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Preface to "The Impact of Culture on Women's Health" Editor: Christina Fisanik Date: 2006 From: Women's Health Publisher: Greenhaven Press Series: Contemporary Issues Companion Document Type: Topic overview Length: 2,346 words Content Level: (Level 4) Lexile Measure: 1110L

Full Text: Frances M. Berg, Women Afraid to Eat: Breaking Free in Today’s Weight-Obsessed World. Hettinger, ND: Healthy Weight Network, 2001. Copyright © 2001 by Frances M. Berg. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.

Many American women feel dissatisfied with the way their bodies look, which often prompts them to seek dangerous means of weight loss. These include starvation dieting, diet drugs, and other methods that can lead to disordered eating and serious health problems. In this excerpt from Women Afraid to Eat: Breaking Free in Today's Weight-Obsessed World, Frances M. Berg, internationally known authority on weight and eating, points to the media, advertising, and societal views about women for such distorted views of body image. She argues that these elements begin to impact girls as young as age two. She concludes that disordered body image is a major health risk for women and that it spawns from society's desire to control women in the public and private sectors. In addition to Women Afraid to Eat, Berg has authored eight other books. She is a licensed nutritionist, a family wellness specialist, and an adjunct professor at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine.

At no time in history have women been so pressured to be thin. Thinness is sold on every street corner, and the wonderful diversity of women, their inner beauty and well-being, is rejected. Women—even those of below average weight—look at themselves and see a body that is too big or is oversized in one part or another.

Our culture is deeply ambivalent about women and their bodies.

"Women are idealized and denigrated, protected and abused, encouraged and discriminated against. By the time most girls become women, they have confused and conflicting feelings about their place in the world. This confusion manifests itself in a dissatisfaction with their bodies and their appearance. Before long, their confused and conflicting feelings boil down to one issue: Fat," write Jane Hirschmann and Carol Munter in When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies.

Perhaps in decades to come, our culture will place less importance on the "ideal female body"—the term should be an obscenity—and women can feel good about themselves in their natural sizes and shapes.

But not now.

The Distorted Media Mirror

Page through almost any magazine, look at almost every television show. Notice anything about the women there?

It seems as if there is literally one model—one who is thin, youthful, beautiful and who, in reality, represents perhaps five percent of women in America.

Where are the other 95 percent? We need to be seeing women in a wider range of shapes, sizes, ages, and attractiveness on television, in advertising, magazines, and the movies. We need lots more role models for the 95 percent of girls and young women who will never achieve that "ideal look"—which of course is often reshaped through plastic surgery, or retouched, airbrushed, and computer-enhanced on the page.

But how can we expect girls and women to know what a normal, healthy body looks like when all they see are the victims of

starvation being praised and glorified for their skeletal structures?

Women on television seem to get thinner each year. Their fashionable faces are now gaunt and hollow-cheeked, reflected everywhere in real life. It hurts to see a lineup of thin girls from the side—high school cheerleaders, for instance—their stomachs caved in, bony clavicles and hip bones protruding. Where are the bodies they have worked so hard to perfect? There's no body. Only bones, arms, legs, hair and that frightening skeletal face, screaming out cheers—or maybe, screaming for help from a society that has abandoned them.

Media—in all its forms—is a powerful messenger....

The two institutions of the "ideal woman"—the Miss America Pageant and Playboy—are being represented by women who are thinner and thinner every year and proportionately smaller in the hips, as a 30-year survey vividly illustrates. Now the typical contestant or model weighs in at 13 to 19 percent below expected weight, and has almost no curve at the hip. The clinical criteria for anorexia nervosa is 15 percent below expected weight.

"Pathologically underweight women are being held up as cultural ideals," laments Dr. David Greenfeld, medical director of the Yale- New Haven Hospital Adolescent and Young Adult Treatment Unit.

This distorted picture of reality portrayed through the media adversely affects girls and women in three ways, says Karin Jasper, PhD, of the Women's Center Toronto.

The distortions include:

Frequently propagating myths and falsehoods1. Normalizing or even glamorizing what is abnormal or unhealthy2. Creating the false impression that all women are alike by failing to represent whole segments of the real world3.

These false messages contribute to the confusion of women, thinness obsession, and prevalence of eating disorders, says Jasper.

Women and girls believe them, respond to them....

The Power of Advertising

But who has the power to resist the bombardment?

Advertising expertly conveys the message that "you're not okay—and here's what you need to buy to fix what's wrong." Advertising sells body dissatisfaction a thousand times a day to women and men who are being set up by the constant stream of gaunt images in the media. The perfect model guarantees our desire to fix our "ugly fat" or other "ugly" features through buying product X.

