weight & society?

Question

In the news today there was a quote:

"Girls as young as five are sensitive about their bodies in a "weight-hostile" environment that equates popularity and attractiveness with thinness, an international conference of experts has heard."

What do you think of the fact that girls as young as 5 years old are concerned about weight? What does this say about our culture? what can we do about it?

Answer 1

carolmerel, megysu's ma here! Howdy. I'm not sure what can be done about it. It is so ingrained in the thinking patterns of our society. We place too much importance on the media and entertainment mediums...kids are in front of TV too much, they compare themselves to the unreal and unnatural ideals put in front of them. But--That's only one small part of it.

It's a complex situation and I'm not sure there is an answer.

Answer 2

I believe this to be true. The people in our society today put so much emphasis on being thin that our children are starting out with concerns that they need not worry about. Most of it comes from parents and adults closest to them. It is a very sad fact.

I think that we should start out letting them know how special they are, and teach them how to love themselves and be confident in who they are. If we show them how to just live right, every thing else will fall in place. We make kids grow up too fast and way before their time. Let kids be kids. They have enough time to worry about the future when it comes. Just getting through being a child is rough enough in this day and age.

Answer 3

Now-a-days I think negative attitudes about weight come more from news constantly telling people they need to be healthy and showing overweight people on camera from there chest down, the from anorexic girls and the need to be skinny in hollywood.

Answer 4

When 90% of any health-related story is about the "obesity epidemic" it's amazing things aren't a lot worse. And worse- it always sounds alarmist.

Pass me the popcorn.

Answer 5

Some girls are overly concerned about weight and body shape. They strive for the "perfect" body and judge themselves by their looks, appearance, and above all thinness. But boys don’t escape either. They are concerned with the size and strength of their body. There has been a shift in the male body image.
Psychotherapists believe that most of teenagers’ beliefs about what they should look like come from the media, their parents and their peers.

The media plays a big part. Surrounded by thin models and TV stars, teenage girls are taught to achieve an impossible goal. A female should have a perfect figure while a man should look like the muscle-bound Arnold Schwarzenegger.
When fat people show up on TV, they aren’t usually serious people, but are either comics, stereotyped as ‘the jolly fat person’, or pathetic talkshow creatures whose lives are miserable because they can’t lose weight.
Psychotherapists said that cultural icons in the West, such as pop-group The Spice Girls and the US-singer Madonna, as well as the fashion industry and advertisements, are planting messages in women’s heads, because these messages influence the basis of women's reality and identity. These cultural messages have a profound effect on them whether they know it or not.

"The movement toward beauty embraced by contemporary culture and relentlessly promoted by the mass media has made millions of women to hate themselves while feeding billions of dollars into the marketplace”, said one source.
In a recent poll by People magazine, a popular publication in the West, 80% of women reported that the images of women of TV and in movies, fashion magazines ad advertising make them feel insecure about their looks.
In addition, the poll indicated that women are made to feel so insecure that they are willing to try diets that pose health risks (34%), go "under the knife" (34%) and 93% indicated they had made various and repeated attempts to lose weight to measure up to the images.

People loose their sense of self, individuality and fall victim to narrow definitions of beauty defined by the media. The media acts as a propaganda machine determined to shake people's confidence, remind them they aren't good enough, they haven't made it, that they just simply do not measure up.

The media machine is economically driven as billions are spent on items such as cosmetics, new diets and clothes.
According to the US-Washington Post newspaper, Americans spend US$33 billion dollars a year on diets and diet related services. This amount does not include plastic surgery or lipo-suction.
This figure totals more than all the money America spends each year on social services and education combine. In 2002, 63,100 weight-reduction operations were performed in the United States, according to the American Society for Bariatric Surgery.

Some 56% of women questioned said they would change one or two things with cosmetic surgery if it was free - and nearly one in 10 would change the lot. About half of female teens think they’re too fat and almost 50% are dieting.
Although a large majority of women are displeased with their bodies, many women and girls experience extreme body image difficulties that can be part of more complicated problems. These extreme body image disturbances include body dysmorphic disorder, eating disorders and severe depression.

In the United States approximately 10% of girls and women - numbering up to 10million - are suffering from diagnosed eating disorders.
Of these at least 50,000 will die as a direct result. Recent data reported by the American Psychiatric Association suggests that of all psychiatric disorders, the greatest excess of patient mortality due to natural and unnatural causes is associated with eating disorders and substance abuse.

Psychologists said that body image is developed through interaction with people and the social world. "It’s our mental picture of ourselves; it’s what allows us to become ourselves. The more negative the perception of our bodies, the more negative we feel about ourselves."
However, while extreme dieting and a constant concern as to how one looks is a problem, so too is obesity and a lack of exercise.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that obesity is already a "world-wide epidemic." There are approximately 350 million obese people and over 1 billion overweight people in the world. Over all about 2.5 millions deaths are attributed to overweight/obesity worldwide. WHO experts believe obesity will soon be the number one cause of all preventable deaths in the world, beating cigarette smoking and drug use.

But the problem is not only in Western countries. Studies by the WHO show that over 50% of people in the Gulf are overweight and obese, caused by lack of exercise, sedentary lifestyles and poor eating habits.
In fact, Bahraini girls are among the heaviest in the world. Only one in 10 Bahraini women has admitted to exercising regularly. The study notes people in the United Arab Emirates consume, on average, 79 kg of meat a year, compared with only 13 kg in less wealthy and more traditional Yemen.

Interestingly, although being overweight usually is associated with eating too much rather than with hunger, a growing body of research is showing that the people who have gained the most weight in the last decade tend to have the lowest incomes.

Answer 6

Shallow and visual.