Blog 7: "Eating Disorders"

An eating disorder is a condition that affects an individual's eating habits. It may be that one may not eat or one may overeat. It is an emotional disorder that appears as an irrational craving for or avoidance of food. It involves a lot of mental aspects that effect the victim of an eating disorder.

The influence of fashion, film, media, and diet industries have greatly influenced the notions of beauty and have effected the rise in eating disorders. Many women look to celebrities as their ideal. Celebrities have to maintain a standard for their body so that they may continue to work. If a celebrity's body changes, their work changes. A plus size celebrity can lose weight, get praise for it, and maintain a job,even gain more work, but if a celebrity becomes plus size they become ridiculed and it is harder for them to maintain a job. Celebrities and the media make it look so easy to be thin and beautiful. As regular women and men, we are constantly presented this standard of beauty and comparing ourselves to them because we are also seeing them as beautiful and what we want to be. Celebrities pin it all on eating healthy and exercise, so when someone is not thin and beautiful then it is assumed that they are not trying hard enough. Only a small portion of people can actually attain this ideal body image through health and exercise and many result to disordered eating habits. Often these issues are swept under the rug, but it is a real issue that needs to be answered. I don't think that the entertainment industry is the cause, but it is an influence.

Food and diet addiction has become a preoccupation with the American society because so many people have become overweight. In America, food is so accessible and its everywhere so we just eat. You eat to live, to comfort, to socialize, to overall just enjoy. Diet pills and the new IT diet are constantly being advertised and publicized because everyone is looking for the easy way out but the way that they are eating has become a lifestyle. Changing a way of life is a lot harder than people might think which is why diets don't work. The easy way out never works unless the lifestyle changes. Its hard to stop eating the way you did before because you need food to survive. I have also heard that diet pills don't work because the body gets used to them after a while. Diet pills are also dangerous. Not too long ago, it was reported that Hydroxycut killed some nineteen year old boy and was taken off the market. You really don't know what you are putting into your body and it could be harmful to you. All you know is that it makes you lose weight, but I doubt anyone looks at what it truly does to make you lose that weight.

There is a preoccupation with food. It is given good and bad media images. When it comes down to one's appearance, it is given a bad image. When it comes to enjoyment and satisfaction, it gets a good image. There is a constant battle of food's image.

I don't think that society can be reintegrated until there is a realness put back to the media. Images of celebrities should not be retouched to portray impossible images. I think there should be a move to real body images publicized instead of thin, emaciated bodies. Nicole Richie is a prime example of the influence of the media. In the picture on the left, she was actually bigger when she first came on the hollywood scene. She still denies that the picture on the right was due to an eating disorder and claims it was due to stress and how she deals with her emotions. Many victims of eating disorders also mention the same reasons behind their eating habits.

Blog 6: "Cosmetic Surgery"

Cosmetic surgery was originally used for patients, most often men, who were disabled by war or industrial accidents. Cosmetic surgery has become centered around women because many women equate their attractiveness to their character. Women constantly feel judged based on their appearance. Women are taught to maintain a feminine beauty as to not be seen as less than. This social standard for women to maintain their beauty has made women obsessed with physical appearance.

Personally, I think that cosmetic surgery just perpetuates unattainable beauty standards. Much of cosmetic surgery is to attain an Anglo-Saxon appearance as mentioned by Debra Gimlin. As an African American woman, I like my ethnic features. I think they are beautiful and I would not change anything about it. Changing your face to look like one type of people is boring and I like the differences of faces. Cosmetic surgery loses that appreciation of your historical background and that is sad to me that you would want to look otherwise. To define what is beautiful is really hard to say. There are so many different oppinions, but personally I do not believe their is one type of beauty.

I would not get cosmetic surgery unless it was something vital to my health. I am not willing to risk my health in order to be someone else's version of beauty. There are too many fake doctors acting like real doctors who are trying to make a buck and too many bad reactions to cosmetic surgery for me to agree. I think that I am beautiful the way that I am. I actually look forward to growing old and getting to see what I will look like later in life. I think that my mother and grandmother are beautiful the way they are. I just look forward to looking older and when I see older people with face lifts, I think it makes them look older.

