From a young age girls learn that body image and beauty are very important within our society and they have these ideas continually drilled in as they watch TV shows or listen to other medias. With all of society telling us we should be like these cookie cutter mold of the models allow us to hate our bodies and therefore hate what was naturally bestowed upon us. When we are watching the TV and getting these ideas of what beauty is and how our bodies should look we are thereby surrendering all of our uniqueness and lumping all women together as one collective body. As we agree without a question to the beauty standards set by the models, we need to look back to our earlier discussions this year about beauty.
What is beauty? It can be defined as so many different things but, whenever it comes down to what we should look like we no longer believe that beauty is what we look like. Having differences in the definitions of beauty allow us to decide that true beauty is something that we don't have but the 'models' represent the ideal version of beauty thus causing us to be envious.
“Envy is a symptom of lack of appreciation of our own uniqueness and self worth. Each of us has something to give that no one else has.”Society dictates some much for us like what to wear, who to be, but should we allow them the power to dictate our happiness with our bodies? If we would be able to realize just how much that are uniqueness are worth then maybe we would see so many little girls so unhappy with who they are and thereby reducing the number of cases of eating disorders to try and fix into the cookie cutters mold. Since after all we are not just gingerbread women, we are 100% all natural beings that are different for one reason or another whether we have realized what are uniqueness are for.
It's so true how much society dictates our perception of "beauty" and ultimatley our self-image. Currently the societal standards for beauty require a woman to be extremely thin, tall and tan. So many women today slave over trying to reach that ultimate goal, often times hurting their bodies in the process. However if we look at the societal standards for beauty a few hundred years ago, the definition of a beautiful woman is practically 180 degrees from what it is now. Pale, and plump was the ideal image of beauty, completely different from today. It's funny the way society's views evolve but I definitly agree that the quality of life would drastically improve if we could rid ourselves of these social stigmas.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that society has control over everyone. Yes, I do think that many women feel that they need to fit themselves to skinny supermodels. However, I think that women that are too skinny look unhealthy. The find the athletic body the most beautiful, not a weightlifter, but someone who plays sports, goes hiking, biking, running, anything that gets you in shape. It's interesting that this seems to effect women a great deal more then men, men seem not to care as much, at least about their own physique.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the greater problem is that our society stays indoors all the time and has no time to work out. To work out, we need to pay a whole lot of money to go to a gym, where some people feel uncomfortable and then don't go. All of this while eating crap for food. We need to take better care of ourselves and have more motivation to do so. Our hectic world is one of the major parts of the problem as well.