The body beautiful?

 Watching Lauren Greenfield's film "Thin" (see previous post) has got me thinking about the way in which bodies are altered in the media to give a false impression of perfection. Distortion and digital alteration of the body in our culture today has been criticised by many as setting impossible ideals for women and setting unrealistic expectations for men and is accused of being the cause of health problems such as eating disorders. You can see in Greenfield's photographs the influence of the media and photographs of celebrities on young girls growing up. One example would be the photograph of a four-year-old girl called Allegra (seen in figure 1.), laying on her bed with a microphone in hand, back arched in a S-shaped pose, similar to that of pop stars and even of glamour models in the media.  The child is trying to copy the positioning and posing of women’s bodies that she has seen in magazines, bodies that are represented to her as “desirable” and “sexy”. Look at the example of Allegra compared with this glamour photo of Katie Price (figure 2.) and see the similar pose, laying down with back arched, legs bent in, looking far off as though unaware they are being watched, she has clearly tried to copy this type of photo.

figure 1

figure 2

In another of Greenfield’s photos from the series “thin”, she presents us with an anorexic teenager (figure 4.). The girl has been asked to draw an outline of herself on the wall to show how she perceives her body size. They have then drawn her actual body size in different coloured pen, which is much smaller and less bulky than the first. The comparison of the two outlines shows how the girl’s perception of herself is distorted. But I have wondered, why would it be so bad if the girl were her perceived size, would it make her any less of a person, or any less beautiful, why have we become so conditioned to believe that a body that is “fat” or slightly more overweight than the norm is a bad thing? At periods throughout history being overweight was seen as beautiful because it was a sign of wealth, prosperity, fertility and an ability to survive in hard times. For example this photo by Julien Vallou de Villeneuve from 1853 (figure 3.) shows a much more voluminous woman in contrast to this underweight, more recent one, of Kate Moss by Mario Testino (figure 4.). 

figure 4

figure 3

Through my research I have found that in today’s culture, a woman who is overweight may be read as a sign that she is rebelling against the male gaze by going against the set standards of beauty. It also signifies the woman’s independence to consume for her own enjoyment and not just to exist as an object for the viewing pleasure of others, in other words she is rebelling against the gaze. Thus, Former new journalist and writer Kathleen Rowe argues that fat, in this instance female, is hated in part because “it signifies a disturbing unresponsiveness to social control”. Encouraged through the medium of digital imaging, women are put under pressure from the idea of the gaze and the pressure to conform to an idealised body and search out for ways to conform to this.