Growing up to be beautiful The difficulties of developing a healthy body imageNora Sasvari

My favorite professor once asked the class about the

oldest means of discrimination in society. The majority of the

class voted for racism, but he and I agreed in sexism. In this

paper I will not focus on sexism only, rather on “look-ism”

and I will try to draw a picture of how an adolescent western-

world girl can develop a healthy body-image and how the

enormous amount of images in the media makes it very hard for

her indeed.

All of our lives we hear about beauty. When we are little

girls every comment we get is about our pretty face, nice

skirt, and beautiful hair. When we grow up we spend a

significant amount of time, energy, and money to correspond to

society’s expectations; and, we are likely to neglect our own.

Our parents, our peers, and the media send us messages that

thinness is highly rewarded and thus ultimately needed to

achieve success.

How does it begin? How do we define beauty and what

happens to us during our childhood, adolescence, and young

adulthood that makes us struggle for it? Why is it that we

only feel adequate and competent if we are beautiful? Many

girls and women suffer from eating disorders as a result of

this process, but this area is out of my paper’s scope. I will

examine the change of the ideal female figure and its

relationship with today’s difficulties of developing a healthy

body image for girls and women with special emphasis on the

role of media. As I discuss some of the forces that make this

fight harder, I wonder: Can we win?

The Era of Thinness

Throughout history, women always tried to change their

bodies according to the beauty idols of the time (Ehrenreich &

English, as cited in Wiseman, Gray, Mosimann & Ahrens, 1992).

In the 1950’s the average American model showed 5% difference

from the average American women in size (Wiseman, Sunday &

Becker, 2005). By the mid 60’s the ideal feminine figure has

changed from a curvy, full figure to a thinner one (Gabel &

Kearney, 1998). Garner, Garfinkel, Schwartz, and Thompson

(1980) examined the changes of the idyllic female body

presented in Playboy magazine and in Miss America Pageant. The

authors showed that from 1959 to 1978 the ideal female body

had become significantly thinner. Wiseman et al.(1992) have

published an update of the same research and confirmed that

the trend is continuous as they examined the same media from

1979 to 1988. In this latter study, the authors highlight that

69% of the Playboy centerfolds and 60% of Miss America

contestants had their body weight 15% or more below the

appropriate weight according to their age and height, which

was (and is) one of the criteria of Anorexia Nervosa in the

DSM-III-R, published by the American Psychiatric Association

(Wiseman et al., 1992).

This study was repeated in 2006 where the authors stated

that it is not surprising that models of Playboy have not

become thinner, since “further decrease in the percentage of

normative weight would be almost impossible due to the

presence of a floor effect” (Sypeck, Gray, Etu, Ahrens,

Mosimann & Wiseman, 2006, p. 234). The research has shown a

stabilization of the percentage of normative weight and a rise

in the body mass index, however most of the Playboy models

still fit the above mentioned criterion of Anorexia Nervosa

according to the DSM-IV (Sypeck et al., 2006).

How does it all begin?

How do we know so early that we want to be thin? When we

are small we do not understand that being overweight is

disadvantageous as a risk factor to many illnesses. What are

the factors, that drives us towards a perceived perfection and

how early does it all begin?

In 1998, Cramer and Steinwert examined three to five year

old children to explore if they had negative attitudes toward

overweight body builds. The researchers read stories to the

children about a “mean” and a “nice” child as they were

playing. After each story, the participant children were

presented with two pictures and were asked to identify which

one is the “mean” one and which is the “nice” one. The two

pictures contained a chubby and a thin figure. The overall

results indicated, that children chose the chubby figure as

mean in a significant percentage. The study also revealed that

children associate chubby figures with unfavorable

characteristics, unattractive self-image and identified these

figures as undesirable playmates. Bandura’s social learning

theory suggests that through observation children learn what

are the desired and unwanted behaviors, that get rewards or

punishments (Gerrig & Zimbardo, 2008, p. 437).

Researchers have studied the “socialization mechanisms

associated with the development of the physical attractiveness

stereotype” (Adams & Crane, 1980, p. 224). The result of their

research pointed out the relationship between primary

caregivers’ expectations and children’s behavior; as mothers,

fathers and teachers expected their children and students to

associate more positive characteristics with attractive and

thin people, and to show a social preference for them.

