Preview

Never Just Pictures by Susan Bordo

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
916 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Never Just Pictures by Susan Bordo
"Never Just Pictures" by Susan Bordo, is about how today's society looks at different types of media to get an idea of what they should look like. In this essay, the author tries to get the readers to take a closer look at today's obsession with the physique of the human body. Bordo talks about how things that were once considered normal, no longer are. Literally people are purging and starving their bodies to become nothing more than silhouettes of themselves. Instead of being alive and healthy, they would rather become a stick figure in someones pictures. Bordo opens eyes to the idea that "thin is in", and what causes poeple to think this way, and why this problem (striving to be thin) is continuing to grow. Bordo is basically saying that today's society looks at magazines, videos, and infomercials to get the idea that this is the way. From one generation to the next being fat has become as awful as committing one of the seven deadly sins. Bordo believes that society and its beliefs have taken their toll on the children of today as well.
In a world where image seems to be everything, it's hard not to pay attention to the way you look. For a long time beauty has been defined as flawless and thin. Media stereotypes are inevitable, especially in the advertising, entertainment, and news industries. Every teenager today wants to look like someone they see on TV, or in magazines, similarly even kids from grade schools have Brittany Spears and Christina Aguilera as role models highlighting the impact of the media on everyone especially youth with their raw impressionable minds. This is the basic argument presented in Susan Bordo's essay. Bordo discusses how strongly the media affects our self-images. The media has a huge influence over the thoughts, ideas, and opinions of today's society, and this power is ever increasing. The media's focus is on the human body -pushing for the thin, "Heroin Chic" look. Most people are badgered by the media into feeling as though we

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The idea of perfection has been planted in our heads that we have to be slim and slender to be noticed. It’s almost as if we are brainwashed into believing if were not thin, then were not beautiful, even though beauty has always come from within. From this idea of perfection, we use all our energy to become flawless and it isn’t possible. We gain back our energy from food and we cover up our disappointment by eating and so, if anything, the media creates us as a monster. For every body in this world, twenty-four hours, just isn’t enough to work, eat, sleep and become that one person we’ve always longed to…

    • 705 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I would like to start of by thanking you for requesting that I analyze Susan Bordo's “Never Just Pictures” and recommend on whether it should or shouldn't be published in The Shorthorn. In short, Susan Bordo is an English professor of women studies who focuses on the media's negative portrayal of beauty through body image. Based on my analysis of this article, I recommend that you publish the article in The Shorthorn because I consider it to be interesting, controversial, and nuanced.…

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In her essay, Worley compares twentieth-century society to a NAAFA convention she attended. Worley describes her home as a place where “you’re grateful if you can find clothes that you can actually get on, and forget finding clothes that actually fit you.” In Worley’s eyes American culture has always treated obese people as a lower class and pushed aside anything that was designed for a fat person. On the other hand, at the convention she finds a planet created specifically for overweight people. The convention opened her eyes to an entirely different planet that is free of inhibitions with nothing to be ashamed of. There she could find clothes that shaped to her body perfectly and she was entertained by belly dancers of all shapes and sizes that “were exquisitely beautiful and voluptuous” (493). She then goes on to discuss how society views fat people and how she believes health care professionals are prejudice towards them. Mary concludes by arguing that like her, all obese people can learn to love their bodies and “play and dance without self-consciousness” (496).…

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women's Culture in Society

    • 2374 Words
    • 10 Pages

    * How might the ‘fat’ body be seen as a threat to ‘acceptable’ norms of behavior?…

    • 2374 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In today’s society, thin isn’t just in style, it is increasingly becoming synonymous with words such as ‘beautiful’ and ‘ideal’. Product advertisements and commercials are bombarding our televisions and magazines with gaunt-looking models having the effect of standardizing what the public sees as normal. Bordo begins Never Just Pictures by introducing the obsession our society has with being thin, or more to the point, its obsession with its disgust of fat. She writes that products offering solutions to weight gain are becoming as commonplace as advertisements for headaches. Pointing to weekly magazine’s ever present articles on weight loss tricks or celebrity relapses and diet pills ads on TV, Bordo suggest that these are just one of the ways that children are learning that being fat is more detrimental in life than anything else. She quotes a study revealing that young children place being fat is worse than facial and body disfigurement. Addressing eating disorders as becoming part of our…

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There is an obvious correlation between the media and the mass’ distorted views on body image and what beauty really is. This much is clear. Because everybody looks at celebrities, and judges how they look whether they are skinny girl or a ridiculously buff guy, and compare it to how other people and they look this has been going on for a quite some time. But the more important question is does the media’s depiction of the ideal lean/muscular body lead to the increased use of radically unhealthy tactics in order to change body image by the general public? It is common knowledge that everybody strives to improve his or her body image because appearance is important; it is simply part of human nature to want to look better. But when striving…

    • 1101 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The media promotes an unhealthy body image that is damaging to both society as a whole and individuals. As a whole to individuals ,promoting an unhealthy body image,and damaging to society makes people feel less of themselves.…

