"The more we see a kind of body, the more we like that kind of body!"

         In mainstream media, whenever we talk about the body image of woman, people always tend to think such idealstic perfect body shapes that can be seen everywhere, whether on the magazine or commericials, even movies and tv shows. What we lack of knowing is the original definition of body image. As the burlesque actress Lillian bustle addresses in her Ted Talk about the negative impact on women’s bodies, “body image is how you look in the mirror or when you picture yourself in your mind”. Women’s idealism of body image is not based on what others think about you, it’s about how you feel about yourself and how do you feel comfortable in portraying your figure. The negative impact is that a lot of girls overthink about how men judge their body figures and also the media is what makes them to change their minds and think being tall and skinny is more important than anything else, this exactly matches what Lillian says that “The more we see a kind of body, the more we like that kind of body”. We’ve seen numerous images of skinny and good looking women so this inserts the message that every woman should be like that because men like pretty women and it is more welcomed in our society.

Emma Watson's quote on defining beauty.

    

       “Passive male absorption of sexist ideology enables men to falsely interpret this disturbed behavior positively. As long as men are brainwashed to equate violent domination and abuse of women with privilege, they will have no understanding of the damage done to themselves or to change, and no motivation to change”(Hooks, 27). That’s how we see a lot of rules are made by men and women are just acting like the vulnerable characters in the game and their lives are being hold by the men. Compare them both in the relationship and public activities, if a man cheated on a woman, he somehow makes this issue less problematic and reasonable because he will probably put down “ I committed the mistake that all male in this world would have made” and then let the thing cools down so less people will judge him. But if a female celebraity did it, she will get all the blame from everywhere in the society and people will say bad things about her misbehavior and some will even insult her physically. We see how women are always the weak one that stay behind men’s back and get all the critiques. “She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life”(Berger 46). That is, women try to hard on thier physical appearances in order to flatter men and if a man think a woman is pretty, then she is pretty. I feel women’s beauty standard is based on how men think about them, not how women feel about themselves. 

       Once in Jennifer Lawrence’s interview about her character role in “The Hunger Games” and how she thinks about women’s body images, she said “We have the ability to control this image that young girls are going to be seen, we need to make them girl see enough bodies that we can’t imitate that we will never be able to obtain these unrealistic expectations. This(Katniss) is gonna be their hero, we have control of that amazing opportunity to reveal ourselves, to be strong and healthy..” Media is often the great use of strategy to shape one’s idea and if it always show the opposite side of how women’s bodies should be portrayed, this will be going into a tragic path to all the women because how this society keeps sending wrong message to people that women should be skinny and good looking on the face in order to be attractive. “A woman is conditioned to view her face as a mask and her bodyas an object, as things separate from and more important than her real self, constantly in need of alternation, improvement, and disguise”(Kilbourne 122). This turns to the biggest concern among young girls because now they are trying hard to lose weight and think of doing plastic surgery in the future in order to have this “ideal” image that can attract men’s attentions, even though this will make them feel very uncomfortable.

   

Abortion Rights signs state that it needs to be legalize and fair treated.

   From the past to nowadays, women have been trying to fight for the equal rights and correct the negative influence in society. Like the first and second women’s movments and abortion rights which continues to happen even today. “Men refuse to allow their bodies to become a legidlative matter because threy have that inalienable right. The drug industry has no real motivation to develop a reversible method of male birth control because forcing this burden on women is so damn profitable”(Gay 276). Men made so much restrictions and rules in birth control that sometimes women have no choices to do so they pay extra money to do other procedures which is not necessary. Women are always the ones that take all the responbilities and deal with all the left over whether men are still making orders and tell them what to do is better for them and what is not. A man can just simply tells his girlfriend to get rid of the child or do the abortion if he doesn’t want the kid or doesn’t want to take responsibility. But for women, this is something that make them feel disappointed and unfair because the surgery may hurt their health and abortion may be not even be legal in some countries. Men sometimes see women as attractive because they think she maybe useful to him or she just looks pretty, whereas they might ignore women’s intelligence and their strengths. As a lot of girl’s campaigns are appearing these days, these remind me of the quote that is mentioned in Lillian’s speech that “To see woman in a variety of shapes, ages and sizes who are not airbrushed or Photoshopped is amazing. It expands our appreciation of beauty, it opens us up to possibilites, and it challenges us to rethink the narrow confines that society has given us for what’s desirable. Maybe it’s even revolutionary---beelzebabe, Siren of Sodom”. What we need to do is to change those sterotypes on revealing women’s images and send positive messages to women about what is more important is how you feel comfortable about yourself, not just wasting your time to please somebody else.

Work Cited

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting, 1973. Print.

Gay, Roxane. "The Alienable Rights of Women." Bad Feminist: Essays. 2014. 267-279. Print.

Hooks, Bell.  The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. Chapter 2: Understanding Patriarchy.  New York: Atria Books, 2004.Kilbourne, Jean. Beauty and the Beast of Advertising. Print.