We buy the product; it doesn't work. We're left with dissatisfaction about a feature we hadn't even noticed before, and the belief that there is one more thing wrong with us. Then we go out and buy more.

It's a wildly successful strategy.

Advertising is a $130 billion industry and the most powerful educational force in America. It has designed the cultural ideals of the last two or three decades.

Media pressure to be thin is stronger now than at any time in the last 19 years. A recent study found that television diet promotions, nonexistent in 1973, now comprise about five percent of TV advertisements.

Jean Kilbourne, EdD, author of Still Killing Us Softly: Advertising and the Obsession with Thinness, argues that advertising overpowers almost every other cultural message through sheer force. The average American sees 1,500 ads per day and spends a year and a half of a lifetime watching TV commercials.

"The tyranny of the ideal image makes almost all of us feel inferior," Kilbourne says. "We are taught to hate our bodies, and thus learn to hate ourselves. This self-hatred takes an enormous toll ... (in) feelings of inferiority, anxiety, insecurity, and depression."

The thinness craze is lucrative for the fashion and tobacco industry; for the makers of body products, weight loss products and services, diet drinks, and for every industry from trucks to whiskey that advertises with striking models posed with the product.

Advertisers are "killing us softly," warns Kilbourne. Yet she says they will never voluntarily change, because it is "profitable for women to feel terrible about themselves."...

Dieting Never Ends

Pressures to be thin are especially acute on college campuses today. Food restriction is taking its toll as young women struggle to attain an emaciated ideal.

"Instead of being strong and creative and full of resilience, so many young women I speak to on college campuses, again the best

and the brightest, are barely making it through at a level of survival," warns Naomi Wolf. "Because they're exhausted. And they're exhausted because they're starving or vomiting compulsively. This generation's voice is diminished, their reasoning powers are blunted. And this is America's future leadership."

But the passion for thinness is by no means confined to younger women—a phase they pass through, and then outgrow as they mature. In today's world women of all ages are threatened by body dissatisfaction, and older women are not exempt.

Studies show that even after age 70, a great many women are still dieting. Among women over age 60 who are not overweight, more than 22 percent are trying to lose weight, according to national statistics from the Centers of Disease Control. This includes nearly 25 percent of Mexican American women, 22.4 percent of white women, and 14.4 percent of African American women—all of them within normal weight range....

Socializing Young Girls

Where does it all start? By age 2, girls are watching television and starting their daily exposure to messages that show successful women are thin. They are hearing their mothers, teachers, older sisters, and women in general objectify, distrust, and battle their bodies in order to make them acceptably thin. They are hearing their fathers, brothers, and important males in their lives talk about and judge women's bodies.

As preschoolers, they learn that certain types of foods will make them fat. Six-year-olds know eating fat is bad, and that people who are fat should diet and exercise. More seriously, a substantial number of girls in primary grades are so concerned about their bodies, they have already tried to lose weight. Weight preoccupation and body dissatisfaction are occurring earlier and earlier. By fourth grade, 40 percent or more of girls "diet" at least occasionally. Those who do not are gathering information and forming values and opinions.

Modern culture is youth-centered, yet in many ways it does not provide an environment that is nurturing or supportive for the healthy growth and development of girls. In fact, it nurtures serious problems.

"A girl-poisoning culture ... a girl-destroying place," psychologist Mary Pipher brands our society in her book, Reviving Ophelia.

Pipher says that in early adolescence girls are expected to sacrifice the parts of themselves that our culture considers masculine on the altar of social acceptability. They have to shrink their souls down to petite size.

With nearly all the messages about thinness aimed at girls and women, some researchers see strong ties between the American public health crisis over weight and eating disorders and an intentional cultural oppression of women. The attack messages work best when the target is young. And young adolescent girls are most vulnerable.

"I am deeply concerned about what is happening to young girls in our society today," says Paula Levine, PhD, former president of Eating Disorders Awareness and Prevention. "Young girls up until the age of 11 are confident, unafraid of conflict, and willing to say exactly what is on their minds. As they enter puberty, however, they adjust to society's messages about what young women are 'supposed' to be—nice, kind, caring, self-sacrificing, agreeable and compliant." ...

Is It About Women's Freedom?

What kind of culture would require its women to remain hungry and half-nourished?

The answer, some would say, is a culture that has given women more freedom than it is comfortable with.

Is this, then, about women's freedom? That's one explanation.

In this view, women entering the marketplace in such large numbers threaten the power of corporate and political institutions, as well as threatening male power. Keeping women physically small, immature, semi-starved, and diverted from life's real issues diminishes their power as competent individuals, and reduces their chances of building strong careers.

