Society has burdened women with an unrealistically skinny model for them to live up to. “Too “Close to the bone”: The Historical Context for Women’s Obsession with Slenderness” and “Size 6: The Western Women’s Harem" are prime examples depicting society's mold. “An Intervention for the Negative Influence of Media on Body Esteem” and “Body Image Limited” also get that message across while showing the side-effects of it. The morbidly thin mold society expects of females today can lead to feelings of depression and low self-esteem among women. The ideal figure of a women has changed over time. "Too 'Close to the bone"' says that, "Just a century ago, body ideals and ideas were the reverse of our own, undergoing the fact that there was no folk wisdom about the value of slenderness that science has recently confirmed. Indeed, the female ideal was Junoesque: tall, full-busted, full-figured, mature. Dimpled flesh---what we today shudderingly call 'cellulite'---was considered desirable" (Seid 164). A women’s plump figure was once deemed desirable. It represented wealth and having a surplus. Fat used to be seen as a silky layer to a woman. According to "Too 'Close to the bone'", "The culture of slimming as we know it is really a post-World War II phenomenon. Fashion continued to value a slender (if curving) form, and the health industry, finally convinced bf insurance companies, launched massive campaigns to persuade Americans to lose weight" (Seid 165). There was a fear that Americans were growing morally soft paralleling their physique. Ninety to ninety five percent of American women feel they do not measure up. These feelings of abnormality lead to isolation and depression. It also leads to women going to dangerous extremes such as starvation, forcing themselves to throw up, and other ridiculousness. It's almost a culture shock for a foreign woman living in America when it comes to her figure. “Size 6: The Western Women’s Harem" explains this all too well. Fatema Mernissi is a Moroccan woman that lives in America. When she went to buy a skirt in an American department store, she was told she was too big. Mernissi says, “That was the first time that I had ever heard such nonsense about my size. In the Morrocan streets, men’s flattering comments regarding my particularly generous hips have for decades led me to believe that the entire planet shared their conviction”(Mernissi 179). It's a humiliating experience for a woman to go into a store and be told she can't fit into anything they have. According to “Size 6”, “I buy my own material and the neighborhood seamstress makes me the silk or leather skirt I want. Neither the seamstress nor I know exactly what size my new skirt is. No one cares about my size in Morocco as long as I pay taxes on time” (Mernissi 181). When Mernissi had told the salesperson that in the store, the salesperson was in disbelieve. In Mernissi’s homeland, the Muslim veil is a restriction on women that covers their body almost entirely. She concluded that maybe the thinness ‘veil’ on the Western part of the world was much more imposing. As you can see from the reading, things are much different in our Western Hemisphere. The pressure the media places on women to be thin leads to negative feelings about themselves. “An Intervention for the Negative Influence of Media on Body Esteem” claims that, “Women may directly model unhealthy eating habits presented in the media, such as fasting or purging, because the media-portrayed thin ideal body type is related to eating pathology” (Haas, Pawlow, Pettibone, Segrist 405). When a woman sees the image the media places in front of her, she feels insecure. These feelings of insecurity lead her to irrational changes in order to look like that image. These insecurities also lead to depression when the woman fails to become the same as the image. The reading says, “Media exposure to female images that are thin and air-brushed is also associated with depression
difficult time for Australia was during the time when the Economic Depression had taken place during 1930. During this time, Australia had suffered through high amounts of unemployed people, low profit, poverty and loss the chance for economic growth. Unemployment was already a crucial issue prior to the coming of the economic depression, nearly 10 precent of the population of Australia was unemployed. However when the economic depression finally hit Australia, the amount of people unemployed doubled…
deflation and depression. The US was operating on the gold standard; which was a monetary system that valued the dollar according to the quantity of gold. Dorothy embodied the everyday American spirit. The Straw man represented the farmers and how they were not appreciated. The reason for the straw man wanting to receive a brain from the wizard was to be able to communicate with the bankers more efficiently. The farmers were looked at as dumb and incompetent. The Tin man embodied…
them from the light of the day, to the dark depression of the night. Robert Frost’s transition was brought forth by the struggles in his personal life. In the early 1900’s after dropping out of university, Frost bought a house in the countryside of Derry, New Hampshire. The family struggled with money constraints and was harshly effected by the death of two of their five children. By this time, Frost contemplated suicide and struggled mightily with depression (Anthology 202). In his poem, Acquainted…
iii. Subjective experience of emotion g. Two-Factor Theory (Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer) i. Physiological arousal + Cognitive Label = Emotion ii. To experience emotion, must be physiologically aroused and cognitively label it II. Embodied Emotion a. Emotions and the Autonomic Nervous System i. Sympathetic (arousing) and parasympathetic (calming) ii. Arousal and Performance 1. Yerkes-Dodson Law 2. Moderate arousal is usually best, but it depends on the task a. Easy/well-learned…
Poetic Hero America has been filled with golden dark obstacles. From racial discrimination to the Great Depression, from Civil War to World War, there are heroes who tried to make changes. “I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself”. These lines are from Walt Whitman’s “Song to Myself’ embodied the complications of this remarkable American Poet. In this quote, Whitman was discussing the concept of celebrating who he is as a human being, even if it’s flawed, contradictory, or imperfect…
Katie Wagner Moira Clark AP United States History 25 March 2013 The New Deal and the Great Society Although the New Deal was established about thirty years before the Great Society was, they both embodied similar characteristics. The origins of these two parts of history clearly resemble each other. Also, the goals of the Great Society largely compare to those of the New Deal. Finally, the New Deal and the Great Society prove to be alike through their lasting legacies. The Great Society resembles…
blisters when we are walking. But yet, we create social stratifications in our society causing certain groups to be oppressed. For each level of the hierarchy in our society, we have beliefs and bias views for each level of class. In fact, class is embodied. Class is dependent on the way we move, our choices for food and the types of clothes we wear. In my case, wearing worn out shoes would be viewed as someone who is part of a low income family. In reality, I am not part of a low income family.…
and Bell’s new inventions: Alexander Graham Bell developed the telephone, and in 1880 his company, American Bell, pioneered long-distance telephone service and created American Telephone and Telegraph as a subsidiary. Inventor Thomas Alva Edison embodied the old-fashioned virtues of Yankee ingenuity and rugged individualism that Americans most admired; he pioneered the use of electricity as an energy source. 8. What name did Edison General Electric change to and why? By the 1890s, Edison General…
when she escaped her enslaved life, she found a way to live happily through her faith in God. She became a preacher and leader to many people because she inspired so many people. Unfortunately, when the event where Sethe kills her daughter occurs, Baby Suggs sinks back into depression and ends up continuously reflecting back on her past as a slave. When Beloved is introduced into the story, it becomes worst for Baby Suggs because she is constantly reminded about her traumatizing past. In this novel, the negative effects…
“This is not written for the young or the light of heart, not for the tranquil species of men whose souls are content with the simple pleasures of family, church, or profession. Rather, I write to those beings like myself whose existence is compounded by a lurid intermingling of the dark and the light” B. E. Scully said this as a description for Gothic fiction. Two writers, who focused on American Gothic, were William Faulkner and Charlotte Gilman. William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in the South…