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Issues of Body Image in Pop Culture Impacts all Women

In the last five years there has been a significant amount of dieting and body shaping among American celebrities/role models. The Hollywood ideal to be thin and this beauty ideal have increased pressure on women. One study found that Black female stars in the film, music and fashion industry are now just as thin as their White counterparts, and the thin ideal for women seems to be spreading across all color lines. Another study found that 68% of a sample of Stanford undergrad and graduate students felt worse about their own looks after reading women's magazines.

Repeated exposure to the images in the media can lead to the internalization of this beauty ideal and make the "Hollywood look" seem achievable and real. But, research consistently shows that the tendency for women to compare themselves to models in the media increases with age and adds to the stress women face. In 1994, an article in Essence (a Black women's magazine) made it painfully clear that "..largeness...once accepted-even revered-among Black folks...now carries the same unmistakable stigma as it does among Whites." Research has found a direct relationship between media exposure and eating disorders symptoms. It seems that the media's idealized images of women, to say the least, has a negative impact on women's self-evaluation.

There is growing research by feminists and scholars Naomi Wolf, Dorothy Smith, Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks and even Michael Eric Dyson that provide a broad lens for understanding the image of women in popular culture. Many academics have brought attention to the ways that women often complain about how they look and ask the age- old question, "do I look fat in this?" In fact, recently a Glamour magazine survey reported that 75% of women ages 18-35 report that they believed they are fat, even though only 25% were actually medically overweight. Additionally, 45% of women who are underweight think that that they are fat too, according to The Beauty Myth, by feminist scholar, Naomi Wolf. The truth is, how a woman perceives her body image can encompass more than just her physical appearance (such as her size, and shape), it can also reflect her self-esteem and thoughts about her value in her family, culture and in society.

So, what does it mean when surveys find that 16% of high school boys and 63% of high school girls have been on diets, or that the single largest group of high school students considering or attempting

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