Some Women's Low Self-Image and the Media

Great Debates
41

And that’s exactly why I don’t buy them. I finally got sick of seeing 220 pages of unrepresentative crap. I’m two steps away from throwing the television out the window for the same reason. Really, think about the “beautiful women” are there in lead roles versus the number of “normal” to overweight women in lead roles [sup]1[/sup]

You have no idea how galling it is to realise the boobs you traded in two years ago are now back in fashion :wink:

I don’t have cites on any of what I’m going to say, it’s just my experience. I started dieting and exercising specifically to lose weight at twelve or thirteen. Why? Kids at school called me fat. Looking back at old photos, no I wasn’t. I looked no different to any of them. Hell, I used to do gymnastics, school rep for swimming, netball, hockey.

Some days I can look at my body in the mirror and think, “I like me.” After all, despite my weight, my b.p. is usually around the 110/70 to 120/80 mark, which is pretty damned good. I’ve got good points, physically, and I can see them. I’m smart, I’m funny enough to make people nose-cola when I crack jokes. I’ve been told that I’m a warm, caring person who’s a terrific friend, and I don’t think that’s so far from the truth. All around, I’m not that bad a person. But…

Other days I loathe myself, I eat rice for days on end. I’d go on “Survivor” just to lose weight, forget about the million dollars.

See, here’s the thing; I can recite all the self-love mantras in the world, but some days it doesn’t make a damn difference. I look at the portrayals of what’s beautiful and what’s ugly - Jeanene Garofalo is the “ugly one?” - I hear that Kate Winslet’s gone on a diet, I hear that Sophie Dahl, who was supposed to be the poster child for the “size 14 is sexy” movement, has dropped to a size 10, and I give up. I can read the nice things male dopers have said here, but then I’ve got to go deal with the cretins in real life, and it’s straight back to self-loathing land. It’s hard to keep wearing your happy-hat in the face of so much crap thrown at you from so many different directions.

[sup]1[/sup]And I mean lead roles, not the character parts, the lead role’s best friend etc.

42

Interesting link from cnn.com today…

http://www.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/diet.fitness/07/23/body.image.ap/index.html

43

Rosanne, Oprah, Rikki Lake (or however she spells it), what was that show with the lady who worked in a factory (single mom with two kids, ex husband who was loving but just not the right guy…Butler? I can’t remember her name), (for guys) Drew Carey, errr… I don’t watch much TV so I can’t think of more off the top of my head.

There are plenty of “non-perfect” people on TV. I don’t disagree that the proportion of nonperfect/perfect coreesponds to IRL, but what the hell. Its TV. If I wanted real life I’d go live it, for Eris’s sake.

44

Brett Butler…

I think that is one of the reasons why Oprah is so popular. I can look at her and say “Look, she’s Black, she’s overweight, she comes from a disadvantaged background, and she is respected, well liked and powerful.”

Unfortunately, Oprah is the exception. Some of the other women you named are, well, classless. Rickki Lake and Roseanne, although “women of size” are not exactly women I want to emulate. Brett Butler’s show was funny, but she wasn’t being portrayed as a happy, successful woman. Overweight women are often portrayed as low class.

There are other sexy women of size - Bette Midler comes to mind off the top of my head. That lovely woman from “The Practice.” But then there is also the very funny, but not portrayed as attractive or likeable “Mimi” on Drew Carey.

45

See, now comments like this offend me. Skinny = bitch and Fat = jolly, is that it? Skinny is just as ugly a word as fat is. Most people don’t use the word “Fat” because it offends. Instead we say “plump” or “overweight.” So why can’t we say “thin” or “slender” instead of skinny? It means the same thing but doesn’t sound so horrible and doesn’t sound like so much of a put down.

A lot of you seem to think that it’s just overweight women who have a poor self image and it’s not. Not all thin people view their bodies as perfect or sexy. I’m one of those thin people. Let me tell you what my insecurities about my body are. Starting from my head and working my way down… my nose is too large for my face, my fore arms are too thin and I have too much hair on my arms, my collar bone sticks out, my shoulder blades stick out, my hip bones stick out when I lay down. My boobs are too small and my thighs are too thin, and my calves are to skinny. I’ve had two kids so now I have loose skin and my tummy scrunches up and looks gross when I bend over and I have stretch marks on my ass, my thighs, my tummy and my boobs. That’s what I see when I look in a mirror. Do I look sickly or unhealthy? No, just thin. I’m not proportioned the way I’d like to be and I’m very self conscious about it. But my SO thinks I look perfect and beautiful and he likes my small boobs and he thinks my collar bone looks sexy and he likes my tummy and my thin legs. He doesn’t see the imperfections that I see. He loves me inside and out and that’s all that matters.

