"Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who is the Skinnest of them all?"

Whether you see it or not

kristinalee418 — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 04:13:45 +0000

Tonight we discussed many articles but the one that stood out most to me was the article titled ”Understanding, embracing, rejecting: Women’s negotiations of disabilty constructions…etc. Although the article focused on the responses that women have to being disabled, it really hit home for me because of my dad’s disability. The article discussed the rejections and acceptances that disabled people make when recognizing thier disability and I have seen that even in my father. There are times that I notice he will admit he is in pain and others where he will act like he is the strongest man alive trying to reject the idea that he has a disabilty…Do you think that happens often with those who suffer disabilites?

When I thought about this article and my topic I thought about how often people don’t look at eating disorders as a disability but label it more as a problem or a sickness. When you think about it, it really can be a disabilty because they are causing pain and harm to thier body. It’s a mental disabilty and although it may not be somthing you can park in a handicap spot for it’s still something that affects them on a daily basis both mentally and physically. People who have eating disorders are not always but sometimes physically noticeable, they can get to the point where they look like skin and bones and others can identify them as being sick when then will continuously reject thier opinions. . . Would you consider an eating disorder as a disabilty?

For the love of…Reality TV

kristinalee418 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:51:20 +0000

After reading this week’s article on “The bachelor and Flavor of love” it made me think back to my post on reality TV and the stereotypes these types of shows form. In the article it states, “Flavor of Love and The Bachelor are very different shows with different budgets, appearing on networks with different mandates catering to different audiences.” Then it goes on to tell you about statistics on which show was more popular and so forth but the reality is they are airing to two different kinds of people. Flavor of love was not a show I would catch my mother watching but I would be able to walk into the living room and find the bachelor on TV. VH1 is a network mainly watched by young adults, who also most likely watch TV more than adults. Those who view VH1, MTV, BET i’m sure have more time on their hands than a mother of 4. But nonetheless both of the shows brainwash its viewers; Each show is about finding the “one” and eliminating those who do not cut it. All of the contestants on the show judge one another and make negative comments about each other helping viewers to form the same opinions. Flavor of love mentions the word “ghetto” often in the show, using it as slang and a way to take a stab at the other women when in reality a ghetto describes a place. Both shows imitate how far women we degrade one another to fight for a one single man as if this man is the only on earth. The claws come out and there are no friends to be made on shows like this. Viewers begin to question their bodies, their looks, and they too begin to judge other women and pick who they think the winner or “the one” should be at the end of the show….which in most cases the relationship is over before the reunion!

and ps. I am completely guilty of being one of those women who both watches these shows and picks who I think is best…haha its terrible i know, but addicting!

Integrity and Discrimination on your body

kristinalee418 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:31:57 +0000

It was extremely hard to relate the articles to my topic this week but let’s give it a whirl…

The last article by Watson talked about integrity briefly and to me integrity is your own morals and what you believe to be right verses wrong. I feel that women who suffer from eating disorders or distorted body images lose this because they begin to become what others want them to be or at least what they believe others want them to be. They strive to look like what they believe will satisfy others more so than themselves losing their morals along the way. In fact they lose a sense of self because they are always trying to be something else or look a different way.

One of the other articles written by Pompper talks about discrimination and sexual harassment and it’s funny how these two issue arise more in the workplace with women. That show Americas next top model preaches on how they don’t discriminate against bigger women and that they can plus size model on the show but then they choose their plus size models who are women at the average weight. I have never seen them once put a 300lb women on the show and tell her that she can plus size model. Models who do photo shoots are constantly sexually harassed even sometimes without knowing, just by your photographer saying something as simple as “give it to me baby” can be noted as sexual harassment (“make love to the camera”, “become every mans dream”…etc.) Sexual harassment isnt defined only as touching it can be something as simple as a word or phrase. I think that models are very much so discriminated against in the workplace, they have to be told what to eat, how much to weigh, how to wear their hair, they have no choices in their career but this is what they choose and choose to love. Victoria secret just came out with a new bra that is supposed to increase your bust size 2 full cup sizes…I was sitting at work the other day and my coworker who happens to be a flat-chested older women, mother, and wife read this in the magazine and flipped out. She said that the magazine was discriminating against smaller women who dont have a bigger chest by saying “guess what now you can have them too!” as if having a small chest is a bad thing and it’s only attractive to have a bigger chest. She made a good point and I do think that although it may not seem like they are discriminating they are because they are telling smaller women that they can be more beautiful and bigger with this bra. VS has a lot of commercials and ads that discriminate against women in what I would call a “secret”( no pun intended) way. It’s obvious that discrimination and sexual harassment have always been an issue with women but can you think of a orgization or company that you believe discriminates against men, or even a sexual harassment issues at work that men may deal with?