However, it is not only parents and teachers that form a

small child’s view of the world. Let’s take a look at Barbie,

every little girl’s first best friend:

“I looked at a Barbie doll when I was 6 and said, “‘this

is what I want to look like’” (model Cindy Jackson on CBS

News, 2004 in Dittmar, Halliwell and Ive, 2006). Barbie dolls

are on the market for over 50 years now and their success is

unbroken, as 99% of 3 to 10 year old American girls have at

least one Barbie doll (Rogers, 1999 in Dittmar et al., 2006).

Barbie has exceptional body proportions, which are called

“unrealistic, unattainable, and unhealthy” (Dittmar et al.,

2006. p. 284).

Dittmar and her colleagues (2006) conducted a research to

determine the Barbie doll’s role in young girls’ body

dissatisfaction. They explain in their study, that Barbie

dolls function as role models of feminine beauty through which

young girls understand the meaning of attractiveness. They

start to view themselves and their own bodies from the doll’s

imaginary point of view. The process includes different

stages, in which the child identifies with the pretty Barbie

doll and eventually internalizes thinness as the most

important element of prettiness (Dittmar et al., 2006).

As a summary of the Barbie doll effect I would like to

cite Anne DuCille (1994), who has put it brilliantly together:

In fact, I regard Barbie and similar dolls as Louis Althusser might

have regarded them: as objects that do the dirty work of patriarchy

and capitalism in the most insidious way – in the guise of child’s

play. But, as feminists have protested almost from the moment she hit

the market, Barbie is not simply a child’s toy or just a teenage

fashion doll; she is an icon – perhaps the icon – of true white

womanhood and femininity, a symbol of the far from innocent

ideological stuff of which the (Miss) American dream and other

mystiques of race and gender are made (p.50).

Fairy tales, just as Barbie dolls, send the same message.

Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz (2003) explain in their study,

that most fairy tales for children glorify beauty and reward

it greatly. They also propose, that the importance on female

beauty ideal in fairy tales might work as a “normative social

control for girls and women” and they strengthen women’s’

“relative powerlessness”, but that is out of this paper’s

scope now(Baker-Sperry & Grauerholz, 2003, p.723, p.712).

Growing up to be beautiful

“Every word, facial expression, gesture, or action on the

part of a parent gives the child some message about self-

worth. It is sad that so many parents don't realize what

messages they are sending” (Virginia Satir, n.d.).

The three most powerful sociocultural influences among

adolescent girls are parents, peers, and the media (McCabe &

Ricciardelli, 2005). All of these are present in an average

adolescent girl’s life in the western world. Parents and peers

have always affected the youth, but in 2010 they are a target

group of the media as well. There are numerous magazines, web

pages, TV shows and movies made directly for adolescence to

consume. Presented research has focused on how these elements

sway the development of a healthy body image in adolescence as

well as in adulthood.

Parents intentionally or unintentionally teach values,

rules, and roles to their children from the moment they born.

Children study which behavior is rewarded and punished first

hand, but they also learn through observing others (Gerrig &

Zimbardo, 2008, p 193).

Preadolescent girls are already occupied with beauty and

thinness, and this tendency grows as they reach their

adolescent years. Smolak, Levine and Schermer (1999) have

examined fourth and fifth grade boys and girls to discover the

influences of parental feedback and behavior on children’s

weight concerns. The study pointed out, that (a) mothers were

more likely to comment on their daughter’s weight than on

their son’s; (b) these maternal comments showed high

correlation with daughter’s attempts of weight loss and

dieting; (c) mothers concerns about their own weight also

moderately correlated with girl’s weight loss attempts. As

girls grow through their adolescent years, they become more

and more aware of the ideal female body and make more effort

to achieve it (McCabe & Ricciaredelli, 2005).

A study focused on 7th grader girls and boys declared that

the most powerful influence for girls were their mothers and

their best female friends (McCabe & Ricciaredelli, 2005). As

they develop further, media and peer influence will increase

and parental influence will decrease (Cobb, 2007, p. 246,

p.413). However, negative, appearance-related parental

feedback has long-term consequences. Schwartz, Phares,

Tantleff-Dunn and Thompson (1999) could trace negative

parental feedback’s effects in undergraduate students body-

image issues as well as in their overall psychological

functioning.

False perfection – The media’s role

“All media exist to invest our lives with artificial

perceptions and arbitrary values” (Marshall McLuhan, n.d.).

One of the main effects of media saturation is the

transmission of the standard beauty idols (Tiggemann, 2006).

Since the media favors thin women, there has been a huge

amount of research to examine and highlight the it’s role in

weight-concerns in girls and women (Grabe, Ward & Hyde, 2008).