I do feel that people take the option of cosmetic surgery too lightly. To me it all seems really superficial at the end of the day. I just want everybody to accept themselves as they are. If the whole world made a change tomorrow to reveal the truth of what everyone looks like, I do not think that cosmetic surgery would be on such a rise. The media helps a lot with the rise of cosmetic surgery but it makes you wonder what the world would be like without photoshop. I guess if it is everyday you have trouble looking in the mirror at yourself and contemplating worse options than cosmetic surgery.

I think it is a vain and shallow culture because to say that cosmetic surgery improves your looks or self-image is still vain and shallow. The fact that when you don't feel beautiful because of your body and that changes your whole personality is very shallow. If someone doesn't like you because of the way you look then they are shallow, so if you don't then I would say the same for you. I don't mean to be rude or judgmental for those who participate in cosmetic surgery because at the end of the day, who am I to judge because I do not know your situation. The only time I would not see it as shallow and vain would be if it was something like a scar being removed, laser hair removal, or the original use of cosmetic surgery. Something like that is the only real justification for cosmetic surgery. I don't really think of that as cosmetic surgery though, I guess because its less invasive and dangerous.

Paper 1 Part 2

I believe every child has seen some Disney movie or knows of one or about one. Disney movies are always typical of the beautiful princess who is saved by some handsome young stranger and they live happily ever after. The female is often the passive character while the male hero is always the active participant saving the damsel in distress from the ugly villain. I believe this is due to the fact that, “Women are mere “beauties” in men’s culture so that culture can be kept male (Wolf 59).” If the villain is male, he wants the beautiful princess, but if the villain is female, she is jealous and ugly. Every woman is drawn to be beautiful unless she is viewed as the evil and mean villain made to thwart the princess at finding true love with the handsome young male.
The first Disney movie that I wanted to analyze was the classic story of Cinderella. She was the beautiful stepsister but you couldn’t tell under all the dirt and cinders on her face from cleaning after her evil stepmother and two ugly stepsisters. They even went to the extent of mentioning that the villains were ugly as to make the decision for you. Cinderella is the young blonde Caucasian ideal of beauty. One of her stepsisters is a red head and the other is a brunette. They both have larger noses and bigger eyes than that of Cinderella. Disney perpetuates an ideal of what is beautiful and what is not just by the drawing of the characters.
At the end of the story, Cinderella of course goes to the ball and the prince locks eyes and they instantly fall in love. Love at first sight is a common theme of Disney movies. Her two stepsisters end up getting shafted in the end because they don’t even find love at the ball. I’m sure there were other well off suitors at the ball other than the prince, but they are deemed mean and unlovable by a male counterpart. They must stay at home with their stepmother and lose their maid. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Cinderella should have stayed the maid instead of living in a castle with many maids. I’m just saying that the stepsisters need some love too.
The story of Snow White is another story of a wicked stepmother who treats her stepdaughter as the maid. The queen is considered beautiful and the fairest of them all, until her stepdaughter grows up and the queen grows old. The queen also looks a lot like Sleeping Beauty’s nemesis which is a little suspicious since they had the same sleeping issue, but that is beside the point.
It’s Disney’s interpretation of beauty as being young. The queen used to be the fairest, but someone younger will come and take your place. It also sends a message of how important beauty is. The queen put a hit out on Snow White because she was prettier than her. It all sounds a little extreme when you say it aloud. What always confused me about the story is why the queen had all this magic, but didn’t just make herself prettier than Snow White. She made herself this frail and wrinkled old lady. I don’t understand why she couldn’t do the opposite if it was such a problem.
I think it is interesting how all of the princesses have a lot of the same facial features. It is continually big eyes, big lips, hourglass shape, and a little nose. Jasmine is the only one who is of a different race. The rest of the princesses are Caucasian and Ariel has a little bit of a tan probably because she lives in the ocean by the beach. The only real differences are their hair color and length.
I’m still waiting for the day where the male is in distress and must be saved by the princess but as Wolf says, “A beautiful heroine is a contradiction in terms, since heroism is about individuality, interesting and ever changing, while “beauty” is generic, boring, and inert (59).” I’m sure that the drawing of the heroine would not be the popular Disney princesses. I remember watching Mulan, and she never gets the same coverage or credit as the others. Even Pocahontas doesn’t get the call for the photo. There are probably others that just don’t get the same recognition. I know that I have never seen the Disney movie of Sleeping Beauty but I know of her because she is in the photo with the other princesses. I wonder if they were not considered beautiful enough.

