The cost of the ideal body

How many times have you stood in front of the mirror, pinching and picking at every undesirable parts of your body? All the time right?

Being a woman in today’s society means that you constantly have to worry about your appearance. You have to make sure that you are not too thin, not too fat, not too wide, not too anything. All creating an unrealistic body image. Body Dissatisfaction has become so relevant to women’s health, that more studies are being done now to measure and address the issue.

These expectations have created serious health risks amongst women. I came across this meta-analysis research written by Shelly Grabe and Janet Shibley Hyde in 2006. The paper focused on a total of 98 studies, the results were analyzed to compare body dissatisfaction among White women, Black women, Hispanic-American women, and Asian-American women. It came to no surprise to read that body dissatisfaction has been proven to create psychological consequences such as, eating disorders and, depression. In trying to meet society’s standards, women will purge, an act of cleaning one’s bowel or throwing up right after eating, in order to minimize the calorie intake. This an extreme measure to maintain an impossible ideal image created by strangers. Women do self harm to please society, only to destroy one’s own mental health.

As the study also mentions, women experience higher levels of depression comparing to men, and body dissatisfaction has actually been hypothesized to be linked directly to depression. The amount of women going through these measures have increased over the last few decades. It did not surprise me that the numbers went up, because as times goes by, society will find more and more things to to want to change in the woman’s body.

What did surprise me about the study was that white women reported higher body dissatisfaction than black women, Hispanic women, and Asian-American women. I would have guessed that black women have higher body dissatisfaction because they are treated as the lowest in the social scale, which creates pressure on all aspects of life. However, the results prove otherwise. Comparing to black women, white women reported higher levels of body dissatisfaction (d= 0.29). Among the many possible reasons for that include the fact that black women judge beauty differently. White women would judge beauty in terms of external attributes, like being tall, being thin, or having blonde hair. Whereas black women would judge beauty in term of personality traits like, attitude, pride, style, or confidence. The approach of each group differs, thus explaining the différence in levels of body dissatisfaction.

Where results for white-black comparisons were clear, results for the other two groups were less clear. Some studies show that white women reported higher levels of dissatisfaction than Hispanic women (d= 0.09). A possible reason for that might be that both groups of women have opposite definitions for beauty. In Latin America, large, full-bodied women are considered healthy, sometimes even wealthy, whereas in America, a thin body is seen as beautiful. Having two different views of beauty might explain the différence. However, other studies have shown Hispanic college women to have higher rates of drive for a thinner body than white women. And majority of studies show no différence in between the groups. The results are all over the place when it comes to comparing Hispanic women.

The results are not so different for comparisons with Asian-American women. Older results show that Asian-American women are prone to live a collectivist lifestyle, which means they are more likely to endorse the mainstream beauty standards. However, some recent studies show there is close to no difference in body dissatisfaction comparing to white women (d=0.01). Other recent studies also show that white and Asian-American women share comparable levels of dissatisfaction. These results are even less clear, as there need to be more studies done.

Women from every race experience huge amount of pressure to maintain the ideal image. The studies do not do a well job at including everyone and all variables in the study, however the results we do have show enough. Enough to ask why white women clearly differ from black women, but not from Hispanic and Asian-American women. The reasons I would have originally guessed black women to have higher levels of body dissatisfaction are the same reason why black women report lower levels. Black women have not only been put down by institutionalized racism, but also by black men. This has caused black women to toughen up and love themselves. The black woman relies less on the approval on the black man, and definitely will not endorse to the oppressors’ standards of beauty.

Does that mean that black women have found the way to decrease body dissatisfaction? Such an assumption cannot be made since not all groups were included in the study for clearer comparisons. The findings also did not focus too much on age. Age might be a factor because the older you get, the more you are presented with more standards. Women will continue to be met with unrealistic beauty standards; the change must start at home, where little girls are taught self love and self reliance. If women learned how to love themselves at an early age, it would be harder for society to influence their own standards of beauty. Women also have to start supporting each other more, so that depression and eating disorders are no longer normalized.