However, these researches only focused on the immediate

effects of media exposure, as women and men were exposed with

thin images of women in the media (Wiseman, Sunday & Becker,

2005). There is no way to actually measure the effects of

media on people, since they consume it from a very early age,

thus immediate effects do not show a perfect picture. The

power of media is more precisely illustrated in a study that

examined women of Fiji. The Fijian ideal woman did not look

alike her Western version. She was curvy and large as long as

the government restricted Western TV in the country (Becker et

al., 2002, in Wiseman et al., 2005).

In 1995 the Fijian people were exposed with the values

and idols of the Western World. A longitudinal study examined

the influences of new television exposure and stated, that

girls were significantly influenced by the ideas of the new

medium (Becker et al., 2002, in Wiseman et al., 2005). The

study showed that adolescent girls, who have been exposed to

television for 3 years, showed an increase in weight-concerns

and body image dissatisfaction. Qualitative data highlighted a

shift in body ideals in Fiji, linked to their access to

television (Becker et al., 2002, in Wiseman et al., 2005).

As a study of Kilbourne (2004) explains adolescents are

the most vulnerable targets of advertising, as they are new,

inexperienced consumers. Also, adolescent girls are at a time

of their lives when they are forming their identities, thus

the persuasive messages of advertisements are more dangerous

for them. They are going through many physical changes and

they feel the growing importance of being beautiful as they

start to date and engage in romantic relationships.

Powerful media messages make young girls believe that the

most important feature of their being is their looks

(Kilbourne, 2004). At the same time they also offer them

products, clothes, make-up and dieting tips to achieve the

idealized image. Girls who are facing some kind of attachment

problems are even more defenseless to these effects (Cheng &

Mallinckrodt, 2009), as developing a thin body offers the

“hope of control and success to a young woman with a poor

self-image” (Kibourne, 2004, p. 255). Adolescent girls are

also very much concerned about their peers and boyfriends’

opinion, so they are even more likely to engage in a drastic

weight-loss diet.

By age 17, the traditionally socialized teenage girl will have

learned, from many and varied sources, that how she looks is more

important than what she thinks, that her main goal in life to find a

man to take care of her financially, and that her place will be home

with the kids and the cooking and the housework, while his place will

be wherever he wants it to be. She will have learned, too, that if

she has to work (and it would certainly be better if she didn’t), her

job will not be as important as his, it will not pay as much as his,

and she will still be in charge of home and kids. She will have been

told that biological differences necessitate these gender differences

and her lesser status in society (Peirce, 1990, p. 491).

However, these messages are not dangerous for adolescent

girls only. We have internalized our beauty ideal already and

we do not realize the process easily. As we grow into our

adulthood, aging becomes an issue suddenly and we follow the

advertisements and messages that are targeted to us, adult

women. They are selling hope and the illusion that we can stay

young forever and our wrinkles don’t have to be seen. These

advertisements use beautiful, adult women who most probably

have the same amount of wrinkles we have, except theirs are

covered up and airbrushed.

A meta-analytic study of 26 research studies examined if

feminist women and women’s studies students were less

vulnerable to weight-concerns and body-image problems (Murnen

& Smolak, 2009). The study revealed that feminism is one of

the most protective factors against body dissatisfaction, and

it can help raise women’s awareness about beauty idols.

However, it is not necessarily enough to raise

consciousness. Rubin, Nemeroff and Russo (2004) examined

feminist women’s experience of body image issues and their way

of handling cultural messages regarding their attractiveness.

Even though, feminism helps women to interpret those messgages

a different way, participants reported, that they still

experienced feelings of body image disturbance and of shame

regarding their appearance. It only means, that we have to

actievely participate in this process. We can discuss it with

others, we can write and read about them.

The problem with feminism today is that it is not a

favorable club to join. Feminism has become the new F-word and

women do not want a label, that is associated with

characteristics, like lesbian, man-hater, masculine,

aggressive (Crawford & Unger, 2004, p.12).

Education, on the other hand can serve as a mean to raise

women’s consciousness about feminine issues (Crawford & Unger,

2004, p.518).

Beauty cannot be measured by numbers of waist-to-hip

ratio. It is not a shiny hair or a thin waist only, it is much

more. The change of the beauty standard in the past hundred

years, did not serve any women’s sake. Models often suffer

from eating disorders, whereas average women suffer from low

self-esteem and shame about their bodies. Still, us, women can

also be an important contributor unconsciously.

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