Paper 1 Part 1

Stereotypes are oversimplified standardized images of a person or a group of people. It is classifying people or a group of people because of social ideas or images. They put people into boxes and make people, who believe them, seem ignorant and simple-minded. Every group of people has some kind of stereotype associated with them. It is like the old saying, “One bad apple ruins the bunch.” They ignore the fact that everyone is different even though they may be classified into a group.
People are often stereotyped into categories because of media images or from others own personal experience. Often on talk shows, you will hear people say, “I believe that this group of people is like this because that is the only image that I see of them.” Many times, I think this come from a confirmation bias rather than an actual experience. They may have a preconceived notion about a person or a group of people then when they meet a person who is categorized as that group they only look for the confirmation of their biases even though there are other factors that may be against their stereotype.
Personally, I do not believe that I have ever felt the need to conform to a stereotypical image. As an African American female, I actually do not like the perpetuation of stereotypical images. I will make sure to not portray stereotypes in public. I feel uncomfortable eating fried chicken and/or watermelon in public. Sometimes I will avoid eating the food just because of the stereotype associated with it. I remember watching the Wendy Williams Show, and she actually mentioned that she said she would never eat fried chicken on television as a man was showing her how to make KFC’s secret recipe.
I can recall times when I felt that others felt that I should conform to the stereotype that African American females are loud, ghetto, and sassy. This kind of stereotype is much like the stereotype of what is considered feminine in that women are allowed a mind or a body but not both (Wolf 59). It is as if everyone must remain in a role and no role can be rearranged or mixed. I was always the girl who went to a predominantly white school, but lived in a predominantly black neighborhood. So, it was like I got the pressure to conform to the stereotype in different ways.
In school, it was as if they wanted me to be louder and more aggressive while I’m just trying to be me. I’m a real laid back girl with a soft voice unless you make me mad. There were a couple of other black girls in the school and one in particular used to drive me nuts because she would conform to the stereotype. I and another black girl who lived in my neighborhood used to talk about how much we had a problem with it because it wasn’t genuine and it was an over exaggerated black stereotype.
She lived in the suburbs and would say ghetto this and ghetto that and it was as if she expected me to act the same way. I really don’t even like the use of the word ghetto because I feel that the word is used too loosely. It is hard to describe the situation, but it would just drive me insane. I’m just glad that I had someone who could relate with me. I guess she could justify that it was just her personality in some way, but something about it seemed like a front and it is not surprising that another girl that lived in what was considered a “ghetto” neighborhood felt the same way.
Then when I was home with my friends in my neighborhood, I would often hear that I talk white. I would ask what talking white is and I could never get a straight answer. It was as if they were saying that I was not black enough for them. It was as if they were saying I talked to proper and educated as if talking black was not using proper English and uneducated. It hurt me to hear black people talk about themselves in such a way because to say that would mean the opposite also. This way of thinking would also bug me since African Americans have been stereotyped and judged for so many years and to see them perpetuate the stereotype on themselves just hurts me.
I learned a lot from these experiences. It only makes me work harder to portray another kind of image for the African American female. I hope that others will see me and get a changed idea of what an African American female does and acts like. I want people to see another version so that there will be a more positive stereotype or better yet a negation of the previous stereotype. I like to think that I am a body outlaw due to the fact that Ophira Edut defines them as, “In a world that still tries to assume our identities, we rebel with an outward expression of self. Our passion of truth, in all its messy complexity, compels us to visibly defy easy categories and sweeping labels, even if they were created from within. We rush to show the world who we are rather than allow it to paint us as one-dimensional characters (xxiii – xxiv).”