Keeping with the Halloween Spirt

kristinalee418 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:19:36 +0000

So still keeping with the Halloween spirt…In class we talked about costumes and identity and how even when kids are young they want to be something that “everyone will like.” After class I started thinking about my paper topic and that same idea. When someone is sick with an eating disorder what they see in the mirror is sometimes completely different from what others see around them, almost like a costume. A friend of mine was pretty sick once, she was at the point where you could see her rib cage clearly and her arms and legs looked like they could snap at any moment. But when she looked in the mirror she would constantly say she was fat. At first we all thought maybe it was just a way of getting attention but I learned later on that she really believed she saw her body differently than what it was. She would complain about certain areas and point them out but when we would look at her what she claimed was there never was. After doing research for my paper I found out that its true, when people are sick with certain eating disorders they see themselves sometimes completely different from how others see it, almost like they are delusional. Relating it to what we talked about, I also read that sometimes women who are sick will claim they feel like “they are wearing a fat suit” and they just want to take it off. Imagine if it was that easy? ha.. But all seriousness, I think that every day we get dressed we are putting on our costume, we dress how we feel comfortable and I know if I’m wearing sweats the way I walk and present myself is going to be a lot different from how I would walk and act if I was in a pair on heels and work clothes. We become the character.

The pressure to be thin

kristinalee418 — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:11:02 +0000

When I think about peer pressure, or any type of pressure for that matter I instantly think negative about it. The truth is some pressure can be positive unless it hurts you or others. Eating disorders form because of pressure whether it’s from peers, media, etc. Both young women and men are suffering disorders because of the pressure to be thin and more recently it has become a massive amount of media coverage. But eating disorders are not like smoking when it comes to being with friends, you dont have those 5 friends telling you to do it or trying to get you to do it and the one friend whose saying no you dont have to. In fact people with eating disorders deal with pressure that they put on themselves. They are constantly thinking about how they can be thinner and what they can do to achieve that. For a normal person not suffering a disorder that could be positive type of pressure…a way to get yourself to the gym or to eat right..but negitive for someone who is dealing with a disorder. Do you think that an eating disorder is found to be in genetics sometimes or is it just random??

Growing up in a skinny enviroment

kristinalee418 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:24:12 +0000

I found it a little difficult to relate these 4 articles to my topic but with that said, The article titled From Home to the Home Corner… discusses the enviroment that children are exposed to when they are young. I knew a family when I was growing up that the idea of being “fat” was not acceptable. When I would go over their house the mom would say mean things to the youngest daughter because she was a little chunky. I remember she was running outside after the dogs one day and her mom yelled “Wow look Cindy is actually running, keep it up and you’ll lose that pouch” I couldnt believe my ears. The family only ate greens and organic foods. If any of the kids started to gain a little weight the parents made them sign up for a sport or go to the gym with them everyday. When I thought about this family relating to the article it reminded me how an enviroment like this can be very damaging to a child. Most of the time being in an enviroment like that can be the cause of eating disorders later in life. The children were brainwashed to believe that they had to be skinny or they were not accepted. The enviroment that you are raised in plays a huge role on who you are and the way you think later in life, and things like what this family said and did will remain in those children’s minds for their entire lives.

What will I do after I eat this?

kristinalee418 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:51:38 +0000

This week in the last reading for Mead, we read about how individuals constantly have goals. Everything that we do in life is a goal, we are always planning our next step never actually living in the moment we are in. When trying to relate this idea to my topic I thought about females who have eating disorders and the way they are constantly thinking about food and excersize. When someone suffers from Anorexia, there are two types of disorders, one type they eat very little and vigorously work out, the other they binge and then purge after or abuse laxatives. Just reading these sentences proves that someone with this disorder is already planning thier next move, “ok well if I eat the bread, then I have to take a laxative after.” This is very common in females who suffer eating disorders, constantly planning on how they will “get rid” of the bad food they ate, which Mead would say is them planning thier next goal. You could even relate this to just body image appearance dealing with make-up and hair, females are always buying the next best thing to enhance thier image. If they see something on TV that makes that person look beautiful they most likely think, “I should go get that.” It’s very true to say that everything is a goal; When reading this section and thinking about the way disorders develop and the thoughts that people have while suffering them stuck out in my mind instantly.

