Body Image Effects On Women

The concept of body image is one that many men but mostly women deal with in their everyday lives. Women and body image go hand in hand, it is believed that women are supposed to look a certain way constructed by societal “norms”. Body image might be more prevalent in our world today although that does not mean that it has not always been an important topic in past generations. While interviewing my mom, Liana Gigliotti, I was able to learn about how body image affected her during her younger years. My mom is forty-four years old, growing up during in the mid 1970’s and 80’s her education and understandings of body image are a lot different then what is being taught today. At young ages girls are told what is pretty and what is not, young women

“I am not saying that my high school experience was negative but a lot of stuff wasn’t addressed as much as I would have liked. I learned much less about body image and feminism and I blame the nuns. Those issues were not important to them and they didn’t have to teach them or even talk about them.” She was sometimes jealous of the friends she had that went to public high schools because they were getting so much more education on body image and women’s rights. Women are having hard time helping other women. Women are being targeted by so many people that it is somewhat difficult to find people that are trying to change the body image and beauty ideal problems. Author of Fight Like a Girl, Megan Seely makes a good point in her “Good Enough” chapter about famous women and how they are regularly ridiculed about the way they look even though they are supposed to be seen as perfect. No one is allowed to look a certain way, this makes many question about what normal is. “…We need to change the politics of beauty, challenge the ideal, and create more room for our diversity” (Seely, p. 128). There is not room for our diversity and there has not been for a long time. Everyone is different, that is obvious and everyone knows that. No two people will look the same, so why is everyone trying to fit one beauty ideal. These questions have been asked over and

Diet trends are still being created just as they were twenty years ago. Women are still trying to fit many of the beauty ideals that society has constructed for them. There is no looking like yourself, you are always supposed to be looking like someone else. My mom graduated high school in 1989 and went off to college in the early 1990s and said that women’s beauty ideals changed a lot during those years because so much was changing in society but there still was a demand for a perfect woman. Year after year the ideal look changes and each year it gets more demanding. Women have to change themselves in ways that cannot be undone. The plastic surgery industry has gotten more popular and women and even men are taking desperate measures to look perfect. Society sets a standard for women that tells them that they have to look good to make it in life and be successful. “Women today have bought into the message that their beauty lies in their physical bodies and, more specifically, their physical beauty” (Seely, p, 132, 2007). Women feel as if the only way they can succeed is if they look better than another woman competing for their position. If you look better, you will do better. Something needs to change in our society. The ideal beauty image needs to be changed and women and girls need to stop feeling like looks are the only thing going for them. Body image is hard to understand and accept but if it is not