Perfect Body Image - Essay Example

15 December 2008 What Women do to have a Perfect Body in Today's Society Perfect body image is a dream of every woman who value personal identity issues and unique personal image. A pertinent issue during early adolescence is that bodily changes bring about a sense of fragmentation in body image. Thus, the body is frequently depicted as a collection of individual parts, such as breasts and hips (Gilbert 82). So, for example, many women worry about the size of their breasts. In the United States, bigger is generally considered better, yet not from women's perspectives. Rather others are believed to hold that value. Because the body is often times viewed as a reflection of the self, the eroticization processes through which the body is transformed into a sexual object become a major source of conflict for many adolescent women. Thus, only some women really need perfect body image as a part of their professional occupation and life style. To these groups belong film stars and TV stars, fitness trainers and fashion models. Film and TV stars are the main groups which really needs an ideal body image. Modern people judged others, and expected to be judged by other people, as being "Fashion In" or "Fashion Out " depending on whether they met the operant criteria. Those who best portrayed the "Fashion In" look became what the people called "role models." Those women selected as role models then set the standards for what other people emulated and perceived as right and normal (Gilbert 98). The people's desires for being judged "Fashion In" could conflict with their interests in developing other characteristics they valued, such as the characteristic of individuality; however, most people remained painfully aware of the problems associated with low performance with respect to fashion. That is, they explained how an assignation as "Fashion Out" carried a heavy social cost by relegating a person to an inferior social position. When judged as "Fashion Out, " any person could expect to be considered as generally undesirable. Gilbert (98) explained one of the indignities a person might expect to suffer when judged as "Fashion Out." "When a person is fashion out they will usually get talked about by other people to other people. Although it's not nice to talk about people, it's something that just happens" (Gilbert 91). This social reality made it important for the people to know the bases for judgments about one's fashion status. In the following excerpt from one conversation about fashion, the people tried to help me understand some of the complexities involved in distinguishing between In their images the "Fashion In" woman is adorned in name brand clothes and shoes that cost a certain amount of money. Thus if a woman does not come from a family with the required level of economic buying power, she is forced to find other means to make the appropriate acquisitions or accept a status as "Fashion Out." (Rothschild 65). Fitness trainers need an ideal body image in order to promote healthy life style and active life style. For this group of women, ideal body means health and good pussycat form. Through their approach these researchers constructed health as an individual's problem and responsibility. By continuing to individualize health and health behaviors, we are able to blame the "victim" (Gilbert 84). While individuals may certainly have power to control certain types of health-related problems, those who individualize the phenomenon of health also camouflage the social, relational, and communal aspects of health (Rothschild 65). They divert attention from much-needed discussion of society's collective influence, concern, and responsibility. Thus, rather than simply viewing health as unidimensional and personal, we might be better off to think of health as a dynamic and complex social phenomenon occurring at the intersection of individual, social, relational, and communal planes. Further, viewing health in this way enables us to politicize the concept of health. Through this process we might learn to recognize and address existing inequities that may interfere with good health (Gilbert 82). Thus, many women continue to suffer in multiple ways as a result of these complex social processes. Meanwhile the psychologists and psychiatrists who have historically led the study of what is known as "body image" have done so in ways that limit knowledge and understanding of women, further contributing to the structures supporting domination and oppression of females (Gilbert 55). That is, these researchers have almost exclusively studied "body image" through quantitative measures that assume objectivity. In the process, they have conveniently and openly ignored and dismissed contributions from social scientists and feminists who have studied the body from alternative and more hopeful perspectives. Body image work has become influential, creating at least three problems. First, the historical study of "body image" has contributed to the objectification of the body. Second, "body image" researchers have created a logic of pathology to explain women's problems (Cash 2004). Third, the "body image" research tradition has contributed to a social milieu within which it is easy to normalize behaviors, anxieties, and preoccupations with their bodies (Rothschild 99). Fashion models need the ideal body in order to demonstrate and promote universal beauty. Those women who obtain the economic means to display themselves with the proper accoutrements may indeed attain the desired status as "Fashion In" with its accompanying assignation as right and normal. Nevertheless they implicate themselves in a harsh social system that treats humans as objects to be criticized and punished. As both groups internalize this system of relationships, they subject themselves as well as others to an oppressive system (Gilbert 65). The women are aware of the injustice of these processes even while they admitted criticizing women deemed to be "Fashion Out." While name brand clothes and shoes that cost a certain amount of money were central criteria for discriminating between "Fashion In" and "Fashion Out, " there was more to this criterion than having the correct attire. A person must also "look like a model" in these clothes. Critics (Cash 43) see the emergence of a subtle ability to judge such as that associated with the knowledge of an expert or connoisseur. Cash (22) suggests an extraordinary level of knowledge that goes beyond knowing what to wear to include knowing how to wear various objects. The model is used as a role model in this conversation, and the image of the model is evoked as a standard. This type of logic is particularly worrisome in an age in which the images of models that come to us through magazines and television are typically computer-manipulated images designed to distort women's bodies to reflect unrealistic proportions supported by commercial interests. Such unrealistic representations are unlikely be achieved by real women. Nevertheless, discrepancies between the real and the imagined encourage women to seriously jeopardize their health in their pursuit of the unattainable (Rothschild 31). Each additional criterion for "Fashion In" reduces the number of women who can achieve the standard. In sum, the perfect body image is a part of professional life some women. Film stars and TV stars, fitness trainers and fashion models need a good body attractive to the audience. People do not identify femininity as an explicit criterion for judgments about being "Fashion In." Femininity is tied to looking right is one criterion for being judged "Fashion In." The costs for the pursuit of "Fashion In" remain monetarily, physically, and socially quite high. Further, the pursuit of this standard of fashion is part of a social process that relies on women's' uncritical internalization of multiple forms of racism and segregation that are circulating rather transparently within their prevalent discourse on fashion. Works Cited Cash, Th. F. Body Image: A Handbook of Theory, Research, and Clinical Practice. The Guilford Press; 1 edition, 2004. Gilbert, P. Body Shame: Conceptualilsation, Research and Treatment. Routledge; 1 edition, 2002. Rothschild, B. The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment/. W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition, 2000. Read More