It should not come as a huge surprise that those exposed to Western media have a tendency to be self-critical of certain parts of their body or fixate on appearance when mind and personality is really what counts.
Lisa Quast, a Forbes blogger, recently made a blog post pertaining to a woman's body size and income. This post was centered on a 2010 Applied Psychology Journal article which found that women who are thinner tend to make more money. Reading both the article and the blog post made me cringe. How did we as a society let this happen?
There is absolutely no empirically supported studying indicating that an individual’s weight and mental competency are related. So why do the thin seem to win? It is my belief that much of this controversy is rooted in the power of the media and more specifically, those who control it. For women especially, we have had felt a societal pressure to succumb to what others view as the “ideal” body type. The most daunting component of this equation is that those determine and perpetuate the “ideal” type of those who struggle to fight it…women. So once again, I ask why.
Is this for men? Or is it for women? Are we pressuring ourselves to fit into smaller size jeans with the hopes that someone will compliment us on how thin/small we look? And whose compliments are held in a higher regard, men or women? Of course sexual orientation plays a moderating role, yet even still, women generally dress well for other women (this is all observational inference). So why don’t we start holding ourselves to a higher standard?
But let’s say women do try to stay thin for men. A 2003 study indicated that women view thinner women as an ideal body type and normal AND HEALTHY weighted women as a normal/chubby-unattractive body type. Men however, rated the same figures differently. They categorized the normal weight types as MORE attractive and the thinner as LESS attractive. So women, it is time to step up!
We should not be letting our worth be determined by our body size, type, or weight. We define our own worth and should live up to our own, reasonable & healthy, ideals. I fear if we do not, future generations will be stuck in this conundrum of choosing their appearance of their mind...and what will that do to society?
Quast’s blog: http://blogs.forbes.com/lisaquast/2011/06/06/can-being-thin-actually-translate-into-a-bigger-paycheck-for-women/
Applied Psychology article (thin win): http://www.timothy-judge.com/Judge%20and%20Cable%20%28JAP%202010%29.pdf
Journal of General Psychology (body type preference): http://www.csulb.edu/~djorgens/lokken.pdf
