Pace Paw Print

Media Credit: womenlifestyle.com More women are growing obsessed with their weight every year and at younger ages.

The reasons why women are so obsessed with weight are incomprehensible. Why do women have to be a certain weight to be sexy-to be attractive-to be desired in all meanings of the word? Does the will to be beautiful, according to popular consensus, overpower the will to be healthy, physically and emotionally?

Typically when females are asked about their weight, they get self-conscience and usually do one of two things-they say "No, I'm too fat!" or they look at you like your insane, giving you an instant red light on the question. The worst part is that the girls responding like this are no bigger than my pinky finger.

There has to be a logical reason why college-age girls who weigh anywhere from 95 to 120 pounds are such weight-aholics. In Sandra Lee Bartky's article "Foucault, Femininity, and Patriarchal Power," there was a survey conducted in UCLA to put this feminine widespread cultural obsession to the test. The results were, indeed, overwhelming. Out of 260 students interviewed, 35 percent of women said they felt fat even though other people said they were thin. In addition to this, many of the women in this survey wanted to weigh ten pounds less than their average weight.

The real factor within all of this lies in a few simple questions: When does the female goal to be beautiful surpass that and reach into the critical masses of obsession? When does becoming beautiful for women turn into a negative health choice bound to eradicate their sense of the true meaning of the word--beautiful?

In looking at Bartky's article, there was another rather shocking percentile. A total of 5.9 percent of women met the psychiatric criteria for anorexia or bulimia. Though this doesn't seem that impressive, this was compared to a total of zero men who were tested for the same criteria.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the terms, anorexia is an eating disorder often characterized by a low body weight and a consistent fear of putting on extra pounds, leading to starvation, while bulimia involves the subject's binge eating and then submitting themselves to compensatory behaviors to prevent weight gain. Compensatory behaviors may include self-regurgitation, excessive exercise, or misuse of laxatives.

While I am pressing hard on the facts, this does not mean that every woman who exercises daily and eats healthy is obsessed, but there are signs. Signs for these symptoms often include dropping to below 20 percent normal body weight, losing weight very quickly without the supervision of a doctor, constant weight checks, denying feelings of hunger, and obsessive exercise. These are all pretty serious signs and some, if gone unnoticed, could ultimately lead to death.

These women are degrading themselves to such meaningless behaviors to satisfy the masses construction of the word beautiful. Why should so many women fall victim to the bait of mass media. Looking at posters, billboards, magazine covers, top models, and movies we often find that the leading female roles are played by women who are thin with so-called perfect physiques. This is why many women have made themselves into private stigmas shying away from the public eye, when instead they were trying to fit in.

Dr. David A. Gershaw in his article "The Female Fear of Fat," would agree that the mass media is negatively affecting the health choices of women when he says, "In the United States we are obsessed with weight. In countless ways our culture says that "fat is bad." This motivates millions of women to always be dieting."

Our personal image is in fact a big issue these days, but it mustn't change who we are. Despite of how you look, be proud to be the person you are and look at yourself in the mirror ready to meet the more important up-and-coming challenges of your life. Girls, don't let anyone tell you what you're supposed to look like or what you're supposed to do-be happy and be healthy and I'm sure beautiful isn't too far behind!

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