Tyra had a really good show about racial perceptions. A must watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGNyjsAumuU

Blog 5: "Gender and Toys"

When you google current little girl toys, you get a lot of dolls, housekeeping items, and beauty items such as painting nails and play makeup. Their dolls are all barbies and princesses. Girls toys are marketed in nurturing others and maintaining one's beauty. When you google current little boy toys, you get cars, guns, and items involved in sports. Their "dolls" are modeled after soldiers and superbeings. Boys toys are more about protection and things that are considered more masculine.

I think toys do influence the way children play. I can remember the times when I was little and I would play with the boys because I felt that the girls were to boring. They always wanted to play pretend or talk while the boys would play sports. I did not have dolls early in my age, but I had an older brother who I would always wrestle and rough house with. As I got older and my younger sister got old enough to play with, I began to have more baby dolls and barbies, and now that I think of it, is when I began to play with more girls and find more interest in their games. My best friend was a boy until the age of 7 and then we just found other interest.

I would not say that toys influence the way we will become because even though as girls we played with the same toys, I would say there is a variety of interests that we all had. I will say that it did have some influence of when someone would ask, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" as a little girl or boy. Girls will typically answer something that involves having to be beautiful or a mommy, while boys will answer something with power or sports affiliated. I would not say that my experience with dolls has influenced what I have decided to be my occupation. When I was younger, I wanted to be a model, a singer, and a princess. When I got older, I wanted a job that involved security for my future and something that I felt would be enjoyable to me because it fit me.

My favorite childhood toy, up to the age of 7, was my Fozzie Bear. It was a stuffed teddy bear that looked like Fozzie Bear and I used to love that thing. I don't know why. My favorite toys moved to Barbies. I had the pink convertible that I could actually ride in, the dream house, my barbie had her own pink convertible, the life size Barbie, Ken (black and white) with his little brother, little sister Kelly, the big head of Barbie so you could do her hair, and every race of barbie imaginable (more African American barbies though). I was dripping in Barbie. My sister and I played Barbie all the time. I would play house with Barbie, do her hair, she had her own show, just any and everything imaginable with Barbie. We had a lot of Barbie because me and my sister would share toys since I am just 2 years older than her.

Blog 4: "Tough Guise"

I think some benefits of putting on the tough guise for boys and men is more of a bonding experience for them. I guess it could also help with their self esteem if they are accepted for the tough guise that they present to the world. The benefits would only come from the acceptance of others which would probably come from other males who partake in the tough guise and have also been accepted for it. It is effective and adaptive in the protection of themselves and others, but it can be self-destructive in taking on the ego or personality of the person. It could also be dangerous to others in that they might feel that at all times that their manhood cannot be threatened and in doing so they will hurt others or put themselves in dangerous situations to maintain the status of their manhood. If you are on the other side of the tough guise, such as those who are homosexual or who may not be as big or strong as others, you will be disadvantaged from the tough guise in that males will use you to make them feel more "manly" which can also be dangerous.

I think that many people see gender's issues synonymous with women's issues because women are seen as more disadvantaged than males because history has often portrayed women as less than. I think it is also because women are more vocal about thier issues than that of males. It's just like the same situation when you say minority issues and people typically think of African Americans, but that is not always the case. I think it is also because men are taught to "man up" so having issues is not "manly." So if men go around talking about their problems with body image or not being treated fairly they are seen as less than or a "wussy" because they are not considered masculine enough to just take it. This thought process leaves men not being able to express their emotions, so instead of crying when they are sad they will express it in anger in order to keep the status of being masculine enough. They will break something rather than express their hurt so that their manhood is not threatened. It is very destructive for everyone involved because you don't know what they might do to express their emotions.