This travesty is not being perpetuated on women by individual men, for the most part—men, after all, have female friends, lovers, wives, sisters, daughters they care about—but by the political power structure and multinational corporations bent on shaping women into the ultimate consumers, perennially dissatisfied with their appearance.

From a feminist perspective, the selling of thinness and the ignoring of the diversity of real women is seen as a manipulative tool to prevent women from gaining power in the work force. The adverse effects of self starvation in the ceaseless quest for a thin body keeps women passive, preoccupied, dependent, and off track from career ambitions. It keeps them in their place as objects to be viewed or pleasured, or used as recreational toys or playmates.

Obsessed with Dieting and Thinness

Dieting and thinness came to be female preoccupations when women got the right to vote around 1920. Never before had there been idealized "the look of sickness, the look of poverty, and the look of nervous exhaustion." The new, leaner form replaced the more curvaceous one with startling rapidity, Wolf says, in a great weight shift that must be understood as one of the major historical

developments of the century, a direct solution to the threat posed by the women's movement and their newly-won economic and reproductive freedom.

"Prolonged and periodic caloric restriction is a means to take the teeth out of this revolution ... so that women just reaching for power would become weak, preoccupied, and mentally ill in useful ways and in astonishing proportions," says Wolf.

The cultural fixation on female thinness is not about beauty but female obedience, Wolf charges. It's "about how much social freedom women are going to get away with."

The "good girl" today is a thin girl, one who keeps her appetite for food (and for power, sex and equality) under control, agrees Kilbourne. Girls are still being admonished to keep their place, to not compete too seriously.

Control Over Women

Both men and women are conditioned and socialized to feel that women must be controlled, kept in their place. Women, of course, internalize these messages, says Kilbourne. "Ironically, what is considered sexy today is a look that almost totally suppresses female secondary sexual characteristics, such as large breasts and hips. Thinness is related to decreased fertility and sexuality in women."

Kilbourne argues that women are allowed success in the workplace if they focus on being thin, maintain a fragile, waifish image, and do not take up too much space. "The pursuit of thinness is a way to compete without threatening men."

Another explanation for the idealization of the lean boyish female figure is that as women have moved into previously male- dominated activities, the traditional feminine shape has developed negative connotations, while the masculine shape symbolizes self- discipline and competency. Thus the rejection of the maternal body can be seen as women's revolt against the sometimes impossible demands of trying to fill both career and reproductive roles.

Kilbourne warns, "This is not a trivial issue; it cuts to the very heart of women's energy, power and self-esteem. This is a major public health problem, one that endangers the lives of young girls and women."

Books

Linda Lewis Alexander et al. New Dimensions in Women's Health. 3rd ed. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 2004. Christine Ammer The Encyclopedia of Women's Health. 5th ed. New York: Facts On File, 2005. Boston Women's Health Book CollectiveOur Bodies, Ourselves: A New Edition for a New Era. 35th anniversary ed. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2005. Gwyneth Boswell and Fiona Poland, eds. Women's Minds, Women's Bodies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women's Health. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Karen J. Carlson, Stephanie A. Eisenstat, and Terra Ziporyn The New Harvard Guide to Women's Health. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Rebecca A. Clark, Robert T. Maupin Jr, and Jill Hayes Hammer A Woman's Guide to Living with HIV Infection. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. George Creatsas, George Mastorakos, and George P. Chrousos, eds. Women's Health and Disease: Gynecologic and Reproductive Issues. New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 2003. Lynn P. Freedman et al. Who's Got the Power? Transforming Health Systems for Women and Children. Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2005. Marilyn Hughes Gaston and Gayle K. Porter Prime Time: The African American Woman's Complete Guide to Midlife Health and Wellness. New York: One World, 2003. Adriana Gómez and Deborah Meacham, eds. Reflections of Inequality: Women and Mental Health. Santiago, Chile: Latin American and Caribbean Women's Health Network. 2001. Diann S. Gregory Maternity and Women's Health. Clifton Park, NY: Delmar Learning, 2006. Marcia C. Inhorn and Frank van Balen, eds. Infertility Around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Institute of MedicineExploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health: Does Sex Matter? Washington, DC: National Academy, 2001. Miriam Jacobs and Barbara Dinham, eds. Silent Invaders: Pesticides, Livelihoods and Women's Health. New York: Zed, 2003. Stanlie M. James and Claire C. Robertson, eds. Genital Cutting and Transnational Sisterhood: Disputing U.S. Polemics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Fran E. Kaiser, ed. Women's Health Issues. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 2003. Cheryl A. Kolander, Danny J. Ballard, and Cynthia K. Chandler Contemporary Women's Health: Issues for Today and the Future. 2nd ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2005. Sana Loue and Martha Sajatovic, eds. Encyclopedia of Women's Health. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 2004. Robin M. Mathy and Shelly K. Kerr, eds. Lesbian and Bisexual Women's Mental Health. Binghamton, NY: Haworth, 2003. Susan McDonald and Christine Thompson, eds. Women's Health: A Handbook. New York: Elsevier, 2005. Mary Jane Minkin and Carol V. Wright A Woman's Guide to Menopause and Perimenopause. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy and Ian Gentles Women's Health After Abortion: The Medical and Psychological Evidence. 2nd ed. Toronto: DeVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, 2003. Jo Ann Rosenfeld, ed. Women's Health in Mid-life: A Primary Care Guide. New York: Cambridge, 2004. Kerri Durnell Schuiling and Frances E. Likis, eds. Women's Gynecologic Health. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 2006.