    • 928 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Obesity in Americans

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Yet this obsession with obese Americans is about more than body fat. Certainly there is a debate to be had about the extent to which obesity is a problem in America - a discussion best left to medical experts. But a close examination of the popular genre on obesity reveals it is about more than consumption in the most literal sense of eating food. Obesity has become a metaphor for 'over-consumption' more generally. Affluence is blamed not just for bloated bodies, but for a society which is seen as more generally too big for its own good.…

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The media contributes to what teenagers believe is “thin and beautiful.” This is why controlling what is in the media is vital to teenagers. Frances O’Connor, the author of Obesity and the Media, explains advertisers bombard viewers with approximately five hundred advertisements everyday, and at least ten percent of these advertisements are directly about beauty. This information shows that there are an overwhelming number of messages from the media about beauty. In addition, O’Connor later goes on to write that, advertisers expose viewers to the idea that being skinny and losing weight will make them happier. However, in the article, “Eating Disorders and the Media,” The Camp Recovery Center Health Group proves that long-term “regimented diet plans do not work”, the more people purchase diet products, the more the diet industry will keep pushing their false advertisements and slogans. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, “Nearly 70 percent of girls in grades five through 12 said magazine images influence their ideals of a perfect body.” This shows that the media, which can lead to many eating disorders, influences more…

    • 1306 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    How does the media influence our body image? In what forms, does the media influence our perceptions about our body? These were the two questions that I asked myself in order to do the research paper and the panel discussion. In my opinion, I would agree that the media does influence and promote women and men to believe that the culture's standards for body image are ideal. Hence, the phrases, "thin is in" and "the perfect body" are two examples of "eye-catching" headlines that I observed in many women magazines. I learned that the media influences us through television, fashion and health magazines, music videos, film, commercials, and various other advertisements. Sadly, as a result, this repeated exposure, the "thin" ideal, can lead many young girls in triggering eating disorders, depression, low self-esteem, stress, and suicide. After acquiring this relevant information, I decided to focus my research on what type of media influences elementary school children and the adolescent teenager. The three central types of media that I found that did indeed influence body image are: Fashion magazines, famous top-models and actresses, and teenage or young adult women in the music industry.…

    • 1263 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The media has been proven to affect not only today 's youth but the majority of the world 's population. With television, radio, advertising, movies, the Internet, newspapers, magazines and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, the media affects the entire population in many ways which can be directly seen. A survey study, compiled by Teen People magazine, demonstrated that 27 per cent of the girls felt pressurized by the media to have a perfect body, with 69 per cent of the girls basing their idea of the perfect body on models featured in magazines that their parents have lying around the home.…

    • 413 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Thin Ideal

    • 2809 Words
    • 12 Pages

    The impact of media images on men and women in America is a formation of an unrealistic illustration of the thin ideal. The media has painted a picture of "the perfect body", people who choose to accept these ideals develop a fantasy and fictitious image of what the ideal body is. In our society, where the mass media is the single strongest transmitter of unrealistic beauty ideals, it is often held responsible for the high proportion of women and men who are dissatisfied with their bodies.…

    • 2809 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Media And Body Image Essay

    • 2891 Words
    • 12 Pages

    She mentions to them that she doesn 't like the way she looks as well. Throughout her article she points out four main points about the way the media is effecting the way people, specifically women, hate the way they look. First she points out that people are becoming dissatisfied with their appearance from a young age and for many women it lasts almost forever. Second she points out that people who are dissatisfied with their appearance compare themselves to social networked strangers, celebrities, and to photoshoped images provided by the media. Third she points out that It is the fashion industry’s fault for making skinny, bony, unhealthy models seem like the ideal “perfect body” because their size zero sample sizes force the media to advertise on such bodies. The fourth point, she adds, is that today 's diets, which are continuously advertised by the media in magazines, TV, and the radio, are the way people are cognitively encouraged to eat and are to blame for their anxiety. Wiseman concludes that the best way for people to get past…

    • 2891 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    How many of you are happy with the way you look like? Not many of there is. That’s because the media gives us the false definition of what true beauty really is. Based on a study released by Dove, only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful. And the reason why that most people don’t feel comfortable is because of this, which we can all see in the grocery store line, perfect woman, perfect hair, perfect skin, beautiful, according to the media.…

    • 404 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and felt disappointed? Or thought to yourself, “I wish I looked like them?” We may sometimes have an idea in our mind of what we think we should look like, compared to how we actually look. This is called body image dissatisfaction, otherwise known as a negative view upon ourselves. Body image issues are relevant all around the world. They impact both men and women of varied ages. These negative thoughts about ourselves can be influenced by many things, including the fashion industry. But how does fashion media impact our body image issues? Celebrities in the media can impact us negatively, but they don’t always have to be negative influences, they can be positive too, as well as different types…

    • 933 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays