Thursday, November 6, 2008
"Dying to Fit In"
The entire article is chock full of important and relevant to my topic, but the section I want to focus on it called Dying to Fit In. Click on the green heading and it will direct you to this part of the page. A word this site uses to describe women is not we commonly hear in our society. "Prisoner" is the word this article uses to describe the women of America. "Women are enslaved to a beauty myth, chained to the false belief that our value is based on our appearance alone." I personally feel that this is extremely true for us as women, and may very well be true for women of other countries as well. Do you feel that as an American woman you are a prisoner to this stereotype and expectation of what you must be and/or look like? If so, where do you feel that this pressure comes from? Is it the media, your friends, family, or a combination or them all? If you do not feel that you a slave to a beauty ideal, how did you learn to rise above this expectation or even avoid it? Either way, it saddened me that most of the given information on frequent eating disorders and bad self esteem was not new to me. I feel that I am constantly surrounded by this information but few are doing anything to change it. Let me know how you feel!
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3 comments:
I personally don't feel prisoner to America's ideal of how a woman should act. My best friend and I are the weirdest individuals you will ever meet, guaranteed, and I don't care what people think of us. I could care less if someone likes me or not. I know I am a good person that never goes out of my way to harm anyone, so if someone has something against me that's their problem. As for the looks topic, that's a different story entirely. I feel as though I can control my personality, and I am happy with how I am, but I cannot necessarily control my looks as well. It's kind of what you are born with you are stick with, but a personality can change, so I think that's why beauty and physical appearance is targeted so much. There's only so much you can do to change your appearance unless you want to take drastic measures such as plastic surgery.
Self esteem, body image, how you're treated my friends and family, etc. all are factors in a person's views and comfort level of themselves. Those who are repeatedly torn down and kicked emotionally are going to feel ugly and unfit. Even the ones who are so gorgeous, but yet are alone, are the ones who fall prey to the media's "beautiful" (all 90 pounds of it usually). I can say as well I've never felt lured by the media to be little and skinny. I've always eaten a BUNCH and just got lucky with a high metabolism I guess... More organizations out there need to be created to redirect the focus from the media's light and back to real beauty.
I would like to say I don't feel a prisoner to this image but to be honest I don't think that would be true. It's more than caring if people like you or not because you could not care and still be conforming to a certain kind of image. Even people who feel like they are rebelling are conforming to a certain kind of dress. Dressing is what our society first looks at and no matter what we do it's just how we have learned to live.
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