Amy L. Sutton, ed. Women's Health Concerns Sourcebook. 2nd ed. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics, 2004. Deborah Waller and Ann McPherson, ed. Women's Health. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Nanette Kass Wenger and Peter Collins, eds. Women and Heart Disease. 2nd ed. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2005. Nancy Fugate Woods and Margaret Heitkemper, eds. Women's Health. Philadelphia: Saunders, 2004.

Periodicals

Laura Berman "Women's Sexual Health Deserves Equal Attention," USA Today, November 23, 2004. Christen Brownlee "Monthly Cycle Changes Women's Brains," Science News, November 19, 2005. Sandra Cortina "Advancing Women's Health Care: Diagnostic, Treatment, and Social Factors of PMDD," Women & Therapy, 2005. Tessa DeCarlo "When Diets Turn Deadly," Ladies' Home Journal, June 2005. Paula Dranov "What Even Young Women Need to Know About Heart Disease," Ladies' Home Journal, February 2005. Environmental Nutrition"Health Concerns at Menopause: HRT Vs. Natural Remedies for Relief," January 2002. FDA Consumer"Moderate Physical Activity May Reduce Chronic Disease Risk in Older Women," March/April 2003. Christine Gorman "Menopause: Beyond Hot Flashes," Time, October 10, 2005. Harvard Women's Health Watch"Gender Matters: Heart Disease Risk in Women," May 2004. Dana Hudepohl "Living with Autoimmune Disease," Woman's Day, April 15, 2003. JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association"Gender and Health," November 18, 2005. Joanna Kerr "State of Our Globe—Globalization & Women's Health," Women & Environments International Magazine, Fall 2003. Gina Kolata "Why Thin Is Fine, but Thinner Can Kill," New York Times, April 24, 2005. Shiriki K. Kumanyika, Christiaan B. Morssink, and Marion Nestle "Minority Women and Advocacy for Women's Health," American Journal of Public Health, September 2001. Grace E. Park "Women's Hearts," Diabetes Forecast, October 2005. Tara Parker-Pope "The Fear Factor: Women Continue to Shy Away from Hormone Therapy," Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2005. Pharmaceutical Representative"One in Four Non-elderly Women Forgoes Care Due to Costs," September 2005. Prevention"Unequal Treatment in the ER," July 2004. Pulse"Premenstrual Syndrome: Making Sense of the Options," February 8, 2005. Lee Ann Runy "Access to Insurance Impacts Women's Health Care," Hospitals & Health Networks, September 2005. H. Wayne Sampson "Alcohol and Other Factors Affecting Osteoporosis Risk in Women," Alcohol Research & Health, 2002. Saturday Evening Post"Women's Wellness," November/December 2005. Olive Shisana and Alicia Davids "Correcting Gender Inequalities Is Central to Controlling HIV/AIDS," Bulletin of the World Health Organization, November 2004. Anne Sutcliffe "An Overview of Osteoporosis," Nursing Standard, September 21, 2005. Marianne Szegedy-Maszak and Susan Brink "It's All in Your Head, Honey," U.S. News & World Report, May 30, 2005. Rosemarie Tong "Towards a Feminist Global Bioethics: Addressing Women's Health Concerns Worldwide," Health Care Analysis, December 2001. Moncef Zouali "Taming Lupus," Scientific American, March 2005.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2006 Gale Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition) "Preface to 'The Impact of Culture on Women's Health'." Women's Health, edited by Christina Fisanik, Greenhaven Press, 2006.

Contemporary Issues Companion. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ3010425102/OVIC?u=txshracd2512&sid=OVIC&xid=800fb2b2. Accessed 4 May 2021.

Gale Document Number: GALE|EJ3010425102