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The women’s movement of the nineteen sixties and seventies has come and gone. Women have financial independence from men, they are sexually liberated, they have the right to abortion. But do those things mean that women are equal to men? Do they mean that women’s rights are no longer an issue, because they are the same as men’s rights? Many people see it that way.
But women are not equal to men, not yet.
More work must still be done. While
women hold more power than ever before, they still may be prisoners.
Millions of women spend their time and money focusing on dieting, on
obtaining a body closer to the ones regarded as ideal in magazines and on
television. The quest to be thin is
one that controls women and keeps them from pursuing more meaningful things.
This
problem, while facing some men, is mostly gender-specific.
In 1998, plastic surgery had increased 153% from 1992. 91% of plastic surgery patients are female (Peacock 1).
Roughly 10% of the population suffers from eating disorders.
90% of people with eating disorders are female.
In one study it was found that women are far less accurate than men in
estimates of the current size, imagining themselves to be larger than they
actually are. They are also less
accurate in predicting the body sizes found attractive by the opposite sex
(Harrison 52). Female models are
found to have higher self-esteem than average, non-model women. However, the self-esteem of male models and of male
non-models is about the same (Peacock 2).
This
is also a problem that faces youth as well as adults.
50-75% of adolescent girls are dissatisfied with their bodies (Journal of
the American Medical Association 2). The
number of teenagers who had plastic surgery in 1998 grew 95% from 1992.
Horrifyingly, one poll found that young girls are more afraid of being
fat than of nuclear war, cancer, or losing their parents (Newman 54).
As
is evident in these statistics, this is a problem, not something to be ignored. The question is, why does the problem exist?
Hating your body is not a condition that automatically comes along with
having two X chromosomes. I believe
that the great dissatisfaction many women feel with their bodies is due largely
in part to the images we are exposed to daily in the media.
It
is no secret that the focus of women’s magazines is very different than the
focus of men’s magazines. One
study found that women’s magazines contain 10.5 times more articles relating
to body weight than men’s magazines (Monteath 1).
It
is not just the articles but the images spread throughout the magazines. Models used in fashion spreads and ads are not larger than a
size six. The average woman in the
United States weighs a little over 140 pounds, which does not translate to a
size six. Only ten percent of
population fulfills the height and weight requirements to be a model, saying
nothing of having the right “look” or not (Peacock 2).
Pictures
women see in magazines have been set up, with lighting and professional make-up
artists. Even after the picture has
been taken, the images are almost always airbrushed before they are ready to
appear in a magazine. No human
being could achieve the look models have in photographs of them – a woman who
thinks she should be able to is destined to fail. But if you never see someone
who has a body like yourself, is it not easy to assume that you are far too
large?
A
study was done in 1997 that demonstrates that women’s poor body image is
directly affected by exposure to fashion magazines.
The participants, a group of 101 female college students, were formed two
separate groups. Both groups were
about equal in age and in the size of their bodies.
The subjects were told they were participating in a study on women’s
body images. After giving consent,
they were told they would have to wait a few minutes before the experiment would
begin. They were led to a waiting
room with magazines spread out across the table for them to read while they
passed the time. For the members of
the first group, the magazines of the table were popular news magazines –
Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, and Business Week. For the members of the second group, they were popular
fashion magazines – Vogue, Bazaar, Elle, and Allure.
After thirteen minutes, the subjects were admitted to a room where they
filled out a questionnaire on which they would rate how they felt about their
bodies.
The
subjects in the first group had higher average scores than those subjects in the
second group on items such as “I am pleased with my body” and “I am
satisfied with the shape of my body.” The
subjects in the second group scored higher then those in the second group in
categories such as “I am frustrated about my weight” and “I exercise only
to lose weight.” The average
ideal weight of the members in group one was 126 pounds.
The average weight in group two was 119 pounds (Turner et al. 6). Though it was only a six pound difference, the subjects only
looked at the magazines for thirteen minutes.
What kind of affect could that have in a lifetime?
Anne
Becker, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, first visited Fiji in 1995.
The people there valued things like strength in their females.
“Thinness and sudden weight loss was seen as some kind of social loss
or neglect.” Becker said. This was the year television was introduced to Fiji,
including many programs from the Western world.
In
1998, Becker returned. 29% of the
adolescent girls had symptoms of eating disorders.
70% said women on television influenced how they felt about themselves (Monteath
2). All of this had occurred in
only three years!
Seventy
percent of teenage girls in a study found fashion magazines to be an important
source of beauty and fitness information. Almost
twenty-five percent of those girls wanted to be like the models they saw in
them.
That
is is not a healthy look for anyone to aspire to.
The average, reasonably healthy person has a body mass index between 20
and 25 (the body mass index is a number based on your height, weight, and age).
Anything below 18.5 is classified as malnutrition by the World Health
Organization (Moore 3). I found
that the average supermodel has a body mass index of roughly 17.2.
They would have to put on around twenty-five pounds to reach what in
considered the low end of their ideal weight.
For young girls to want to emulate them is a mistake, something our
society should recognize as a problem that needs immediate fixing.
In
another study it was found that, between the years of 1979 and 1988, 69% of
Playboy models and 60% of Miss America contestants weighed at least 15% below
the expected body weight for their age and height.
