Body Image Issues: What Causes Them and How Can We Help?

Body Image Issues have been on the rise in recent years. The causes of them have been up for debate, as has been a solution to how to fix the problem. The taboo around the topic is thankfully lifting, and with a general open outlook at mental health and body issues, I hope that tackling this problem will become easier.

 

The Media’s Role

It almost goes without saying that the media plays a big role in our lives now. It’s intrinsically linked to how we perceive the world around us, no matter how much we try to avoid it. However, there have been negative traits that have risen with media culture. Whether these have been as a result of the media or not, is still up for debate. Out of these issues is the one of body image, which has become an epidemic in our world, particularly for young girls and women (though it does affect boys and men, but at vastly lower numbers).

The truth is that ever since the invention of new technologies, the media has played an increasingly important role in society. Though people may often try to deny exactly how important it is, history books will still dictate that the invention of the television played a crucial role in how opinions of the Korean War changed during the 1950s.  I’m not trying to go into a history lesson here, but I think it’s important that each of us acknowledge that the media has played an important role since its inception, and this role has only grown in recent years.

More than that, the media and our culture have become completely intermingled, which means that children are exposed to messages from the media from a very young age. This doesn’t mean that if you keep your children away from television (which is difficult enough to do on its own) they won’t be influenced by whatever possible negativity the media might be spouting about bodies. Instead, the way the media has become intertwined with our culture means that children will become exposed to these messages no matter what we do. Whether this is through television, the internet, or even through your nice enough friend who has internalised enough messages from the media to pass it onto your kids.

 

Messages of Body Negativity

What kind of messages is the media sending us anyway, you ask? Surely, it can’t be that bad! Well, for decades the media has created a cult of glory around a certain ideal of woman. This has typically been women who have flawless skin, are usually white, and incredibly thin. As the years have passed, the thinness seems to have simply increased. This isn’t just an issue in the fashion industry, where only a certain class of models are usually featured, while others with differing body types might struggle to find a job, but it’s pervasive in our culture through actresses, singers, etc.

While asking people to aspire to a certain body ideal is certainly not healthy, what makes the whole issue even worse is that usually this body ideal is actually unattainable, and created through tricks of the camera, make-up, stylists, and obviously, photoshop. Which means that even the people who are purporting these body ideals don’t have these bodies.

r3_0_1256_708_w1200_h678_fmax
image: intrigue

Women and Self-Esteem

This is particularly emphasised in women, especially as they are already raised in a culture that already discourages their self-esteem to knock down their confidence. Even women in the media who are, by normal standards, beautiful, are knocked down constantly for not living up to an unattainable ideal. For example, female celebrities are often mocked for their pregnancy, as it obviously changes their usually-thin bodies. Not like that isn’t bad enough in itself, but these same celebrities are again mocked for not immediately losing the baby weight after giving birth.

In normal society too, we continue to perpetuate these ideas to women and mothers. We talk about mothers who are pregnant but don’t really start showing until later on in their pregnancies as if this is some sort of an ideal. But more than that, we continually criticise mothers for not losing the baby weight as fast as possible. Like it isn’t difficult enough to carry a baby for nine months, give birth to them, breastfeed them, and take care of them, but on top of it all we lump mothers with this unusual expectation of losing weight as fast as possible, as if it’s the most crucial thing in such a time of their life.

 

‘Thinheritence’

It has been noted that girls are becoming aware of their body images from even younger ages now, and is it really any surprise? A new term, thinheritance, has been adopted to speak about girls who inherit the body issues that their mothers have. So it seems like a sad cycle for women.

Mothers who struggle with their bodies pass this onto their daughters. Though children learn from the world around them, their first instances of knowledge come from their parents. Their parents are their first role models, caretakers, and teachers. So a young girl often mimics her mother’s behaviours. Which probably explains why young girls are so eager to borrow their mothers’ lipsticks (and break them!). But it also explains why girls are becoming more and more aware of their bodies at earlier ages. It explains why their self-esteem is plummeting from earlier and earlier ages.

 

Cultural Diversity, Cultural Negativity

Different cultures also have different relationships with bodies and self-esteem. I think that women of colour often suffer disproportionately from self-esteem issues because of a number of things. One of these comes from the media and its continual lack of including women of colour. This means that women of colour never see themselves reflected back in the society around them, causing them to suffer from self-doubt from an early age.

While white women might not have the most diverse body of characters representing them, at least they have something. Women of colour, however, have practically been invisible in the media until recent years. And even now, things are pretty bad. Even when women of colour are represented in the media, these are often lighter-skinned women, or darker skinned women whose skins have been photoshopped, or lightened through the use of set-lighting. The message here is pretty clear: there’s a certain type of women of colour that we want, and it’s not you!

I can’t speak for the different cultures around the world, but in my own culture there’s also a real problem in how we view the bodies of women. There’s a general idea that women’s bodies are open property for everybody to comment on. This means that you can walk into a room full of Bangladeshi people and it’s open season for everyone to comment on your weight. While men also suffer from this, it’s women who seem to be the primary targets, criticising each others’ bodies as if it is the most important thing.




The most extreme example of this was when I heard one woman say to another that she had really lost a lot of weight since the last time she had seen her, and when the woman responded that it was because she had been sick, the former joked that she wished she could be sick if this meant losing weight. This is the kind of glorification of weight loss that exists in our culture, where we encourage it, often at the detriment women and their health. It’s a culture where “healthy” has become synonymous with “thin,” which is simply not true.This idea is not just present in my culture, however. Conflating thinness and health is something that people in Western culture constantly perpetuate in a way that continually shames women for their bodies.

So it’s unsurprising that there has been a significant rise in eating disorders when thinness is the epitome that we glorify it to be. When it’s one of the major things that many women are encouraged to aspire to, as if it is a prize to be won at the expense of their own mental and physical health.

o-selfie-facebook
image: huffingtonpost

Positive Outlooks for the Future?

All hope is not lost, however. Recently, there has been a rise in body positivity movements that aim to embrace all types of bodies; different shapes and sizes. There has also been an increase in how the media represents people. There has been more diversity in body types; though they are still few and far in between. There has also been more of an emphasis on actual health; on eating well and keeping well. This isn’t done as a glorification of thinness, as it is often done, but as an encouragement of taking care of yourself, both physically and mentally. Many companies have also attempted to be more diverse in their campaigns; including fashion lines featuring more diverse models. I can only hope that this trend is one that continues, and continues to grow in its inclusivity instead of becoming stagnant.

Self-esteem and body image also go hand in hand. And funnily enough, women are actually boosting their self-esteem through social media and the selfie culture. While many will complain about the self-centeredness of this culture, and attempt to turn it into a conversation of women’s vanity; the selfie culture actually brings a lot of positivity to women; particularly young women. In the selfie culture, these women are encouraged to celebrate and love themselves.

With the rise of social media, there is also more representation. You don’t have to look to TV shows or films to find a celebrity that might possibly look like you. Instead, there are people on Instagram who look like you and love themselves for it, so why shouldn’t you?

We still have a long way to go with body image issues, and they’re certainly not going away anytime soon. So long as we keep conflating health with thinness and beauty, we will keep encouraging the young to hate their bodies, and themselves. It’s been proven that the best way to encourage healthy living is through positivity, and that’s exactly how we need to shape our culture as we grow and develop. We need to create a culture that encourages body diversity. We need to get rid of “thinheritance” by creating an inheritance of bodily love and confidence.

Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.