Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

            Beauty is an idea that has somewhat changed over time.  “Beautiful women” have always been petite, curvy, thin women.  “Beautiful men” are seen as very buff and masculine.  As time goes on the idea of beautiful, especially in women, has become thinner and thinner.  In the piece “Never Just Pictures: Bodies and Fantasies” by Susan Bordo, she stated that “models have been getting thinner since 1993”.  As the media gets more and more involved in our everyday lives ideas of beauty, fatness, and eating disorders have been changed and became more important in the lives of the society.

            Eating disorders are becoming more popular in society today.  In Bordo’s piece, she states, “Children in this culture grow up knowing that you can never be thing enough and that being fat is one of the worst things you can be”.  For health reasons, no one wants to be ‘fat’ or overweight.  But that’s not why the majority of people today don’t want to be fat.  The biggest reason today is that people don’t want to be known as the ‘fat’ kid.  The media has somewhat brainwashed people into thinking that being skinny is the only way they should look.  The models that business’ uses are stick thin.  These models to many young kids are not just a person with cool clothes on or a new hairstyle, but they are people that kids look up to.  They are someone that kids want to become when they’re older.  For example, the Victoria Secret Fashion show has so many viewers and encourages girls to want to look like that when they’re older.  There are so few people that actually look like this that they should not be the icons of the world.  It’s even unnatural.  The obsession to look like these ‘Victoria Secret Angels’ commonly lead to eating disorders for many people.  The normal person could never get this skinny so they have to develop an eating disorder to become this thin.  “And these disorders reflect, too, our increasing fascination with the possibilities of reshaping our bodies and selves in radical ways, creating new bodies according to our mind’s design,” is a quote from Bordo that clearly reflects society today.  ‘Our mind’s design,’ has changed so much, maybe not even in a good way, that made young kids feel the need to stop eating in order to achieve a models body.  I agree with the idea that the media and models are responsible for eating disorders to become more and more common.

            Eating disorders develop because no one wants to be called ‘fat’.  In the article “Warning: I Will Employ the Word ‘Fat,’” by Lionel Shriver, he states, “Multiple studies document that children from Iowa to Italy have established a powerful aversion to fat- and to fat children- as young as age 3”.  In these studies children are shown pictures of obese people, people in wheelchairs, disfigured people, or people with missing limbs.  Out of all of these pictures, children are turned off the most by the picture of an obese person.  This is an awful way for children to think because you don’t know someone until you meet them.  There were always those overweight kids in school that people picked on just because of how they looked.  I’m sure most of them were very nice if you actually got to know them.  As people grow older it becomes less of a bother to them to be overweight.  In Shriver’s article he states, “Besides, as I get older, I grow less involved with feeling beautiful than with finding beauty”.  As people get older they realize that looking good isn’t everything.  Both men and women figure out that being a good person and doing what is best for them makes them successful.  In the end, having a model like body isn’t all there is in life.

            Being beautiful is a controversial topic that provokes many good and bad feelings.  Beauty isn’t everything in life and the media shouldn’t put that idea in the minds of the people.