Hungry Girls
The women of the western world are hungry. Defined by the complex structure of post-modern society, women seek to achieve levels of inundated proportions while sifting through the compost of mediated definitions of beauty, success, power, and the multifaceted gender role that both liberates and constrains. Although seemingly psychological in nature, the developmental tendencies of the female to acquire eating disordered behaviors and /or clinically diagnosable eating disorders are more intricately correlated with various socio-cultural factors than previously thought, and this concept allows for a better understanding of the western media’s role in the female concept of identity, her internal awareness of such, and the patterns that lead to the crippling expectations of the feminine ideal. The socio-cultural definition of femininity, along with body and self image analysis in the western world are “spring board” concepts that reveal the gender-controlled society of patriarchal capitalism that still inadvertently seeks to oppress women through body obsession.
According to the Eating Disorders Coalition, those affected with eating disorders suffer the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder. Around 20 % of anorexics die within 10 years of contracting the disease. The prevalence of eating disorders and disordered eating in women themselves has grown in the last decade, and is reaching a younger female demographic than ever before. In addition, binge eating disorder has recently become a huge contributing factor to the declining health and increased weight gain of the Americans; an estimated 65% of adults and 30 % of children are overweight, and 15% of those individuals are collectively obese. Twenty five years ago, models were, on average, 8% thinner than the average woman. Today, models are 23% thinner than the typical American female, a staggering increase that has led to more than 40% of nine-year old girls having admitted to dieting. (Dereine, Jennifer). The epidemic of disordered eating among western societies has only recently begun to expand into a full-fledged research ideology, and as a result, many psychologists have determined that a number of factors additionally add to the rise in its prevalence. The socio-cultural influences of western thought, when paired with the correlating media exposure of such a technologically absorbent and capitalist society, weave together to connectively produce a “feeding ground” for the ineffectual concept of female identity. This in itself has contributed to an increase in eating disorders, poor self image, and a loss of self, as women seek to “seem” rather than to “be.” (Beck, Anne.)
Research has shown that “consumer culture and media imagery have a pervasive and powerful influence on girls at a critical age developmental stage.” (So, Nehrissa, 2006). Within this context, identity is utilized not on an individualistic basis, created and understood by ideas of a natural mental ability and coupled with environmental factors, but instead as a product of a media saturated adolescent experience, where young girls are leeched into a “co-constructed” culture identity by their local social world, as well as drawing upon “cultural resources and symbols to construct, understand, and represent who they are.” (Beck, Anne, 1998).
In a Fijian Case study conducted to determine the amount of impact that western media exposure had on an indigenous society, the concept of the “emerging female identity” revealed the source of the American female adolescent’s understanding of identity: visual symbols, perpetuated both by consumerism and targeting , clash to create an internal stress environment, as a young girl is forced to “maintain a trajectory of achievement” that correlates with her presumed obligations as a female. The intense pressure can easily unravel into an eating disorder as the additional notion of “the body’s plasticity” comes into play within the images presented to her volatile, vulnerable mind. (Beck, Anne,2006) (pg.3).
Sharlene Hesse-Biber argues that young women literally must learn to “be a body.”, and that this type of “reflective appraisal” suggests that a woman’s measure of worth lies, first, and foremost, in the mirror. Within the umbrella of this thought process is further evidence of the media’s role in the concept of femininity through research that suggests a mind/ body dichotomy that is not easily separated within western society. Women, now fully aware of the success and “desirability factor” that arises out of achieving a status that is deemed culturally thin and relevantly beautiful, (and are also aware of potential implications for being overweight and deemed unattractive), place huge value on attaining culturally perpetuated “ideal thinness; “ exerting opinions that place a strong parallel between weight loss with a sense of power in the context of the social world. (Hess-Biber, 2006).
This correlation suggests that since social status is determined largely by socio-economic and career–based factors, that maintaining a high level of desirability is crucial when walking alongside the opposite sex. While striving to create equality between genders, the seemingly progressive Western society still has not yet been able to break through the thickly–lined glass ceiling of male attainability in terms of sustaining prestige in the business world. The understanding that attractiveness is crucial to have a “leg up” within a fiscally and capitalistically male dominated society then clashes when “A woman with a successful and lucrative career may fear that her success comes at the expense of her femininity.” (Hess-Biber 2006).
A woman’s femininity, then, contradicts itself everywhere she turns as she struggles to find the balance between valued career-woman, sexual goddess, and soft, maternal housekeeper. Modern society, in its vast attempts to re-define traditional gender definitions, has additionally created a level of internal confliction within the American female that inadvertently promotes a fundamental (though subconscious) need for women to regain control in a society that objectifies their bodies, and endorses “capitalist interests” and “patriarchal perspectives.” The manifestations of these socio-cultural ideals are within “self- imposed” controls. (i.e., dieting, restricting, fasting, over exercising, )and feeding into the consumerism that, as Becker argues, invariably exposes a “problem” and then provides the solution under the surmise of products that promise perfection, but consistently fail to live up to the societal ideal associated with it. (Hess-Biber 2006). The effect of this cycle creates a volatile social environment where paths of psychological interests, environmental experience, media exposure, and a consistently gender-biased society produce diminishing self worth, confidence, internal acuity, and satisfaction in the women of America. Essentially, our society breeds eating disorders.
