How a young woman sees herself

Body image is a silent, widespread, growing epidemic that most young females deal with; just about all women worry about the way they look and how people see them.

 

Student Dorian Mason says, “I think society has a physical ideal for females, seen on the cover of almost every magazine marketed to women. This ‘ideal’ could (influence) females to look and act a certain way.”

 

Mason suggests that body image includes things a woman can control like clothing and hair color and also things she cannot control like foot size and height.

 

Julie Mack, a student at Scottsdale Community College in Scottsdale, AZ says, “You think you would fix (your body image issues) by getting skinnier, but no matter what, you’ll still have those issues.” This suggests that there is no end to a woman’s body image problems. Mack describes body image as a perception of how you look and how people see you. Like many others, Mack would get plastic surgery if she had the money. “It would help fix some of the issues I have with my body,” says Mack.

 

Arizona State University student Julianne Holliday says that body image is, “my perception of how my body looks/feels.” Holliday says that all women suffer from body image issues. Holliday agrees with Mack and that if she had the money she would also undergo plastic surgery. Holliday says, “The media (pressures women); it’s true, it’s the image that they put out there.”

 

In a different perspective, another Arizona State University student, Kali Owens says, “(plastic surgery) is dumb because it changes who you are.” Owens says, “It’s a competition to get a guys attention based on how you look and what you are wearing, not so much your personality.”

 

Owens sees body image as the way you portray yourself. Owens agrees that the media influences young women the most; “they think they have to look like the models,” says Owens.

 

The Social Issues Research Center, a non-profit organization that conducts research on social and lifestyle issues, released a summary of research findings on body image. In its release the center wrote officials, “Recent experiments have shown that exposure to magazine photographs of super-thin models produces depression, stress, guilt, shame, insecurity, body-dissatisfaction and increased endorsement of the thin-ideal stereotype.”

 

The media has painted an image that women need be skinny to be desired. As a result of the media, many young women desire plastic surgery and practice dieting to make themselves look how the media portrays the perfect woman.