Correlation between Body and Person's Self Identity - Essay Example

THE BODY Introduction Body image is the dynamic perception of the body and is often shaped by perceptions that keep on changing and end up determining the identity of any person in the society, and how the society views him. Therefore, the body image is likely to experience highly dynamic perceptions of the body, and is strongly influenced by self-esteem and evaluation by self rather than external evaluation by others in the particular society that one resides. Given the overwhelming societal standards of appearance and attractiveness, body image has become important to humans, especially the females. The body has become part of a project that has to be worked at continuously and is linked to the identity of the humans (Entwistle, 2000, p. 2). People tend to think that the body is simply a product of nature, but the reality is that the body is also a product of culture that requires modification and reshaping in order to influence identity (Featherstone, 2000, p. 15). This may be accomplished through a variety of techniques and practices aimed at making the body either conform to the ideals of beauty or make it a mark of social status amongst other reasons (Barker & Barker, 2002, p. 92). This may be achieved through such means as dieting or through cosmetic surgery. It is important to note that while people seek to improve their body image, it may not always be a motivating factor as some forms of modification of the body may have unintended consequences that may have a negative effect on the identity and self-esteem of a person. For example, some cultures impose constrictive and debilitating modification on the body of women for them to obtain the ideal curvaceous feminine figure that reflects the idea of women’s natural frailty in body identity. While the ancient ways of managing the human identity have gone out of fashion, there are now new ways of controlling the projection of body for identity purposes such as extreme dieting, punishing exercise regimes and cosmetic surgery. The connection between the outward appearance of a person and his identity are an important aspect of how a person is portrayed in the society. Many professionals in the art and practice of body art suggest that there are numerous ways in which the virtues and identities of a person are conjoined to the body. This implies that the outer form of a person reflects his identity in most instances; the more we put emphasis on the visual objectification of the body, the more popular such practices such as dieting and explosive growth of cosmetic surgery. Therefore, instead of working only to conform to the norms of beauty, it can now be confirmed that such practices such as dieting and cosmetic surgery are sure ways of working on the self and identity. Cosmetic surgery has seen a serious uptake with women being part of the larger constituency on whom it is performed, but men have also not been left behind. While some people see cosmetic surgery as a way of improving the self-image and esteem, others view it with skepticism in that they have the opinion that it is a sad indictment of a culture with rigid ideas of beauty and identity. Critics associate cosmetic surgery with potential risks related with post-operative infections and other surgical complications. Cosmetic Surgery This falls under the arm bits of cosmetic enhancements that refer to the aesthetic enhancements of the features of the body and include cosmetic surgery features such as breast and eyelid surgery and the focus on beauty that is visual. The continued uptake of cosmetic surgery, therefore, suggests that it is now widely accepted, for example most modern women in the current British society have had some form of cosmetic surgery. According to official statistics by the British government, approximately seventy thousand surgical cosmetic procedures were performed in the United Kingdom alone, in the year 2008. The statistics show that enlargement of breasts was the most popular followed by rhinoplasty, which refers to the reshaping of the nose, liposuction and face-lifts. This shows that it is usually facial surgery or breast surgery that is carried out for that the person to look more beautiful and feminine. When the enhancements become the norm or the trait as practiced by the persons taking them, the normality is redefined and traits that were hitherto unenhanced become inferior rather than normal. This may come to mark either the status, social or economic status of the person that ultimately determines his identity in the society. This dictates cosmetic surgery that measures up the human body against unrealistic ideals of beauty and perfection that performs corrections as well as removing deformities. Amongst the most popular cosmetic surgical procedures conducted on women include tummy tuck, eyelid surgery also known as blepharoplasty and mammoplasty that may include breast enlargement, reduction, lift or male breast reduction. The tummy tuck involves reshaping of the abdomen and firming it and is popular among women who have just given birth after a pregnancy and improves appearance by concealing the stretch marks. Eyelid surgery aims at reshaping the eyelids and is both a functional and cosmetic procedure and may aid in improving visions for people with drooping eye lids. Breast enlargement is one of the most common for cosmetic surgery and may be done with fat grafting or prosthetics. This is often done to make the breasts larger or make them uniform in size. This procedure leads to a considerable boost in the self esteem and positive feelings about the sexuality of a woman in her body both internally and externally. Breast reduction is a procedure aimed at removing the skin and glandular tissues in order to make the breasts smaller and it helps in relieving of physical comfort that the female may be experiencing. Male breast reduction is usually carried out on men with abnormally large mammary glands and helps in improving their self image. This research paper therefore aims at showing how representations of cosmetic surgery have greatly contributed to the evolution of a discourse in which the body must be projected to represent the character and identity of