Body Modification In Women

Improved Essays
“Throughout history in all cultures a common ultimate goal is to achieve beauty” (Hutchins). For centuries, women of all race, culture, and location have strived to reach one common goal, which is to feel attractive. The old Chinese used to use a technique called foot binding, which was not only a symbol of beauty but also wealth and status. While foot binding no longer is a procedure used in this day in age, women have found new contemporary methods to make themselves look and feel more attractive. Cosmetic procedures, once used only by the rich and famous, are one of the most dominant methods of body modification in society today. In other countries, such as Africa and Thailand, other types of body modifications are used to achieve the …show more content…
Surgery was shown to be effective at addressing these problems” in an article in the British Journal of Plastic Surgery (Klassen). With that being said, it is easy to understand why women put themselves through procedures to alter their bodies. Today in the 21st century objectification of women’s bodies is prominent and can cause women to “internalize an observer’s perspective as a primary view of their physical selves” (Fredrickson and Roberts (1997)). Also, “[o]bjectification is likely to result not only in the tendency to monitor the body and its various parts, but also in behavior designed to enhance attractiveness” (Henderson-King and Brooks, 2009). Women also undergo the “Fashion-beauty complex” in today’s day in age, which is by definition “the extensive network of corporations, media conglomerates, celebrities, and techniques that together create and support the ideology of feminine beauty and narcissism” (Henderson-King and Brooks, 2009). The fashion-beauty complex “[glorifies] the female body and to and [provides] women with the tools they need to maximize their beauty potential, one actual effect is that women are made to feel deficient and in constant need of improvement. Thus, the female body becomes not only an object, but also a project, an object to be worked upon” (Henderson-King and Brooks, 2009). Henderson-King and Brooks also …show more content…
It has been proven that women throughout the centuries have manipulated their bodies for one common purpose: to be more attractive and achieve the type of beauty that is wanted. The old Chinese bound their feet to stop growth because small feet were a prestige item and represented beauty back in their culture. Women in Africa stretch their lips, and wear neck rings to act as a illusion of a elongated neck because that is represented as beautiful in their culture. Women in America undergo surgery’s to reshape their features, and receive a look that is considered beautiful in the world today. Marilyn Monroe said it best, “[b]eauty and femininity are ageless and can’t be contrived, and glamour, although the manufactures won’t like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour; it’s based on femininity” (“Marilyn Monroe

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In this essay I will be examining “Losing Bodies” by Susie Orbach, an essay on the body-shaming of women in modern western culture. She argues that our culture’s obsession with attaining the perfect body has caused women to take drastic measures to achieve modern western beauty standards. When Orbach states that we are “losing bodies”, she is saying that our bodies are no longer seen as our homes, but something in constant need of reshaping to fit into western beauty standards. For decades, the media has perpetuated a western ideal of femininity so narrow that almost no can live up to it.…

    • 584 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    At the end of the day when the clothes come off, how comfortable are you with your body? In Horace Miner’s satire of American life, he recognizes that, “The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly…” (Miner); and with all the billboards, television ads, and magazines that project unrealistic photo-shopped standards of beauty, it is understandable why many members of society are obsessed with modifying their appearance. Society spends countless dollars on clothes, make-up, and numerous other beauty regimens, but what happens when all of our temporary tricks and tools no longer satisfy our desires to alter our appearance? From ritualistic to purely cosmetic, the act of body modification has transformed…

    • 2148 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Locker Room Talk Summary

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Stephen Dunn’s “Locker Room Talk” takes the reader through Dunn’s personal experiences as he listened to other guys’ stories about girls throughout his life. His memories start from when he was young, at around twelve or thirteen, when an older boy named Frankie talked about having sex with a girl and introduced him to pornography in the school yard where he felt “Wonderment. Not wonderful.” Later on, when he got more experience under his belt, the wonderment that he felt was substituted by embarrassment although he did not know if he was embarrassed for the girl being spoken about, the guy telling the story or himself as the listener. During college while at the locker room he heard a guy explain, purposely loud enough so the whole room…

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “The Beauty Myth”, Naomi Wolf describes this myth as “prescribing behavior and not appearance” (Wolf 14). Women try to attain a look that is unattainable and because they are trying so hard to be skinny and attractive, they are distracted from the real problem. The real problem is their lack of control. Society uses the “beauty myth” to distract women from obtaining power. They are told not to eat, and focus on dieting rather than fighting inequality.…

    • 725 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Unrealistic Body Image

    • 790 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Photo manipulation, cosmetic surgery, and models are all found in media and are the three main contributors to unrealistic body image for women. Media has evolved greatly over the past few decades due to the growth of electronics outlets…

    • 790 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Media Influence On Beauty