I consider myself to be somewhat attractive but by no means do I think that because I’m thin I’m more attractive then someone who’s overweight. Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. You can have the most perfect face and body and be the ugliest person on the inside. I know people like that and they suck. But just because someone is thin doesn’t mean that they’re anorexic or bulemic or a bitch. We have just as many feelings as everyone else and it hurts just as bad to be called names like skinny, beanpole, stick, slim, or concentration camp victim.

I look at the ads on t.v. and in magazines and I want to look like those women too but it ain’t gonna happen. The media has brainwashed everyone into believing that these women are perfect and that you have to look like them to be accepted by others. It’s not just the media who puts thoughts like that in our heads. It’s all the other people around us. I can’t go to lunch without someone at work talking about how much they’re eating, what diet they’re on, how many calories is in a carrot, etc., etc. It’s sickening. I’m sure they talk this way at home in front of their daughters too and I’m sure their daughters are going to be just as weight obsessed as their mothers are. And then there’s the ones who rag on me because I do eat a lot and don’t gain weight. I’ve quit eating my lunch in the cafeteria because I get so tired of the nasty comments made about me. So it’s not just the media, it’s everyone. As long as people keep talking about diets and calories and obsessing over body image women are still going to be down on themselves.

I don’t want to turn this into a rant because that’s not my intention. I just want everyone to know that thin people have the same insecurities and anxieties as everyone else and PLEASE stop using the word skinny!

46

Hmm. I think, then, the issue is “How come the people that are on TV that I wanna be like aren’t like me already?” That question seems a little, well, self-referential in a way.

Not being perfect has never bothered me as a male. There are males who have been bothered by it. I’m assuming that this is pretty much the same for women.

jarbabyj: “either you like a washboard stomach or you don’t.” True true…that doesn’t mean “either you only like a washboard stomach or you like everything but a washboard stomach.” I, for one, like both flat stomachs, little tummies, and stomachs which don’t reflect magazine photography or telelvision’s ideals. As testimony implies, so do lots of other men.

I guess television is eating away at the public’s collective mind. <sigh> Eris bless the internet, whre we can finally interact without that whole physical appearence getting in the way :smiley:

Fact: There is only one (to toss out a name) Cindy Crawford.
Fact: Many, many men find Cindy Crawford attractive.
Fact: Many, many men do not find that Cindy Crawford is the only attractive female.
Fact: People get merried, get into relationships, etc, all the time.
Conclusion: the TV ideal is not only not achievable on a large scale, but most don’t expect it to be.

Long live the average woman, who is truly more special than a million supermodels!

47

Preach it. You know, I still stand by my statement that some men are somewhat conditioned by a) the feminist movement and b) the women they love to refrain from saying how they really feel on these issues. Because, really, it’s very interesting that I haven’t seen one guy post to this thread and say “I like skinny, tight tummied, slim waisted women who look like Pam Anderson and wear a size four”. Because I venture to say if they did, there would be a group of women who said “HOW DARE YOU! WOMEN OF ALL SIZES ARE BEAUTIFUL, ALL THE TIME, THERE IS NO UGLY, you bastard holding women to unattainable standards!”, and a group of men who would say, “keep it down pal, we’re trying to make the mousy chicks feel good.”

It’s fascinating to me that so many men ‘hate’ Pam Anderson or ‘skinny’ chicks, and yet…whenever Pam is in Playboy, it flies off the stands, and she’s one of the biggest stars IN THE WORLD.

I’ll be honest here with two things. I’m an attractive woman to SOME men. There ARE men who find me attractive. But everyday I wake up and think, if I lost 10lbs or had better abs or more well defined biceps or longer hair or better skin, MORE men would find me attractive, and one day, eventually, I’d be loved by ALL men and all women would be jealous. There, I said it.

And here’s the other thing. For a man to be attractive to me (husband excluded, I’m talking fantasy men) he must be quite near to PERFECT. I like big muscles and a perfect hair cut and perfect eyes, and great clothes and good shoes and a nice voice, and it all has to fit together. If I’m staring at a guy on the street and hoping to fantasize about him…there’d better be no flaws. I’m VERY selective, so I assume that a) other women are like me in that regard and b) other men must be, too.

jarbaby

48

Well, I’d hate to give the impression that I hate her appearance. I watch VIP whenever I remember that its on, which is about one of three shows that I do that for. She’s hot. The costarts are totally hot (Natalie Raitano and Molly Culver are my fave’s tho). So?

If you automatically assume that there is only one standard for beauty and we all stick to it, even if some men stupidly let it slide, then there’s nothing to debate here.

Its a conspiracy.