The potential effects of boys and men trying to live up to these cultural ideals of physical size and strength is the same dangerous effects as the cultural ideals of size and beauty among women. There is bigorexia and manorexia more common now more than ever. It is just as emotionally destrucive and health concious as women's issues. I remember watching a tyra show with a male who suffered from bigorexia who got so big to the point where his arm actually exploded. Everytime he looked in the mirror, he just saw someone who needed to be bigger even though he was huge to everyone else. Even after the whole ordeal and getting to a healthy size, he still looked very big. Steroid use had become an everyday habit to him. The bigger he got the more he saw himself as big, strong, and powerful.

The media in some way inspire change because their constant message on what you should be and look like and people pay close attention to every little detail. There so much attention paid to the tabloids and what is the hot new look that the media strongly influences what IS the beauty standard for both sexes. People has the top 50 most beautiful people in the world while maxim has the hot 100. Its everywhere telling people what is beautiful and who is the new "it" person to watch and wanna be. People see celebrities on tv and they think they are so beautiful and confident unlike me and so I want to be that person I see on the tv screen, I wanna have people look up to me as I look to them. People tend to make this supersized version of the person they see on tv which is why they say that you should never meet your hero because you will realize how human they truly are.

Blog 3: The Beauty Myth "Work"

The general ideas that I found recurrent in the reading was that women are not measured by what they offer mentally but what they offer physically. In the workplace, women are not accounted for because of the work that they put in but more because of what they look like. Knowing this often makes females feel self-concious about their work because they never know if they are where they are because of the work they did or if it is because of the way they look. In history, there have been many trials working in favor of the workplace instead of the female counterpart who felt she was objectified in the workplace because of her dress or the way she looks. This only makes women feel more helpless when they are harassed by their boss or coworkers. Another general idea of the text was that women earn $6 - $7 thousand dollars less annually then men unless it is a profession focused primarily on beauty such as: modeling or prostitution. Before reading this, I was under the impression that equal pay was prevalent any and everywhere and that was a distant memory. It makes me wonder if I have ever been deprived of pay for all the work that I have done.

Beauty, body image, and sexual attraction is a function of "social construction" because it is socially acceptable that the men make the money and that women be pretty enough to get a man that makes a lot of money. In the workplace, it is as if they are saying men can make more money than women because their supposed to. Women are supposed to look pretty because they are supposed to be there to catch a man. It's confusing as a woman because if you do really good work but you are not "pretty" or constantly making yourself "presentable" then you will not get as much recognition but someone who is beautiful but does poor work gets the acknowledgement but they are not taken seriously. You have to have it all to get the kind of recognition you deserve. You have to work harder than any male and look pretty and put together while doing it and it is socially acceptable.

In the reading, the most shocking story in the book was the one where the woman was raped and the court did not go in her favor because they said that she wore provocative clothing that provoked the whole ordeal. Stories such as these scare me to go into the workplace. Things such as these should not be so prevalent. Another thing that was mentioned in class, was that women get used to the cat calls and side comments made by customers or male coworkers and it just makes you wonder why should we as females have to put up with it or get used to it. Why is it acceptable? It all reminds me of when I was working at a restaurant as a hostess. I would constantly get hit on by male coworkers and they would comment on my clothing or compare me to other female coworkers. I never said anything but ok and just brushed it off. Another thing is that my brother told me that it was not a real job and I was just being paid to stand and look pretty. I was really offended because there is a lot more work into being a hostess than just standing and greeting guests. There is a lot of organization that goes into it and making sure that the waitstaff is presented a fair amount of guests. It just goes to show how some males continually undermine the work of a female just because she wants to look good while doing it.

Ideals of female beauty function as a form of social control in that they make a standard that females are supposed to adhere to only to later say they only got that position because they look a certain way not because of there efforts. She is not respected as the head of the company or the boss but only the secretary. Women have to work 2x as hard as males to earn the same equality and pay. Females are just supposed to be pretty and that is the main purpose. This limits women's life choices because this idea of women weakens women's self esteem in that they will not feel good enough or worthy enough for their efforts. So many females are qualified, but society constantly telling you "you can't" can make many women believe so because they do not feel worthy of anything more. Women are looking to models and celebrities as their role models instead of the female ceo or the president (because there is no such thing as a woman president.)