a person. This means that cosmetic surgery must not be conceived as technology that is aimed at achieving beauty, but as a way of transforming the human self. It describes and offers a scripted narrative of identity in which the human body is aesthetically and quickly transformed while making an endeavor the virtuous person that the person is. Therefore those women who undergo cosmetic surgery for aesthetic reasons do so to improve their self esteem with the realization that it is greatly dependent on their physical appearance in the society that places much emphasis on image. The increased uptake may be attributed to be symptomatic of the permanent sense of dissatisfaction with the body that the women possess. Kathy Davis, in her book Reshaping the Female Body: The Dilemma of Cosmetic Surgery (1995), offers a guarded ‘defense’ of the practice as a strategy that enables the women to exercise control over their lives in circumstances that offer little or no opportunities for the realization of the human self. To her, most women opt for cosmetic surgery when they are well aware of its benefits and drawbacks contrary to claims that they do so. Therefore, cosmetic surgery as adopted by women is a way of enhancing their self esteem and the decision to undergo cosmetic surgery is an act of empowerment rather than oppression. Other researchers on the relevance of cosmetic surgery on human identity consider it as a tool for subverting the male-dominated ideals of feminine beauty. While cosmetic surgery has been utilized to produce traditionally gendered, it can also be utilized for staging cultural identities as the surgical refashioning of the body opens up the possibility of highlighting the culturally constructed nature of beauty (Davis, 2003, p. 98). Therefore, it is envisaged that cosmetic surgery is a procedure that acknowledges rather than disputes its role in the reconstruction or re-projection of the body. This means that cosmetic surgery can be used in demonstrating that nature and identity of the body are notions that may either be fixed and immutable. Davis argues that women who decide to take cosmetic surgery do so because they feel a deep sense of rift from their bodies. They believe that the cosmetic operation helps them achieve a sense of self where the physical and psychic self are more integrated with one another. Therefore, women undergo cosmetic surgery to feel at home with their body and this enables them become embodied subjects rather than objectified bodies (Davis 1995, p. 161). The whole picture portrays a situation whereby women who undergo cosmetic surgery feel skeptical of it as a general remedy for dissatisfaction with the general appearance of a person. They do not undergo the surgery at the behest of anyone but do so as an act of self-assertion and self control over their own in the society and not because of any disadvantage placed on their part due to their gender. Therefore, cosmetic surgery involves the exercise of power under the conditions which are not of the woman’s own making and can be integral in helping her shape her life by reshaping her body (Davis, 1995, p. 163). This calls for the re-evaluation of the practice of cosmetic surgery on the respectful reasons given by the recipients. The importance of cosmetic surgery can ultimately be underscored by the fact that most women who opt for it experience a feeling of elation and satisfaction after undergoing the surgery even in instances when surgery did not come through as expected. Dieting Dieting is the practice whereby a person eats food in a regulated manner to have an optimum body weight and is often used in combination with exercise. It involves the taking of low fat, low- carbohydrate, low-calorie and very low calorie foods in the feeding regime of the person concerned. Studies show that majority of individuals who undertook dieting had an improved body image and identity. The body image is therefore important in the construction of the self and identity that is determined by the weight as embodied in a skinny or thin body image. This is due to the fact that a skinny or thin body is perceived as having a higher value in terms of the cultural capital as compared to the real self of a person. This places an obligation for the females to undergo a transformation to achieve an acceptable or appreciated body that is only attainable through such acts such as dieting. In a world that stresses good body figure and image, building body image that define the identity of person take time and require that the person find the right diet for him. Having the requisite body image could be a real incentive to lose weight faster to emphasize a good body image before, during and after losing weight. Improving the body image and identity of a person through dieting helps the person feel good both physically and mentally. The first question that is usually of importance for any person willing to improve the image of her body through dieting is the need to accept and respect the body as well as get comfortable in it, both in the inside and the outside. Having a healthy body through the correct dieting is important in improving the self-esteem and the nurturing of the mind. The body image of any person is often denoted as how the person thinks and feels about the body and having a poor body image is always linked to dieting or eating disorders as well as self-esteem issues. There are also instances when a person will diet because of having a poor body image, which may lead to physical illnesses when the weight of a person cannot be controlled after dieting. Drawing on the concept of habitus as envisaged by Bourdieu, obesity drives much attention in the desired body size that women want to have a desirable image for identity purposes. The provision of food and practices related to its uptake which were in conflict with the promotion of changes in behavior were central to the act of mothering in the society and the disdain for obesity and big body structures. The structure of the fields occupied by the humans and their behavior in terms of style, the customs and manner in the social context are thus affected by habitus (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 72). Therefore, Habitus is a concept