, vol. 202, no. 14 (Apr 2, 1990): 28.
