Stereotyping Women In The Media

Stereotyping Women in the Media

Throughout history when we think about women in society we think of small and thin. Today's current portrayal of women stereotypes the feminine sex as being everything that most women are not. Because of this depiction, the mentality of women today is to be thin and to look a certain way. There are many challenges with women wanting to be a certain size. They go through physical and mental problems to try and overcome what they are not happy with. In the world, there are people who tell us what size we should be and if we are not that size we are not even worth anything. Because of the way women have been stereotyped in the media, there has been some controversial issues raised regarding the way the world views women. These issues are important because they affect the way we see ourselves--contributing in a negative way to how positive or negative our self image is.

In the media there are people who view women a certain way, and if we don't hold to the standard that we are not as good as other women who are the size the media says we have to be. In an article it said that "Large women in America are to all intents and purposes invisible in today's thinness-obsessed culture. A big women is neither seen nor heard, and is defined purely in terms of her weight and other people's prejudice." (Goodman par 1) This is a hard thing for women that a heavier to understand because they want the person to think that they are heard. This plays into the way that they think and the way that women look at their bodies. You can see this happening with different types of televisions shows, which put on the show thinner women. "Practically the only television programming that addresses her directly consists of weight-loss ads, the message: lose weight. You're not real women unless you're thin (Goodman)". It is hard to think that this statement could be true, but

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we see it every day women how don't matter unless they are thin or thin to the world. In the United States it plays a bigger role then in other countries. In the commercials we only see the thinness people and the clear faces for the make up commercials. It puts women down that do not have the type of body that the media wants it makes women go through physical and metal sickness. Renee Zeglwer is a good example of this she has struggled with her weight her whole life that she has been in the show business. Hollywood tells her that she needs to be a certain size to be considered for roles. She has come out and said that it is hard for her to be as thin as everyone wants her to be and that she is so much happier being a normal size. To lose weight is not always a bad thing it is losing weight at an unhealthy way. There are diseases that women get because of they way try to lose weight fast so they try the fastest thing. The diseases are called anorexia and bulimia; they are both deadly and harmful to the body. Anorexia is what people do the most, they starve themselves and tell them selves that they are to fat so if they don't eat that they will be thinner and they will but the thing that it is doing is eating the things that our inside there body and it makes them weak. Through my life and most of my teenage years I have struggled with my weight and thinking to my self that I have to look a certain way in order to be excepted and I do not come from a family that is know for being small and thin. I have always wanted to be a certain size, but as I have gotten older I come to realize that it doesn't matter what size we are it is our attitude that makes us except our weight or that it could be the down fall to us. In the article it said that "A more dire consequence of teen attitudes about weight emerged in a study, which found that high school students who believed they were either very overweight or very underweight were more than twice as likely as other students to have suicidal thoughts. Suicide

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attempts also correlated significantly with these categories, but with important racial and ethnic differences". There are more and more teenagers that feel that they need to be a size that they can be able to have people see that they are there. There was a girl in my high school that was a freshmen she didn't like the way that she looked it got so bad that she thought that she would not deal with it anymore, so she decided that the best way was to take her life and that if she did this that she would never have to look at her body again she was so psychology messed up because she let the media tell her what size that she needed to be that she committed suicide. There was a survey done to teenagers about obesity and how it affects them in their life we came to realize that teenagers are more concerned about their weight