Although the blame is clearly placed on the media alone, but on a combination of factors that contribute collectively, case studies have been conducted to test the relevance of how strongly the media can perpetuate an idea in a society with little to no outside exposure, namely the indigenous population of the Fijian people. Conducted in 1998, the natives had had no previous interaction with western media until 1995, when advancements in technology lent itself to their region. Suddenly “Xena: Warrior Princess” and “90210” created conceptualizations concerning the feminine ideal that entirely contrasted the “robust desirability” of women in Pacific Islands, as well as the notion that a healthy appetite in a woman meant that her husband was a good provider. (Beck, 1998).
Similar findings resulted from another study conducted in 2001 that evaluated Chinese high school girls versus Australian girls to determine differences in positive body image, self worth, frequency of dieting, and importance of peer groups in the development of eating disorders. Results concluded that Westernized high school students were far more likely to have dieted. The Chinese girls, in fact, seemed happier with their bodies, and were more likely to diet not as a result of media exposure, but in correspondence to friendship and parental pressure to do so. (Soh, Nerissa, 2006).
The findings of this study contradict the interpretation of conventional research that individuals who remain saturated in the context of their cultural environment are essentially “protected” from developing disordered eating behaviors. The prevalence of eating disorders are no longer dismissed as “the white girls disease” (Daniels, Jennifer, 2001), but instead are being evaluated in ways that are “no longer confined to a particular class or ethnic group.” (Beck, Anne, 1998).
An opposing approach continues to perpetuate the opposite of these findings, undermining the idea that socio-cultural explanations interpret both the inner workings of eating disorders and marginalize the gendered confusion surrounding femininity. A case study conducted comparing Iranian women living in their homeland versus acculturated Iranian –American women concluded that those living in Iran are more likely to over-exercise and desire the “feeling of an empty stomach” than Iranian-Americans, even though Western media has been banned in that region since 1978. In addition, a case study evaluating similar characteristics in Thai women revealed that, despite having a strong cultural connection that stemmed outside of Westernized concepts, native Thai women reflected a stronger sense of body image dissatisfaction than those living in America. These studies suggest that the emphasis, as well as the blame, should not be placed entirely on the Western ideal or media exposure from one region to the next, but that it is instead more relative and individualistic pertaining to culture. Still, the findings concerning the Fijian people are difficult to ignore, and the rise of eating disorders in the west stimulate the notion that fundamental research may not be the only missing link needed to redraw the lines of the feminine ideal. (Abdollai, Panteha, 2001).
The dimensions of female identity have long since been evaluated, evolved, surrounded with controversy, injected with sexuality, suppressed, and dejected. Re-drawing the blurred lines of this complex concept must start with the age of adolescence, when young girls and their vulnerable thought processes are bombarded with a thinness ideal lending to poor self esteem later in life. Evidence of this is found in a study conducted in 2001 that empirically investigated the linkage of feminine figures with thin women, as well as perceiving heavier women to be “less feminine.” The emphasis placed on the femininity/ thinness correlation is the place to begin- and in order to reshape the female construction and identification of societal expectations, as well as internal awareness, social action in opposition to subordination via the male perspective is what will begin to unravel the unrealistic standards of beauty, femininity, and objectification that continue to plague western society. (Hesse-Biber, Sharlene 2006). Barbara Sictermen comments “As women and men take a more active role in running their own lives and in political decision-making and as they communicate socially in a wider variety of fields, so private consumption will become less important. For private consumption is secretly a malignant consumer democracy and involves the consumption of illusions of attractiveness” ( Sichtermann, 1986, p. 53).
This interpretation values the power of individuality and identity in a society that largely smudges the outline of the developing adolescent female. In her attempts to construct a sense of self worth that is intrinsically preserving she attempts to express her vast ability to contribute to a falsely cathartic culture ; wrapped in a deceptive cohesion of trust by both treasuring her femininity as a phenomenon and as a jewel, while similarly introducing her to the contradicting components of the western feminine idea. And until an active coalition of change is determined and brought to fruition, she and the rest of the western world will remain hungry girls; forced to sit on a shelf of invariable plastic Barbie dolls; Resorted to nothing more than an untapped crystal, submerged in the muddy definitions of society…
Contained with our secrets, we are Les Cours de La Mer, sunk in the unattainable, collecting century’s worth of patriarchal dust.
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