Page 74 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Body Image |

Body size and shaPe
Height Weight Dress Size Measurements

Average woman 5’4” 145 11–14 36”-30”-41”
Fashion model 5’9” 110 2–4 34”-24”-34”
Store mannequin 6’0” N/A 6 34”-23”-34”
Barbie 6’0” 101 4 39”-19”-33”

Source: Adapted from ANRED (Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders), http://www.anred.com/
stats.html.

the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) as “serious disturbances in eat-
ing behavior” that are often paired with “feelings of distress or extreme concern
about body shape or weight,” typically begin when girls are between ages 11
and 13. One recent University of Minnesota study found that teenage girls who
frequently read magazine articles about dieting were more likely in later years to
practice extreme weight-loss measures, such as vomiting, than girls who never
read such articles. Men can also develop these same eating disorders, and an
estimated 5 to 15 percent of people with anorexia or bulimia are male. Accord-
ing to the National Institute for Mental Health, between 0.5 and 3.7 percent of
females suffer from anorexia at some point during their lives, while between
1.1 to 4.2 percent of women suffer from bulimia. (About half of the individuals
who have been anorexic later develop bulimia.) Deaths attributed to anorexia
and bulimia, especially among fashion models and other celebrities, have raised
a great deal of concern about the health effects of extreme dieting in pursuit of
the “thin ideal.”

ComPLiCaTions oF raCE, CLass, anD agE
Research on body image has sometimes been criticized as focusing too much
on the experiences of young white girls and women in the United States at the
cost of ignoring differing expectations and experiences for women and girls of
color or for older individuals. Some have argued that the “thin ideal” constitutes
a standard of beauty among whites, but that African Americans and Latinas in
particular grow up with different cultural ideals of beauty and attractiveness. In
response, scholars contend that while there may be some cultural differences
in what is considered desirable or attractive, all girls are exposed to the same
narrow range of media images of beauty found in magazines, television, film,
and advertising. Girls of all races or ethnicities are barraged by messages about
their bodies, skin, hair, and faces, and although these messages may at times
be contradictory, increasingly one of the few common experiences for girls in
the United States has been the pressure to diet in order to fit into mainstream
American culture. Some studies focusing on women of color have found that
as an individual’s socioeconomic status increases, so does the pressure to attain