Body Image

Everyone who brings home a bad report card knows that with a little

effort they can better their grades. Yet there are some things in life

that you cannot

change and the way you look is one of them. In today's

society teenage girls face an ongoing battle to attain the perfect body

image. The following paper discusses the definition of perfect, why we

strive to attain this impossible ideal, why we don't fight to change the image, and the consequences that can result from this battle to please.

A dictionary definition of perfect is: 1. complete, having all its

essential qualities 2. faultless, excellent 3. exact, precise 4.

entire, total(1). Now does this seem like a reasonable goal to strive

for? Absolutely not, it is impossible, yet so many teenage girls feel

that perfection is within their reach. Society plays a massive role in

influencing our lives and our judgment. The emphasis placed on looking

good in our society clouds our vision of what is truly important.

Western culture portrays certain morals and ideals that girls feel they

must live up to. Society's ideals themselves are largely influenced by

those of the media, which in return puts added stress on the image

problems that teenage girls face. Every time they look around

themselves. "[They] loose [their] sense of self, individuality and fall

victim to narrow definitions of beauty defined by the media. The media

acts as a propaganda machine determined to shake our confidence, remind

us we aren't good enough, we haven't made it, that we just simply don't

measure up."(2) All we see in the media these days are tall, thin,

beautiful girls with great skin and even better figures. The media

sends out the message that the ideal body should resemble that of

a Barbie doll. Girls are supposed to try and look like this, so they

will "fit in." Girls feel that with an "ideal" body comes power in society, and they are shown this starting at a very young age; She will be a woman like all the women in the thousand of ads and movies and

television programs she has seen since she was very little.(3) The media is sending out negative messages to millions of vulnerable teenage girls striving to be accepted in today's society and this is causing extreme problems. The media image is only going to become more and more destructive because, while the media ideal female is getting smaller, the average North American female is getting larger. This dichotomy is creating more and more girls who feel unacceptable and unattractive. The effects of a narrow feminine ideal are

crippling. (4) Girls who assume they must be thin to please, and be

accepted in today's world have a very negative mental attitude contributing to their compulsive behavior to be perfect. Women are enslaved to a beauty myth, chained to the false belief that our value is based on our appearance alone. (5) Women can be very vulnerable and susceptible to believing that such notions are reality, even though they know in their heart that it is not the truth. We allow ourselves to fall victim to the mind games that the media plays with us to convince our minds that thin equals good and fat equals bad. The need for the ideal body image takes its tolls on a female, mentally not just physically. When one gets caught up in the desire to please others it can distract [them] from what [they] truly feel. One who excessively pleases places her worth into the hands of other people and depends completely upon their judgment while doing their best to influence their judgment. (6) It is mentally unfavorable to depend on the critique of other for one's own sense of self, yet it is an ongoing problem that occurs every day in many parts of the world.

Why do we strive for this ideal image? One of the leading reasons

we struggle to attain this ideal is to survive in today's society. It is survival of the fittest and every girl wants to come out on top. Unfortunately, not everyone can win the never-ending game that is life. Pursuing the act of thinness creates a life that excludes other more important and interesting aspects of living; developing skills and hobbies, developing character and personality and finding and keeping friends. (7) The problem is that women don't stop to think about or even care what they are missing in life; the only thing they see is what they must look like. She strives for the impossible in pursuit to trick herself into thinking that if she becomes thin and perfect that everything will just fall into place. These girls couldn't be any more wrong. Nothing in life just falls into place, even the women that we idolize from the media had to work for their right to be there, but we overlook that. The way we see it, life is so easy for them, therefore we strive to be just like them so we too can be idolized by both men and women and have everything handed to us on a silver platter. We see ourselves getting job promotions, getting stares from men, finding someone to settle down with, if only we had the ideal body. We tend to underestimate the attractiveness of a confident, intriguing personality (8) because we are too blinded by body image to realize what is right in front of us. Another reason we strive for such high ideals, is out of fear. The obsessive impulse to please is generated by fear of loss. It is based on ones fear of losing the love of another and the need for approval, admiration and caring from those who are close to us. If we achieve the impossible, everything in our life will seem easier.

Why don't we strike out against these misconceptions? As I

previously stated, females these days associate thin with success and feel a strong drive to be successful. The problem lies in our definition of success. Success is not defined by