For those who missed it, Barbies manufacturer Mattel sent The Body Shop a cease and desist order after posters featuring Ruby - a self proclaimed Anti-Barbie spokesperson started appearing in American shop windows. This banned advertisement was also forbidden to be hung up in the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway. The complaints included her “nude and nippless figure” being exposed to the public which offended people in the US and China.
Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a disorder in which the affected person is excessively concerned about and preoccupied by a perceived defect on their body.
Bulimia?
Definition: An eating disorder, common especially among young women of normal or nearly normal weight, that is characterized by episodic binge eating and followed by feelings of guilt, depression, and self-condemnation. It is often associated with measures taken to prevent weight gain, such as self-induced vomiting, the use of laxatives, dieting, or fasting.
Anorexia?
Definition: A lack or loss of appetite for food (as a medical condition). An emotional disorder characterised by an obsessive desire to lose weight by refusing to eat.
Example of a model on the runway for one of the large fashion houses. Do you find this an attractive example of illusion and fantasy? Whose fantasy includes starving women who are so thin they can barely stand up?
Advertising rules the marketplace and in advertising thin is “in.” Twenty years ago, the average model weighed 8 per cent less than the average woman—but today’s models weigh 23 per cent less. Advertisers believe that thin models sell products.
The Culture of Thinness
Researchers report that women’s magazines have ten and one-half times more ads and articles promoting weight loss than men’s magazines do, and over three-quarters of the covers of women’s magazines include at least one message about how to change a woman’s bodily appearance—by diet, exercise or cosmetic surgery.
Television and movies reinforce the importance of a thin body as a measure of a woman’s worth. Canadian researcher Gregory Fouts reports that over three-quarters of the female characters in TV situation comedies are underweight, and only one in twenty are above average in size. Heavier actresses tend to receive negative comments from male characters about their bodies (“How about wearing a sack?”), and 80 per cent of these negative comments are followed by canned audience laughter.
Unattainable Beauty
Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that media images of female beauty are unattainable for all but a very small number of women. Researchers generating a computer model of a woman with Barbie-doll proportions, for example, found that her back would be too weak to support the weight of her upper body, and her body would be too narrow to contain more than half a liver and a few centimeters of bowel. A real woman built that way would suffer from chronic diarrhea and eventually die from malnutrition. Jill Barad president of Mattel (which manufactures Barbie) estimated that 99% of girls aged 3 to 10 years old own at least one Barbie doll.
Images of female bodies are everywhere. Women—and their body parts—sell everything from food to cars. Popular film and television actresses are becoming younger, taller and thinner. Some have even been known to faint on the set from lack of food. Women’s magazines are full of articles urging that if they can just lose those last twenty pounds, they’ll have it all—the perfect marriage, loving children, great sex, and a rewarding career.
TheBarbieEffect
