Gender and Body Image

Advertising > Gender Issues
Gender and Sexuality
Sociology > Media and Society

Argues that the images of perfection that are disseminated by society are generally stereotypical images that reinforce gender roles of dominance and submission.

3,642 words () | 5 sources | MLA | 2004 United States

Paper Summary:

The way in which society defines the structures and strictures of gender has developed in the last century into a field in which there is an abundance of textual dissertation concerning gender, identity, body image, and other issuances of definitional standards that often defy the status quo and change the way in which we think about what it is to be a man or woman. The paper shows that these essential qualities that define gender are harder to determine the more we explore the boundaries that have been set up, in many cases, as no more than cultural myths that represent the continuance of a socio-economic class system. One of these myths is the idea of the mythical body image, or the ideal physiological representation of a society in which gender lines are clearly defined in terms of male and female. This paper explores the idea of this image in terms of its contrivance, ramifications, social constructionism, and its support of gender stereotypes to provide an understanding of how our culture defines male and female images of perfection.

From the Paper:

"Myths traditionally focus on the superhuman or divine while providing a model of behavior for their consumer, who is more often than not encouraged by them to accept a sort of socio-economic status quo, along with a sense of diversion and the illusion that in escaping reality, the person buying into the myth is escaping the status-quo of an
economically oriented social class system. This particular diversion is carried on through time and changed, if slightly, by successive generations as the gradations of society change with time (although the continuance of myth is often retrogressive concerning the continuance of the society). Although the theme may only change slightly, the
presentation of a new myth within this traditional trope suggests other changes that are more important."