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The United States is the wealthiest nation in the world, yet residents of this bountiful country are denied the simple right to adequate nutrition. Citizens are forced to abstain from basic human needs to be accepted members of society. Popular culture suggests that emaciation is not only a fashion statement, but an expected lifestyle choice. The past hundred years have seen the rise of a startling and horrific trend; the thinning of the nations young women. One in five college women suffers from a severe case of either anorexia or bulimia nervosa. (Schwitzer et al. 165) With a death rate of up to 15 %, anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate among psychological disorders. Those dying are not the poor and ignorant unfortunates from the slums and ghettos of the inner cities -- they are the best and brightest of the young generations.
They are the future leaders of this country, and they are, literally, wasting away. Yet this epidemic has never made the cover of Time. There is no national council to fight this war against the body. The issue is relegated to daytime talk shows between cheating lovers and make-overs.
I maintain that western civilization has knowingly manifested an atmosphere of hostility towards women and their bodies. 95 % of those who struggle with eating disorders are female (Wolf 183). The small percentage of men who suffer are almost exclusively athletes or homosexuals. The situation is most prevalent among male wrestlers and dancers who feel extreme pressure to keep their weight low. So, why women? In her book, Beauty Bound, Rita Freedman writes, A five-year-old confidently tells me that girls play at being pretty, but boys play cars... The socialization of gender begins in infancy and involves almost every aspect of experience. (118).
A little girl learns early that her aesthetics are her definition. She understands that to be a woman is to be attractive, to be attractive is to be thin, and to be unattractive is to be unwomanly. The twentieth century brought remarkable technological advances, but it also gave rise to an attitude of unimaginable consequence. Young women are taught that exterior beauty is more relevant than any other aspect of their lives. Female role models teach that young women can achieve anything, if only theyre first thin enough to be seen in public. The average actress, model or dancer is thinner than 95 % of the female population (Levine and Solar 472).
In effect, popular media has decreed 95 % of women unacceptable. These disorders are nonexistent in third world countries. Only in wealthy, western nations do we see the deliberate starvation of millions of young women. The first identifiable modern trend toward female thinness can be traced to the United States. The country had been swept up in the European Romantic Movement and its emphasis on gentility and ethereality. The ballets, operas and plays of this era presented heroes of unearthly passion and heroines of unearthly beauty.
Thus, while men were striving to improve their mental strength and vigor, women were pursuing an unnatural physical standard. At this time, the American fashion magazine made its debut in 1828 with Goes Ladys Book. The publication set standards in all aspects of a womans life. The steel-engraved illustrations were of young, pretty women with tiny features and rosebud lips. She was slender and willowy with a tiny waist, and had become the dominant ideal women chose to emulate. Early feminists were strongly opposed to the Steel Engraving Lady and the standards she set for the modern woman.
Of most concern were the unrealistic aesthetic ideals women were expected to fulfill. In Never Too Thin, Roberta Pollack Said quotes early womens rights activist Harriet Beecher Stowe as angrily observing that we in America have got so far out of the way of womanhood that has any vigor of outline, when we see a woman as a woman ought to be, she strikes us as a monster (61). This, in 1850, was an early herald for the devastation that would soon engulf the psyches of American women. In 1908 fashion designer Paul Poiret was credited with a transformation in American women, which he believed to be both natural and liberating. By introducing a sleek, natural look he took much of the emphasis off the waist and bust, choosing, rather, to flaunt a womans legs. He silhouetted them in long, simple skirts and proclaimed breasts to be unfashionable.
Women were metamorphosed as the hourglass figure fell quite suddenly out of favor. The lower body that was once kept so hidden was now exposed and glorified. Fashion critics everywhere were describing the wearers of these new clothes as slim and graceful. Women were now required to be thin in order to be elegant. For the first time, a slender body had to be achieved, and without the aid of rigid, body-shaping undergarments. What had provoked this change in womens fashion?
If we take a look at America herself at this time, we see a country on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution. Machinery had become commonplace and emphasis was on efficiency. How could technology make our lives easier? How could our machines run better? There was no patience for excess and human bodies were not excluded. They were to be as beautiful as sleek machines.
Womens magazines began to advocate thinner figures. Excess flesh was considered untidy, for it made a woman cumbersome and awkward. It was also at this time that women were gaining more freedoms in society. They were attending universities, and were, in small numbers, entering professions such as medicine, journalism and law.
Young ladies were joining the work force as nurses, teachers and secretaries in triple the numbers of the previous generation. Large petticoats were awkward in cramped working spaces. Decorative dress seemed exude a femininity inappropriate for the workplace. After World War I, all the modern trends that encouraged women to lose weight were intensified. Poirets slender style evolved into the carefree look of the flapper. Breasts were bound, waistlines were lowered to hide hips and skirts were shortened to expose the clave's.
Perhaps most significant, was that women were discarding the most cherished aspect of their sex by cutting off their long hair. Fashion had suppressed the female shape, opting for a boyish, prepubescent look. Modern young women were either free-spirited college students or cynical sophisticates. They were rebelliously casting off the shackles of gentility and hitting the dance halls to flaunt their newly exposed knees. They smoked cigarettes, drank bootleg liquor, participated in provocative dances, and were even wearing makeup. They were vamps, seeking to cultivate the mysterious eroticism exhibited by their idols on the silent screen.
The newly emancipated woman was to be athletic, intellectual, and a competitive equal to her husband. She was not simply his wife, but his companion. She was young and did not wish her body to portray the image of her older, more mature maternal predecessors. She was her husbands vibrant lover. In her book Fasting Girls, Joan Jacobs Brumberg writes, A woman with a slender body distinguished herself from the plump Victorian matron and her old-fashioned ideals of nurturance, service and self-sacrifice. The body of the new woman was a sign of modernity that marked her for more than traditional motherhood and domesticity (245).
The swinging twenties offered women countless new freedoms, but with athleticism and exposing new clothes came critical judgments about weight and beauty. The first Miss America pageant, flaunting women in bathing suits, was held in 1921. The winners physical measurements were held in such high regard, that the numbers have been carefully preserved. During the 1930 s and 1940 s Americans were heavily consumed with such issues as the Great Depression and World War II.
Women involved themselves with matters of survival, protection and work. After waiting in line for a weekly ration of butter and sugar, these items were likely to be cherished rather than rejected. A preference for slenderness remained, but it was essential to avoid the look of a deprived individual. Screen stars such as Joan Crawford and Ingrid Bergman were no doubt thin, but were not skinny.
The war and mid-forties brought the buxom pinup girl. Christian Dior introduced his new look featuring shapely women. The ideal figure was again hourglass shaped with a full bust and hips, and a small waist. Modern women might have been able to regain their bodies from the grasp of the thin ideal at this pivotal time.
But as men returned from the war, finding their women independent and relatively self-sufficient, interest in weight loss crescendo ed. For more than fifty years, ambivalent ideas about thinness had coexisted, but the preference for a slim figure prevailed and womens magazines began publishing almost ten times more articles related to weight control. In the 1950 s, television became a member of the nuclear family. Images of societal ideals were invited into homes and thrust upon Americans. The television stars, Miss Americas, and movie actresses such as Doris Day and Sandra Dee were put into settings and situations similar to those of normal, middle-class American wom...
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Research essay sample on The Emergence Of Thin Ideal In America
