Acceptable

Body image is a daily battle for almost all women. No matter who are you. Fat or skinny, black or white, Christian or Atheist, every woman wants to look, and feel, acceptable. This raises the question to the term “acceptable”. An acceptable body image is what pushes women to extreme measures to feel beautiful.  Even though some women undergo plastic surgery or develop eat disorders, most just have confidence issues. Adolescence is the time of major social and physical development, and this is the time when girls start to feel the most pressure to look acceptable. This pressure comes from many different sources, not just one. Yes, the media does play a role in body image but the internal battle of women has been going on long before Brittany Spears and other pop icons.

Women have been trying to improve their natural beauty for centuries. In 1770 BC, the corset started being used to shape women into a certain body type. This was far before low rise skirts and belly-button rings but it is the same concept. Hundreds of years ago, corsets were the modern push-up bras.  Even though at this time there wasn’t reality TV and pop singers, there was still the pressure to match the social idea of beauty.  So is the media really to blame here?

As a girl, I know what it’s like to grow up in a society where looks are almost everything.   Young girls hear from their parents and superiors, “You look just like a princess” or “That dress makes you look beautiful”.  So right from the start girls feel the drive to look acceptable for their peers.  They see princesses as skinny, beautiful women with perfect hair and skin so they start to feel the pressure to look like them. They wear clothes not for themselves, but more to impress the people around them. Women feel that how they look and what clothes they wear will help them fit in. This is just natural of women over the years, just the styles have changed. In some ways, the media emphasizes the drive to fit-in but it isn't the only reason women feel this way. Its just how humas are wired.

In conclusions, the media is not the only reason for body image issues in women. Girls have always felt pressure from parents, family, friends, and boys, to look beautiful. It will always be this way. The media definitely made "beautiful" harder to achieve because the women that girls see are not how they seem. There isn't one way to solve this problem. Once girls reach a certain age, they mature and become more comfortable with how they are and how they look. Until they reach that point, parents and friends have to be supportive and encourage girls that they are great in every way. (405)