Sound Off: A Note on Body Image
Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on this blog on January 3rd, 2011.
I am republishing it because I think it's a message that bears repeating.
It has been lightly edited for style and grammar.
Read some of the subsequent writing I've done on body image in the following posts:
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| via inside thought |
Makes you cringe a little doesn't it?
When I first saw this photo in December, it honestly just made me sad. Sad for this woman, sad for myself, and sad for the industry that makes this kind of thinking so ubiquitous.
The sad fact is that millions of women feel this way about themselves because of the severely restricted standard of beauty that is perpetuated within the fashion industry.
I spent the last two weeks of the semester writing two different papers on digital manipulation in fashion and the cultural backlash that comes with retouching women down to size zero. One of the points that arose was that much like traditional media outlets, the fashion industry needs to employ some kind of social responsibility for the messages that they disseminate.
It isn't enough to simply say "anorexia is bad. Don't do that." The bigwigs within the industry need to make it their business to aggressively campaign against the rigorous standards that they themselves have set.
The unfortunate problem is that the world of fashion is currently set to THIN as opposed to HEALTHY. There is obviously a case for people losing weight. Obesity in the US alone has skyrocketed in the last few years. but the focus should not be on losing weight, but on regaining health. (Like those Queen Latifah Jenny Craig ads i love so much) Size 2 might be healthy for some women but size 8 will be healthy for others, and we need o understand that that's ok.
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