Embodiment

Throughout this week's readings, I could not help but feel grateful for my mind and body. I cannot help but be affected by the media that surrounds me, but I rarely feel like I need to attain some unachievable body type. The society that surrounds us tells us that our bodies are never good enough, that happiness lies in the attainment of the "perfect" body. What makes the perfect body? According to the media, it is thin, unhealthily thin, and it is never beautiful in its natural state. For example, women are expected to wear makeup. Many womens magazines will run stories about how to get the"natural look," which still includes putting on scads of makeup. What is natural about this?

Our bodies are constructed by many things including diet, physical activity, chemical makeup and the media's portrayal of how our bodies should look. The media stops us from seeing the beauty in our bodies, the admiration for bodies that we have as a young child. Children discover their bodies and are excited about them. I can remember how exciting it was when my brother was a baby and he discovered his hands. He was fascinated by them and would stare at them. But we lose this excitement as we grow older, reaching our awkward adolescent years. Then, as we get older we are still flashed with constant images of rail-thin women, weight loss ads, and infomercials for exercise equipment. Our society is obsessed with losing weight, but the war is never over. For many people who suffer from eating disorders, there is never a stopping point. We have been brainwashed to believe that what we were born with is not good enough, that there is always room for improvement. It's no wonder fourth grade girls are dieting; we encourage them that they should.

Never having been what people would consider "thin" myself, I can understand the pressure to lose weight. Fortunately, I like food way too much and I hate running, and I have never suffered from anorexia or bulimia. But I am affected by the message that my body is not good enough. None of ours are. It is way too easy to look at models or actors and think, maybe if I looked like them, my life would be different. We have been conditioned to associate thinness and beauty with happiness, when more often than not, the opposite is true. Thin models and beautiful actors face the same issues that everyone else faces, feel down about themselves sometimes, and many turn to substance abuse to feel better. It is a false belief to think that 'If I just lost ten pounds, I would have a happier life'. In my opinion, happiness is something that only you can create for yourself. It is about how you look at things, how you choose to feel about yourself, not how the media tells you to feel. Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty tries to make us see the media differently, like they do in this commercial:





Our bodies are constructed by what we see around us, what the media tells us is good and bad. The question is, why do we care about the media's opinion?