Miss America winners weighed significantly less than the rest of the
contestants. According to DSM
III-R, maintaining a body weight 15% below what is right for you is a criterion
for anorexia nervosa (Turner et al. 1).
It
has been thought that anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders may be merely
genetic and not a symptom of a problem in society.
The study done in Fiji shows that this is not the case. Another article reads “The Western exportation of media
images of rail thin women is leading to incidences of eating disorders where
anorexia and bulimia had never been seen before (McClelland 41).”
This
is also not a problem that is improving. In
the nineteen twenties, contestants in the Miss America Pageant had body mass
indexes between 20 and 25. More and
more winners in recent years now fall in the range of malnutrition, some falling
as low as 16.9 (Moore 2). In the
nineteen forties, the ectomorphic body type (the one described earlier as
“rail thin”) was not regarded as attractive – rather, the women in the
media (films, magazines, advertising) had curvy figures.
Now, the ectomorphic body type is the one that women find most desirable
for themselves, as well as the one that is most easily spotted among our media.
There
are other factors at work here that are holding women prisoner.
The images of women we see in ads and fashion spreads are not just those
of thin women, but of women demeaned, in submissive positions, turned into sex
objects. Since women have gained
their independence, left the house and gone to work, they have had to encounter
far more debasing images of other women. In
1971, it was found that images of women in advertisements reflected four
different stereotypes: “A woman’s place is in the home”; “Women do not
make important decisions or do important things”; “Women are dependent on
men and need their protection”; “Men regard women primarily as sex objects
– they are not interested in women as people.”
It’s been found that in recent years ads have lost only one of them –
“A woman’s place is in the home.” In
the last twenty-five years, there has been a 60% increase in images of women
shown purely as decorative or as sex objects (Peacock 2). That is a worrying development.
There
have been experiments done to see what can be done to put an end to this. One insightful one was done in 1998, using groups of
college-aged men and women. There
were two groups. Both groups were
given evaluations on their body image – both their beliefs of it, and their
behavior regarding it. Originally,
there was no significant difference between the two groups.
Then the second group went through a program that taught them to analyze
magazine ads for their validity, to frame them correctly, to intervene in the
way they automatically respond to them. When
this second group was analyzed again, things had changed.
Though the men in the study did not show a significant change in their
beliefs or their behaviors towards their body image, the women had positive
changes in both beliefs and behaviors (Rabak-Wagener 5).
If
women and girls can learn to recognize that these ads are there to make money,
not to put forth what a healthy human woman actually looks like, then perhaps
they will see them in a different, less threatening way.
It is then a question of how more women can be taught this, instead of
just assuming what they read and see is normal and true. Women must join
together and decide that it is not acceptable anymore, that there must be a
change.
These
images of women will persist because they are profitable.
Women continue to buy creams to make them look younger, implants to make
their breasts larger, expensive diets, and many other things.
They continue to buy the magazines themselves because they believe that
they need them for guidance on how to live their lives, how to appear for men,
how to be the right sort of person. This
idea that women must be unnaturally thin fuels an entire industry.
It
is that idea that makes me think women have the power to stop this.
As has been mentioned several times, women have money available to them
that they never had in this country before.
They have financial independence, and they can choose where their money
goes. If the only reason these
repetitive, dangerous, demeaning images of women exist is to make money, the
only way to stop them is to take the money away. If all people, regardless of gender, would stop buying from
stores that have malnourished models as their advertisers, if they would stop
buying products based on their insecurities and the advice of magazines, if they
would stop buying the magazines themselves, then perhaps this problem would
begin to die.
Once
people recognize this problem as a problem, not just a normal part of life, they
can band together, they can boycott all those things supporting the problem.
This is something people have the power to control.
They just need to recognize that.
Bibliography
1.
Peacock, Mary. Sex,
Housework, and Ads. Retrieved
April 3, 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.womenswire.com/forums/image/D1022/
2.
Peacock, Mary. Role
Models. Retrieved April 3, 2001
from the World Wide Web : http://www.womenswire.com/image/models.html
3.
Harrison, A. (1997). The relationship between media consumption and eating
disorders. Journal of
Communications, 47, 40-67.
4.
Newman, Judith. (1997,
September). Little girls who
won’t eat. Redbook.
5.
McClelland, Susan. (2000,
August 14). Distorted images: West
cultures are exporting their dangerous obsession with thinness. Macleans, 41.
6.
Monteath, Sheryl A., MCCabe, Marita.
(1997). Influence of
societal factors on female body image. Journal
of Social Psychology.
7.
Rabak-Wagener, Judith., Eickhoff-Shemek, JoAnn., Kelly-Vance, Lisa. (1998). The
effect of media analysis on attitudes and behaviors regarding body image among
college students. Journal of
American College Health.
8.
Moore, D.C. (1993). Body image and eating disorders in adolescents.
Journal of American College Nutrition.
9.
Turner, Sherry L., Hamilton, Heather., Jacobs, Meija., Angood, Laurie M.
(1997) The influence of
fashion magazines on the body image satisfaction of college women: an
exploratory analysis. Adolescence.