More on BDD…

kristinalee418 — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:58:00 +0000

“It may be only on certain days of the week and certain hours of the day that we can get into that attitude of feeling at one with everybody and everything about us.” pg 275

The earlier post I made this week was on a disorder known as BDD. It was a taping of the Dr. Phil show about two young girls and their struggle with body image. When reading Mead I came across this line (above) and it reminded me of those two girls. These two young women struggled on a daily basis to feel “good enough” or accepted by society as pretty. As a young women I can say that I have woken up some days and nothing seems right, my hair looks bad, my make-up is terrible, and I feel fat, but at the same time there are also days were I wake up a feel pretty and ready to take on the world- which I think is what Mead is refering to, how there are some days where we feel equal and we do not think we’re better or worse than anyone . But with these two girls in the video, they never felt what Mead is explaining, they always felt less than everyone around them. They constantly struggled with their looks and wishing they looked like someone else, they didnt have that one hour in a day or day in a week where they felt equal to everyone; in fact they always felt like an indivdual…an ugly one at that. Even when Mead says “everything about us,” again these girls were not happy with themselves, if you watch the video they pick themselves apart, which I’m sure we have all done at one time or another but not every single day where we need to constantly change things about our body to create that ideal body image that these young women were striving for. For most of us achieving what Mead is saying is possible and sometimes easy but for people who suffer from BDD it is almost impossible. Although, I’d have to say I think Mead would look at these girls and simply say “Snap out of it!” and explain that they have fallen into what the institution(media) wants them thinking about themselves. If you watched the videos, I have a questions for you…Do you think the second girl really suffers from this disorder known as BDD, or do you think they enviroment in which she was raised(community, household, pageants) and the influence(parents, media) around her is what caused her to think the way she thinks??

Body Dysmorphic Disorder

kristinalee418 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:09:45 +0000

This is just a bonus post for the week..I was researching online and this disorder known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder kept coming up, a disorder that I had never been aware of but seems to be pretty serious. I’ve attached a youtube video of a Dr.Phil episode where he interviews two girls suffering from the disorder, it’s very imformative and scary at the same time. Check it out if you have time!

Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMxL1uv9Vh0

Part 2 discusses a young girls sense of self and how she views the way she looks verses the way other view her due to the way she grew up and the enviorment she was surrounded by

Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu50R74XIcI

The media made me do it!

kristinalee418 — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:53:01 +0000

“It is in such media that human society develops, media entirely different from those which the insect society develops” pg 237

So I’m not quite sure if Mead actually means “media” as a means of entertainment but I’m going to take this line as exactly that and try to run with it because this reading seemed a lot harder to relate my topic to than the recent readings.

So to say that media influences the development of human society may be a little far fetch; let’s break it down to influencing the development of one particular individual first and move on from there. There are “beautiful” people everywhere in the media, you can find them in magazines, on the internet, posters in your grocery store, even at the gym you work out in. The people in these ads are usually very attractive and considered flawless. These people also easily influence young girls in today’s society because most girls, and women, want to be labeled as beautiful. So if Jessica Alba suddenly appears on your Television with great hair, a physically fit body, and a great outfit- but she’s advertising mascara(which you can barely see)- still, there’s a pretty good chance that at least 6 out of the 10 girls watching that TV will be buying that mascara tomorrow because the media has influenced them to think it will make them as beautiful as Jessica Alba.

The best AD I’d have to say are the Pro Active commercials, When Proactive first came out the Ads were only on late night infomercials and used normal non-famous people claiming “it worked for me so it will work for you!” Then they had an idea! Let’s put stars in the commercial and advertise daily! Well guess how much sales went up once people knew P.Diddy and Jessica Simpson used Proactive!!! (aka beautiful people). So the media influences us to go out and spend our money on these things because we as humans believe that if someone beautiful used it, and look like that, maybe if I use it I can be as beautiful as them!

It also relates back to my topic on body image- the other night I was watching ANTM(America’s Next Top Model) and there was a girl on the show who openly admitted she wore a size 8, after she admitted this to the judges they replied with ” Well you know that you will model Plus size right?” AND YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MAD ME MADDDDDD! I’ll admit here openly on my blog that I also am a size 8, which I thought at one time was considered an average size. But I also realized at that moment that the media even for just those few seconds influenced me to believe that I, at my size, am considered plus size….but says who?! Tyra Banks? Who are these people who decide that anything above a size 8 is plus size or that your not beautiful unless you wear this type of lipstick….guess who…the media! It’s shows like this that make young girls practice unhealthy eating habits and sometimes even form eating disorders just so that they won’t be categorized as “a plus size woman.” The human society has been brainwashed into thinking that if the media says it, well then it must be true. Has anyone else ever fallen into this media trap but then caught themselves like my experience with ANTM?