What is your sense of worth?

What is it about our society that makes us so obsessed with our weight and being beautiful?  Of course we all want to be beautiful and desirable, but what and who defines those standards?  Sadly enough, there are messages everywhere about what beauty means in our society; and far too many of the messages are of negative context.

“Although many women have made considerable strides in the world of work, the prevailing ideology continues to assert that being attractive (read “thin”) enough to capture the right man is the real way to success”(Rothenberg, 2005, p.568).  We live in a society that puts a ridiculous amount of pressure on both men and women, to obtain a physique that is often unattainable.  We are trained to think that if we have this perfect body, we are going to have the perfect job, the perfect spouse/partner, ultimately, the perfect life.  But how do we come to have these perceptions? 

Throughout life we all have many interpersonal relationships (family, school peers, work peers, peers through extra- curricular activities, etc.) that mold many of our perceptions.  The socially constructed idea of beauty in different interpersonal relationships is one topic that I view to be important.  Our families are our first interpersonal relationship that we engage in and learn about life values.  In a story about Delia, her family puts a high value on being beautiful, thin, and desirable.  Her father installs the value to do whatever in life that makes her happy.  However, her mother pushes values on beauty.  At age 13, Delia became so obsessed with her weight that she became bulimic.  She was continuously reminded of her weight from her mother.  Although, Delia states that her mother was never verbally harsh with comments such as “you are fat”, her mother would suggest that she does not have desserts, or would slap her hand if she was about to eat “unhealthy” foods.  She was wrapped up in a world where she was taught that being thin helped her achieve everything and anything she wanted.  When she entered college, she was involved on the competitive cheerleading team where her focus on weight was continuously reinforced.   Her focus at school was no longer on her studies or having fun, but what, if anything was she going to eat.  By the end of her college career, she adapted to her mothers’ state of mind.  Delia no longer wanted to make a living for herself; she wanted to find a husband that would do that for her.  She gave in to the ‘Cult of thinness’.  She wanted to make herself desirable and beautiful so she could have any man she wanted (Hesse-Biber, 1996). 

From a young age, her environment and upbringing placed such a high value on beauty and being desired by a man.  As Delia grew older her values became reinforced by the activities and friendships she engaged in.  More often than not, a woman’s worth is often very sexist.  There is a high value placed on beauty and being thin in our society, and as adults, we need to learn how to portray positive body image to young children.  There is no problem in teaching children about healthy eating and exercising, but there needs to be a limit.  Throughout a child’s life there are going to be plenty of people (friends, enemies) that try to destroy their self-worth by picking on their intelligence, their performance, their height, their weight, etc.  A parent should go through hell and high water to build their child’s self-esteem and make them feel beautiful and/or handsome.  We need to teach our children that beauty comes in all different shapes, sizes and colors.  After all, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and we all desire something different.

 

Hesse-Biber, S. (1996). Am I thin enough yet?. In P. S. Rothenberg (Eds.), Race, class, and gender in the united states (8^th ed.) (pp.587-594). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.