Body And Society: The Effect Of Body Image On Our Life
I really believe that everyone has a snapshot of themselves embedded in his or her brains from a time he or she was young that he or she is ashamed of. And for me, it’s that 10-year-old overweight and the short kid who felt so incredibly insecure and wanted to be accepted so badly by this group of girls that looked the complete opposite of her. I was in 5th grade when I meet these girls who weren’t necessarily popular but they all had very big personalities. I looked at them and see how fun they were to be with but was constantly ignored for being shy and how I looked.
At a young age, I have been a little more conscious of how I looked physically. I have been labeled by others and myself as fat and ugly because of being overweight. I have been constantly told by my own family to “stop eating” because “people will not like you”. With that, I found it to be a constant struggle to love my own body and even harder because a lot of people helped me hate it. I once had a teacher who asked me what my body weight was in front of the whole class, and when I did, everyone’s jaw dropped and looked at me with disgust in their eyes. When I sat down, my seatmate had whispered and told me “it must be so hard being that heavy, huh”. It was the most embarrassing and humiliating moment of my life. I never knew those numbers mattered so much until that moment. Since then, this consciousness in my mind grew a million times bigger and it affected everything that I did. I have started dressing in dark colors and wore jeans instead of shorts despite the extremely hot weather in the Philippines. I would hide behind other people in pictures or I will voluntarily take the picture just to escape being in it. I did all of those because of that moment that struck me hard and left me scarred forever. With all these in mind, I had kept a Barbie doll within arms reach to serve as a constant reminder of what I thought I wanted to and should be. It was the image that everyone wanted and accepted; skinny, blonde, and beautiful.
Every little girl has probably had this idea imprinted in her head. No one could actually pinpoint how and when this was made the basis for what a woman should look like. Society has a way of unconsciously creating a norm that everyone also unconsciously follows. No matter who a person is, they are affected by the body image that everyone claims to be perfect which is further validated by the media. Mass media is mainly constructed to reach different kinds of audiences through the use of technology. It is meant to provide the information we need to function as a society. It has grown into this inevitable thing that we can’t live without. Currently, social media has this tremendous effect on the public, especially in generation Y and Z. We started from getting news and ads from the television to seeing them in our smartphones. It is this thing that has consumed and led everyone to believe whatever they advertise. They have mastered the skill of playing with words that satisfies people. It started from diet pills to diet juices, to bum creams that apparently makes your bum bigger, and etc. It all sounds ridiculous but there are people who actually buy those. They do because all their insecurities are pointed out and used a strategy to lure women into buying those.
Which led me to believe that all of these standards of what a woman should look and be like stems from what the media has been showing us. They are emphasizing the things that most women are not very confident about which leads to harmful effects to women. It is horrifying to think about how great body images affect us both mentally and physically. Today, we see a whole lot of ads basically screaming “you’re ugly, get this”. It’s almost like it is a disease that needs to be treated. In developing countries, like the Philippines, white people, especially, are highly idolized for how they look.
