Femininity

• When one thinks of femininity they usually think of complete beauty and perfection.

•  It is the idea of somatic femininity in that, female bodies are never feminine enough and must be intentionally and sometimes painfully made to be what “nature” wants it to be like (Urla and Swedlund, 1995).

• "Beauty Myth": Naomi wolf explains the "beauty myth" as being fueled by profitable weight loss, cosmetic and fashion industries. It shows the glamorized ideas of the ideal body and how it influences women as, "...a dark vein of self hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and dread of lost control" (Urla and Swedlund, 1995).

• Gender is primarily located in the physical body, rather than gesture, language or other displays of performance (Urla and Swedlund, 1995).

• Barbie is, “…an ideal not just for young women, but for all women who feel that being beautiful means looking like a skinny, buxom, white twenty-year-old (Urla and Swedlund, 1995).

The following video below is a clip from the educational film, Killing Us Softly. It discusses how women learn what ideal beauty is at early age from the models they see in magazines, but what they tend to not realize is that the majority of the model's bodies are edited in some form, which makes it unattainable to imitate. 


Killing Us Softly 4 (0:34-1:54)

Facts

•  The average U.S. woman is 5’4” and weighs 140 lbs whereas the average U.S. model is 5’11” and weighs 117 lbs (Women in Advertisements & Body Image, 2005).

•  The number one wish for girls 11-17 is to be thinner (HealthyPlace, 2008).

•  45% of women feel that women who are more beautiful have greater opportunities in life (Dove, 2004).

• 59% of women strongly agree that physically attractive women are more valued to men (Dove, 2004)

•   70% of women wish that the media would do a better job of portraying women’s diverse physical attractiveness, including age, shape and size (Dove, 2004).

•  Obsession with body size starts at a very early age. “…as many as 80 percent of 9-year- old suburban girls are concerned about dieting and weight” (Urla and Swedlund, 1995).

•   47% of girls were influenced by magazines pictures to lose weight, but only 29% were actually overweight (Women in Advertisements & Body Image, 2005).

•  Adolescent girls experience very high levels of body dissatisfaction and as many as 90% of them want to reduce the size of their body (McCabe, Ricciardelli, Ridge, 2006).

• 69% of girls reported that images of females displayed in magazines influence their thoughts of the ideal body figure, and 47% said that the images made them gain the desire to diet and lose weight (Ata, Ludden, Lally, 2006).

Internalization of Media Ideal

• Internalization of media ideal is when a, “…individual cognitively accepts the thin societal standard of attractiveness as her own personal standard and engages in behaviors designed to help herself meet that standard (Harrison, 2005).

• The pressure to conform to the idea and internalization of the media ideal has been found to directly predict female preadolescents and adolescents’ body dissatisfaction (Knauss, 2008).

•    The sexualization of girls in the media has negative consequences like eating disorders, depressed mood, low self-esteem and body dissatisfaction (Knauss, 2008).

• A interview with 67 adolescent girls showed that media messages created the most pressure on them to be thin (McCabe, Ricciardelli and Ridge, 2006).

• Looking at ones own body and comparing it to a more unrealistic body ideal results in the relationship between body dissatisfaction and body surveillance in girls (Knauss, 2008).
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• 75% of "normal" weight women think they are overweight and 90% of them overestimate their body size (HealthyPlace, 2008).

The following link is also from the educational film, Killing Us Softly 4, that talks about how young girls are who are getting the message that they have to achieve this look that is "impossibly beautiful". Girls seem to be fine when they are younger, but once they reach adolescents they feel like they have to be physically perfect.

Killing Us Softly 4 (3:00-3:36)

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