too skinny too fat or stuck in the middle

Too Skinny, Too Fat or Stuck in the Middle

When Professor Marsh first told us that we had the freedom to pick whatever topic we wanted to write about for our second paper, at first I was really concerned because I had know idea what to write my paper on. Then I figured I would just write it on something easy like celebrities and how they affect our daily lives. When I went to the conference with Professor Marsh and told him my idea, he told me that it was to vague and that I would loss my focus because there are so many different sub-topics that I could write about. Then I told him about the episode of the Tyra Banks’ show that I was watching the night before. The theme for that episode was how the media affects young girls. They started to talk about how if Marilyn Monroe where to still be alive in today’s society she would be considered heavy or even fat and how A-list celebrities that are way too skinny are considered to be the “it girls”. So soon as I told him about that he told me “that’s it, write about how the idea of the “ideal woman” has changed throughout the years”.
Throughout history the idea of the “ideal woman” has been influenced through the media. For the most part when you ask a man or a woman who they would consider to be their “ideal woman”, they would most likely name a celebrity or a supermodel. If you were to ask them, why, they would probably give you several physical reasons why they consider that person to be their “ideal woman”. Now don’t you think there is something wrong with society if we just consider them to be “ideal” because of their physique? Well I do. I feel like not only do people see these women to be “ideal” but half the time they try to be just like them. One thing that I feel like most people don’t really understand is that these “ideals” do change and have changed throughout the years.
In the beginning of the 1950’s when Marilyn Monroe first came out as a celebrity or an “it girl”, most women wanted to be her and most men wanted her. She first started off as a cover girl/ model and then she became an actress. She had this sex appeal that no other woman of her time had. Marilyn Monroe was a size twelve. Her body was curvy and very voluptuous. But according to Just Say When “Vintage Clothing sizes are much much smaller than today's clothing sizes… vintage clothing sizes run 4-6 sizes smaller than clothing sizes today.” So what we would consider to be a size twelve back then in today’s standards it is really a size four or six. Now still considering that if Marilyn Monroe would still be alive today she would still be consider fat because she was a size six. As much as this might hurt to hear in today’s society if you’re not a size zero or two, you are probably considered fat. But back in the 1950’s most women looked up to their “ideal woman”, Marilyn Monroe, and they were basically wearing clothes that in a way were showing off most of their curves, to show that they weren’t rail thin. But in the 1960’s everything changed.
Twiggy a world renounced Supermodel came to be what most women were idealizing in the 1960’s. Personally I would say that this is when rail think look came into play. Twiggy was about 5’8 and weighted 97 pounds. It’s pretty scary to think that this is what women today would consider to be “ideal”. I would consider this to be the era when the anorexic look came about. One thing that that I think inspired this look of being really skinny was that in 1959 Mattel introduced the first Barbie doll which “became a huge success in the sixties” (Vintage Blues). Now these look last through the sixties and the seventies. The “ideal” look for women in the eighties didn’t really change a whole lot. The skinny look was still in but not the deathly skinny look but more of an athletic look. But for some weird reason the “ideal look” of being extremely skinny and looking like you’re about to break came back through the nineties and it hasn’t gone away because today we see celebrities like Nicole Ritchie, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan are all female influences that young girls and women would consider to be “ideal”.
One of the main reasons why I wrote my paper on how the idea of the “ideal woman” has changed through time is because I really want to open up some people’s eyes and truly show them that trying to fit in with society is not necessarily the best thing because it will eventually change. I guess being a girl this topic really affects me because I have to deal with looking at these images of what society calls “it girls”. Which for the most part, what women consider to be “ideal women” are not healthy “ideals”.
The playwright Oscar Wilde once said that “My great mistake, the fault for which I can’t figure myself is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality” (Hair Cut advice). This quote describes perfectly what part of my project is about. Young girls, boys, women and even men these days are trying to fit into and are trying to portray an image that can never really be achieved because in the end when they finally get to the point where they are considerable happy, a new look or a new “ideal woman” comes around that will change their prospective on everything. My whole point is just be yourself, be happy with the look God gave you because he gave it to you and just you for a reason. Don’t try to fit in with what society thinks is cool or in because in the end everyone will be the same, and what’s the point if we are all the same? What’s the point in trying to look like these “ideal woman”? When in reality maybe what we think is “ideal”, in the end it isn’t.


















Bibliography
http://www.justsaywhen.com/Vintage-101-Sizing.htm
How Cover Girl and “America’s Next Top Model” Have Influence Pop Culture. 14 April 2007 <http://wordpress.blakeschool.org/wordpress/?p=26>
The “Ideal” Woman <http://haircutadvice.com/article30.php>
Cohen, Barbara. The Psychology of Ideal Body Image as an Oppressive Force in the Lives of Women. 1994 <http://www.healingthehumanspirit.com/pages/body_img.htm>
Shapely Centrefolds? Temporal change in body measures: trend analysis. BMJ <http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/325/7378/1447>
Benson, Tera. Today’s Cultural Ideal of Women <http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/local/scisoc/sports04/papers/tbenson.html>