    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages

    It’s something in this century that needs to be changed and the story beneath under it is everyone doesn’t have to be what they see in the media. The pressure to look young and beautiful is at an all-time high, and more and more people are picking up the phone to schedule surgical enhancements. Americans spent $12.5 billion on cosmetic procedures last year, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Since 1997, the number of both surgical and nonsurgical procedures performed annually has increased by a whopping 465 percent. (Lerner and Lerner 408-411).…

    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Today, an overwhelming number of American women choose to alter their body in order to fit the physical attractiveness created by our culture. Women’s feel an immense amount of pressured from the media, friends and families members to look beautiful risking their lives for black market procedures to make their buttocks bigger. Females are going to extreme lengths to reach their physical desires but, when it comes down to it, just how far are too far. I feel very happy that I choose to research the black-market of silicone butt injections because I feel like I have the ability to help other women’s. This practice is becoming extremely popular but not everyone is aware of the side effects.…

    • 847 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout history, society has looked at the role of woman with a domestic and submissive perspective. Women were the property of men, and were there to pleasure him, bear his children, and relieve him of the domestic duties. Throughout time the role of women in society has evolved; however, women still struggle to have full control of their own bodies. As Adrienne Rich said (Of Women Born):"Women are controlled by lashing us to our bodies. " The theme of women being lashed to their bodies has been evident in America from the 1800’s until the 1970’s, as women have fought to gain the right to their own bodies and is still evident today as women continue to battle against patriarchal control of their bodies by the government and media.…

    • 1410 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Television, glamour magazines and the internet are a few of the powerful social forces that influence the impossible body image of perfection. Both men and women strive to gain their self worth and self confidence from mirroring what society brands as beautiful. Consequently the journey to achieve this false sense of beauty leads to erroneous eating disorders, unnecessary medical procedures and other poor choices that puts their life at risk. The impact of this destructive social influence leaves physical and psychological scars that do not heal.…

    • 1802 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    These insecurities constantly immersed women in a concern that they would not be valuable enough for their husband. Creating these distortions in body image was the reason “natural beauty became displaced by artificial beauty” (Hansen & Reed, 1986, p. 63). The outcome of this adaption held the place that “individuals were made to become emotionally vulnerable, constantly monitoring themselves for bodily imperfections which could no longer be regarded as natural” (Featherstone, 1982, p. 20). A paradigm of this drastic outlook on body image was in the Victorian era, when women had corsets synched to their waists, so that they gave the illusion of having an immaculate hourglass figure. Women were defined by the dimensions of their compressed waist and proportionate figure.…

    • 1555 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Define Beautiful. To some people, the way they look on the outside determines their beauty, while to others inner beauty is what counts the most. According to Merriam Webster beauty, means being physically attractive or the qualities in a person or a thing that give pleasure to the senses or the mind. In our world today, to be beautiful you need to be at society’s standard of what is considered “beautiful.” All around, there are ads, magazines, commercials, posters, etc., on what to do to have the “perfect” body or the “best” looking face.…

    • 1549 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In this modern era, everybody needs to be looking great and appealing. As, Kimmel and Holler (2011) utilize the idea of Naomi Wolf to portray the “beauty myth” the stigma in which woman being caught by the high premium models of fashion markets. Kimmel and Holler (2011) use Naomi Wolf’s definition that the “beauty myth” is an inaccessible female excellence that uses the pictures of female magnificence as a political weapon against women. It depicts that “the ladies itself get caught in an interminable cycle of beautifying agents, magnificence helps, weight control plans, and activity devotion” (Kimmel and Holler 2011, 324).…

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There are more than seven billion people in this world and according to recent studies almost forty percent of teenagers have thought about participating in some sort of plastic surgery. In addition to that study, over 200,000 teenagers have actually received work. According to Zuckerman, more than 236,000 of those procedures were to people between the ages of 13 and 19. So the question is why do teens suddenly have the desire to have a procedure done? Plastic surgery has created an unreasonable standard for females which has caused self esteem to plummet in teenagers throughout America.…

    • 1099 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Photo manipulation and its ethics/ No Photoshop Movement and the parallels Submitted by: Bhagvanth Prasad M Submitted to: Date: B.A. (Hons) Communication Design Advertising Year 3 Birmingham City University ICAT Design & Media College // Possible Title 1. The reasons behind No Photoshop/airbrush movement and its requirement 2. Cause of No Photoshop movement and Photo manipulation Ethics 3.…

    • 3486 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Plastic surgery is a surgical specialty that was intended to be used for traumas and reconstruction of body defects. But, over the years, elective surgeries are becoming more popular to achieve the beauty people want. Beauty is the qualities in a person that give pleasures to the sense or the mind. In today’s society, beauty is judged harshly and is frequently talked about throughout social media. The people who are troubled about their appearances will try to cover up these insecurities with make-up, fashion, or dieting and exercising to improve their self-esteem and appearances.…

    • 1312 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays