Page 75 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Body Image

the “thin ideal.” Becky Thompson, for example, has argued that a desire to be
thin—or to want one’s daughters to be thin—may be a result of economic, racial,
ethnic, and religious discrimination that parents experienced. Because other
physical features (skin or eye color, hair texture, height, etc.) are not easily (if
at all) alterable, more emphasis may be directed towards weight. Recent studies,
then, have concluded that girls, whether African American, Latina, Asian, or
white, grow up learning that being thin is valued. These arguments are strength-
ened by evidence that eating disorders are increasing among women of color.
Because eating disorders typically begin when girls enter puberty, most re-
search on body image has focused on adolescent girls and women in their early
20s, although some studies have discovered very young girls (age 6) and women
in their 70s with eating disorders. A few studies have examined body image
among older women. Their findings suggest that women’s dissatisfaction with
their body shape and size persists across their life span, and that even in later life
women tend to be more dissatisfied with their bodies than men. Older women
may not feel this dissatisfaction as strongly as younger women, however, and
their “ideal” body size has been found to be larger than that of younger women.

hisToriCaL anD CuLTuraL aPProaChEs
Rather than using empirical methods like surveys, assessment scales, or labo-
ratory experiments to investigate body image, some scholars have explored this
topic within a historical framework, arguing that such research can offer a bet-
ter understanding of the role of culture in shaping an individual’s attitudes and
practices in relationship to food, diet, and body image. Scholars such as Susan
Bordo and Kim Chernin have noted that body norms and ideals have changed
over time, often in conjunction with changes in a nation’s overall wealth. Initially
in Western cultures, a rotund figure was the visible sign of economic success.
During the Victorian era, as food became more readily available to members of
the middle class and not just the rich, the aristocracy began to adopt the “thin
ideal” as a different way to make class distinctions apparent. A thin body began
to represent wealth and status, power and control. By the late nineteenth cen-
tury, the middle class adopted a concern with body image and began dieting to
attain an idealized weight or shape. A rounded body was no longer seen as a sign
of success, but of moral failing or a lack of control, while a healthy and fit body
was equated with self-control, self-denial, and willpower.
Primarily, though, women serve as the representatives of class distinctions; a
slender and attractive wife can represent a husband’s success. Though the “thin
ideal” emerged in the Victorian era, it was a thin waist in particular (along with
an ample bosom and hips) that was prized. Corsets helped women achieve this
look, though at the cost of fainting or suffering serious physical ailments from
having their waists constantly cinched to extremely thin (and dangerous) di-
mensions. The changing shape of women’s bodies has in many ways served to
reflect larger cultural values. In periods when women were striving to demon-
strate their equality (especially in the 1920s and again in the 1960s and 1970s), a
thin, straight figure was prized. In times when gender differences seemed more