ANNA CANGELLARIS
Gargoyle staff reporter
Posted Friday, May 16, 2008

I HAVE BEEN dissatisfied with my body since the first snide remark about my round stomach was cruelly made to me in fifth grade, and I have a strong feeling that I am not alone.

The problem that my overwhelmingly mediacentric generation is facing is rampant and distorted body image messages that are funneled down our throats the second we turn on the TV, flip open the pages of a magazine, glance at a billboard, or even walk into a grocery store where we are bombarded with bright obnoxious low-fat and low-calorie labels.

So the fact that we are steadily brainwashed by the media to worship the Jessica Albas and Eva Longorias of the world and constantly chant the “I must lose five pounds” mantra is an age-old idea. But don’t sigh and close your browser window just yet; I have a few variations and musings on this subject to divulge.

Over the past few years I have become more and more confused about how I am supposed to feel about my body. With the recent launch of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty in which “real” women with curves are portrayed as the ideal, and the magazine covers that have taken to bashing all the highest-paid, thinnest actresses in young Hollywood for being too skinny, my conception of beauty has become befuddled.

Any sane person would rejoice at these changes in the media’s currently unrealistic standards of beauty. Yet, I, who have idolized and envied the perfectly thin young starlets and models, feel no relief in the representation of curvier women as having beautiful, attractive bodies.

In the back of my mind I’ve always known that Kate Bosworth and Keira Knightley represent a small percentage of the population that is naturally that thin, and even then they are pressured to keep their weight down, and that is incredibly terrible and wrong. I have also always known that it’s better to keep one’s personal health and shape in mind and not strive for an impossibly thin physique.

By that reasoning, would one place the Dove models as closer to an ideal body?

In interest of personal self-esteem, I wish I could say yes. Yet, I must ashamedly admit that I look at the Dove campaign ads and think, “Well, they all look good and happy with their bodies, but I would rather be 10 pounds lighter.”

So what shape am I supposed to strive for, somewhere in between a Dove model and Angelina Jolie? I catch myself wondering why I waste my time and sanity pondering such an issue, but it seems that every girl I know is doing so as well. My peers and I are among an incredibly self-conscious generation of individuals, and I often wonder if something more than the media is driving our body-image obsession.

The diet and weight-loss industry is a multi-billion-dollar nightmare. Why? I recognize that obesity rates have increased and that health has become a serious national concern, but every other ad on TV is an advertisement for Hydroxycut or Jenny Craig, and that is sending the wrong message.

The mentality that the general population needs to lose weight, a mentality created by constant subliminal and blatant messages in the media, is what feeds the growth of the various weight-loss, diet, fashion, gym/workout, and media industries that perpetuate it. Our obsession with weight-loss and body-image has essentially been manufactured.

Though the source of the problem is easily identified, it isn’t as easy to simply change our attitudes about body image and re-establish overnight the ideal standards of beauty.

There does seem to be a conscious effort on the part of many different media organizations to re-examine the extremely thin ideal that is so frequently portrayed, but a size 6 girl (deemed “plus size” by the judges) winning “America’s Next Top Model” or a magazine article showing scarily thin pictures of Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie isn’t enough.

There will still be size zero models, strutting their long skinny legs down the high-fashion runways in the latest styles tomorrow.

Perhaps it is too difficult to ask for a significant change in the near future, but maybe I could get one of my questions answered: If I’m not supposed to starve myself skinny but also shouldn’t eat myself into obesity, then am I supposed to be somewhere in the middle, with a bit of fat here and there, or am I simply supposed to accept the shape of my body and focus on ridding myself of all excess body fat? What I am wondering is what the ideal should be. Are the Dove models truly representative of how a woman should look?

What my peers and I often fail to recognize is that there are so many different builds and physiques, and to try to take curves and fit them into a box or vice versa is impossible and unrealistic.

But even now I’m not quite convincing myself.