49

Thanks for the CNN link, here is another:

Media may feed weight problems of teen-aged girls
My mom bought me a subscription to Seventeen when I was about 13, it was a rite of passage, almost, with a “this will teach you how to be a real girl” message. As I grew older, there was always grooming pressure, from mom, from peers - “You’d look so much better if you put some makeup on/lost some weight/got a cute short high-maintenance haircut/wore heels/put this stuff on your face/got asked to the prom.” I ran cross country, track, played soccer and softball and still remained a stocky, boxy-type person who wore glasses, ie “not pretty.” I look back at old pictures of myself and wonder “WHY did I feel fat? I looked AMAZING!” But “the media” taught me not to see myself that way.

I’m glad someone mentioned Oprah - HOW MANY diets has she been on? She has struggled very publicly with her weight, key word being “struggled.” She’s had to work on finding a healthy, strong weight, assisted by a personal chef and numerous personal trainers. Celebrities work full time on their appearance. Roseanne’s weight also fluctuated up and down quite a bit - I guarantee that all the “big beautiful women” you mention have been told at one time or another in their careers that they were too fat for show business.

Margaret Cho was told that she was too fat to play herself on television.

There is a chicken-and-egg thing going on - we like looking at beautiful people, the theater has always put the most dynamic/attractive/charismatic people up on the stage. We like seeing the “ideal” up on the screen, and can’t be blamed for liking Marylin Monroe better than Norma Jean.

Women have always been judged for their looks, competed with other women, powdered and frizzled themselves to fit in with the fashions of the day. Some of the ideals have also been detrimental to health - remember corsets? But we’ve never had the scope of media assault that we do today, pervading every household in America, reaching around the world so that young girls in countries that have never had eating disorders are developing them. And there has never been this kind of money to be made from selling a certain image to women - billions of dollars ride on how women feel about the size of their pores or the thickness of their eyelashes or that skirt that Jennifer Aniston wore on Friends last week. Advertisers, good and bad, deliberately try to reach you on some emotional level because that’s what sell their products.

I think there is a direct correlation between this pervasive advertising culture and the rise in eating disorders, the early age at which girls start feeling that they are “not okay”, and the low self-esteem and poor body image that they carry into adulthood with them. Women have to look at their feelings of self-loathing and realize that people are making money from making you feel that way and get angry. If you get angry then hopefully you’ll buy into it less.

50

A person is only as selective as he/she can afford to be. Everyone does the best they can, in terms of selectiveness, but in the end, most people just take what they can get.
Fantasies, of course, are an exception to this rule.
A good book is The Moral Animal by Robert Wright. Whether you subscribe to its sort of thinking or not, it’s food for thought, especially on matters like this.

51

I’m short and round. I have always been short and round. My whole family, on both sides, is short and round. I will never be able to beat the short part. The only way I can beat the round part is to stop eating and spend several hours per day exercising. I’ve tried that a couple of times, but the things I have to give up are not worth it to me. It’s taken a while, but finally I’m usually okay with my body.

What I’m not okay with is my friend’s 5 year old daughter telling me that she wants Slim Fast for lunch so she can be “thin and pretty.” Maybe this only comes from her mother, but knowing her I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t feel that I need to be thin to be attractive – as an adult, I can recognize that my intelligence, my wit, my compassion, etc., all contribute to whether or not people like me. But there are a whole lot of kids out there who don’t have that confidence yet. I think that is where the biggest problem lies.

52

Article on rise of eating disorders in black women, tied to how they react to white/advertising culture:

http://www.blackstocks.com/in_news/9298d/page2804.htm

Article on how magazines promote unhealthy stereotypes among teen girls (sorry in advance for the horrible colors)

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~onderdonk/Spring309/teen_magz/YM%20Magazine.html

Excerpt from Our Bodies, Ourselves dealing with advertising, body image, and race:

Women Up To 10 Times More Likely To Have Poorer Self-Perception Than Men

53

Oh, and one more - on Latinas and body image:

http://underwire.msn.com/underwire/bodyworks/be/becover29.asp

54

Not to mention that Naomi Wolf’s book, The Beauty Myth is a long treatment of this exact subject. If you haven’t read it, you might want to. While I don’t agree with everything she says, a lot of it makes sense.

55

I don’t have much to say in this thread that hasn’t been said already, except to express my shock that there are people who consider Brett Butler overweight. I don’t know what she looks like now, but when she was starring in “Grace Under Fire” she was not a heavy woman, and certainly nowhere near the size of the other large women (Roseanne, et al) mentioned. If people think that Brett Butler was fat, is it any wonder that so many perfectly normal sized woman obsess about losing weight?

56

Lamia, you are right. Brett Butler is not the “ideal” body type, but she is not fat. i.e she isn’t Jennifer Aniston - and there is nothing wrong with not being Jennifer Aniston (in some ways Brett Butler looks a whole lot healthier).

I think the problem is a little more pervasive than just the media. Try shopping with an “average” sized women. Go to the Gap and see if anything will fit her.

I’m not overweight. I’m 5’6"-5’7". I weigh 135. I am large chested, but well proportioned. I wear a size 10, although I still fit into the 8s in my closet (I have faced up to not wearing those 6s anymore, they’ve hit the goodwill bucket). And I have a pretty positive self image on my body - sure I’d like my breasts back where they were before my daughter, but it doesn’t bug me. When did I get to be an XL in a Gap t-shirt? And if I’m an XL, what are my larger friends?

But hey, shopping the Women’s section at Sears is trendy and self image improving, isn’t it?

57

You know, I felt sympathetic before, but I’m getting sick and tired of hearing people bitch and moan about evil “advertisers” and “the media”. Who the hell do you think works for these companies? Satan’s nameless, faceless evil ghouls? NO! It’s you and me.

Yes, you too ladies. You work for the corporations that spew out all the garbage that makes you feel bad about yourself.

You want it both ways. You want to have the good job that allows you to pay for the things in life which make you feel better about yourself… but in the same breath you demonize the very companies which afford you that luxury!

In other words, quit your job if your ethics are too high. Or, stop buying the advertised products and subscribing to the fuckin’ fashion contest jarbabyj and others have mentioned earlier.

erislover, I don’t know if this was tounge-in-cheek or not, but be wary about using that word around here. Somebody’s out to get the ladies, huh? Someone is out to make them feel bad? Shit, dopers have been run out of town for using the dirty ‘c’ (as in conspiracy) word around here.
But it’s OK to use it in this situation, huh?

In fact a while back, I was chastized for saying there are hidden messages in commercials, particularly the Sprite-cola campaign, regarding race. Dopers practically strung me up for saying that I was “reading into it too much”.

One doper even had the audacity to suggest I needed mental help for seeing these “secret messages.” But apparently it is totally acceptable to see “hidden messages” concerning female body issues.

In fact a direct comparison can be made:

“I see thin women on TV” = “I need to adopt an eating disorder.”
"I see murders occuring on TV = “To be cool, I need to kill people.”
Neither argument holds water.

My all-time favorite:
"The media made me do it."

Is no one taking personal responsibility anymore? Use some self-restraint and don’t subscribe to the latest diet craze, fashion, body image… etc.

The hypocracy bleeds over into your personal lives as well… you are the ones who put pressure on yourselves to lose the weight and look like the stars. You put that pressure on your friends. You use it against each other for comparison to save your egos. It’s a sick game… don’t play it.

Yes! That is the spirit!

Basically, approval-seeking behavior will lead you nowhere. Be yourself (as I’ve said before).

The ‘conspiracy’ is in your head. You have to trust yourself. You are beautiful.

58

And tell me somthing Acco. HOW DO YOU KNOW? Have you seen me? Or any woman who has posted to this thread? Or do you also buy into the media by singing “Everyone is beautifulll…in their ownnnn waaayyyy”

Some people are not.

I am about 47% affected by the media.
I am about 19% affected by my mother telling me a woman doesn’t leave the house without makeup.
I am about 10% affected by the guy at the bears game who said “You’re a fat f-ing c***”

and the rest is just me. Telling someone to just suck it up and be happy with themselves after 28 years of not being happy with themselves is like stopping a skydiving maneuver.

I’m trying, Acco. But until some guy comes up and says “Hey baby, that poochy stomach, slightly smaller left eye and stringy blonde hair is hot! We want you for our ad campaign”, I don’t see me stopping going to the gym anytime soon.

jarbaby

59

All I’m saying jarbabyj is that as long as a full 76% of your opinion of yourself is out of your control, you are chained to unhappiness — by choice. Free yourself. I never said it was easy. Just think about it, and it will happen slowly.

Really who the FUCK cares what some asshole at a Bears game said? Why, praytell, does his opinion matter to you? That’s what I want to know.

And as far as what you look like. Well, you are right, I don’t know what you look like. But your husband does, and obviously he likes what he sees. But somehow in your twisted up way of looking at things, his opinion is only as valid (if not less, seemingly) than some drunk asshole at a football game. Wow.

You might want to be validated by being asked to appear in a Cosmo ad.
Well, I’d like to be a millionaire and have a yacht.

We all have our dreams… don’t blame the media for that.

60

I suggest you re-read my post. My point was exactly what you said, only with less words:
If you think the media is the sole arbiter of beauty, then you’re missing real life where beauty is, always has been, and probably will be, in the eye of the beholder.

Thus, if you use only one source for your own “eye”… well, I think you get the picture.