that overcomes the problematic binary between the agency and structure that defines the relationship between the person and the social world. The desire to manage the obesity and the fact that it is an undesired trait leads the women to undertake dieting as a means of improving their image. The question that arises is why people must adopt dieting as a way of managing their bodies for image and identity purposes The greatest culprit in this quest remains the celebrity culture amongst other reasons for trying to correct a situation where a person is trapped in a body she doesn’t desire to be in (Cashmore, 2006, p. 109). Current physical ideals such as the female ideal and the pressure to attain it is one of the major reasons for dieting, therefore, women are encouraged to attain a thin body as opposed to the usual physical ideal of a woman that stresses curves and softness that are natural to the female body. These ideals are at times unattainable through biological processes as few women have the ability to attain a body that has been assigned to the females by stereotypes. Size prejudice controls how people perceive the size and shape of the body and is usually absorbed at tender ages thus contributing to the desires of a woman to diet to control their bodies. Closely connected to the pop and celebrity culture in maintaining a feminine image by the women is the idea of performativity that characterizes gender as the effect of reiterated acting that produces the effect of the usual gender but hides the contradicting acts of a person due to her gender. This creates the true gender and basing on this hypothesis, the socially constructed aspect of gender performativity offers a comprehension of the gender binaries and gender performance, meaning that what is performed can only be understood through reference to what is barred from the signifier within corporeal legibility. The media has been a key cause of the uptake of dieting in the sense that most women resort to dieting after reading or watching through the different media that makes them uncomfortable with their bodies. This is due to the fact that after watching the images, they become uncomfortable in their bodies making them want to diet to improve image and identity. The media as a conduit of transmitting cultural beliefs is responsible for instilling standards of physical attractiveness that women try to imitate. Plenty of evidence suggests that the media glorifies slenderness and weight loss in the achievement of beauty and appearances for image and identity purposes. The beauty and fashion industry as exhibited through the media have a significant impact on the process of development of identity and its formation, and the development of values and beliefs that impact on identity and image of the human body in any society. The media more so contributes in image identity procedures through what is known as the female gaze as compared to the male gaze. The female gaze simply shows how a particular work is presented from a female point of view and reflects attitudes that can be attributed to a female and is hinged on the expectations of the audience. When compared to the male gaze which is pervasive, it is found in works that are exclusively for women. Therefore, a woman will look at herself from the perspective of a man meaning she has to conform to the norms established for the benefit of men and how they perceive her body image. The thoughts, feelings and behaviors that are related to the uptake and management of food can however interfere with the everyday activities when too much focus is put on the body and how it responds to eating. Dieting in terms of food and weight preoccupation also has the effect of likely leading one to severe emotional and physical problems in the family and the society. It is important to note that individuals who are struggling with their identity and self-image are at great risks of suffering esteem issues as well as those that have had a past experience of traumatic events. As a remedy, it is important to encourage a positive body image and taking of healthy foods as a regime for dieting that includes working towards achieving the physical, emotional and mental well-being that ultimately helps one attain the desired identity. It is a good idea to criticize the culture that promotes an unhealthy body image and avoid the labeling of food as either junk or bad that leads most females to start dieting. Conclusion In conclusion, the images that a person aims at focusing on the value of appearances and impact on the body satisfaction play a key role in the identity of a person. Research has shown that the media and the celebrity culture contribute to the image and identity of a person and it therefore requires that those concerned advocate for more positive and self-esteem messages in order to improve body satisfaction. The pictures of the human self that may be captured through image, embodied practices and habits that are mental present a challenge that people must think of themselves as embodied both internally and externally. The only indication of our identity is therefore only through the visual self and the assertion that the most important aspect of fashion is its ability to transform objects into symbols. The body can therefore be used to depict the inside or the identity of the person as may be shown by cosmetic surgery which is an ongoing project on the body. The body will also be required to conform to the societal expectations based on archetypes and standardized goals. Reference List Barker, D.J., & Barker, M.J. (2002). The body as art. Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, 1, 88- 93.  Bourdieu, P. (1993) Sociology in Question (London, Sage Publications) Cashmore, E. (2006). Celebrity culture. Abingdon [England], Routledge. Davis, K. (1995) Reshaping the Female Body: The Dilemma of Cosmetic Surgery. New York and London: Routledge. Davis, K. (2003). Dubious equalities and embodied differences: cultural studies on cosmetic surgery. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield. Entwistle, J. (2000). The fashioned body: fashion, dress, and modern social theory. Cambridge, Polity Press. Featherstone, M. (2000). Body modification. London, SAGE. Read More