In our image-obsessed society beauty is a valuable commodity, so it’s not surprising that Chloe Marshall is making headlines. But the Miss Britain hopeful isn’t just beautiful, she’s a size 16, and that’s news. The fact that a full-figured, beauty pageant finalist creates a ‘stop the presses’ moment vividly demonstrates the fact that larger women are not usually considered ‘fairest of them all’. Open a magazine or newspaper on any other day of the week and the message is loud and clear: thin is in.
It’s a message that women hear loud and clear. And as the average Aussie woman is said to be a size 14, the comparison isn’t great. A recent Newspoll survey of women aged 18 – 64 revealed that only six percent were ‘very satisfied’ with their looks. Think about that: 94 percent of Australian women are critical of their appearance. It’s a sobering thought that begs the question – how and why have women become so obsessed with physical appearance? And why haven’t we wised up and shrugged off the stereotypes?
“If every woman in the world woke up, slapped herself on the head and said: ‘I’m happy with who I am’, entire economies would collapse,” says Jane Caro, an award-winning advertising writer and co-author of The F Word: How We Learned to Swear by Feminism. The author and lecturer believes that the fashion and cosmetic industries have a vested interest in keeping women insecure by presenting an ideal that no woman can hope to achieve. “Advertising isn’t immoral, it’s amoral,” she says. “It responds to where the money and the desire is.”
Logically we know that the perfect women in advertisements, magazines and film are idealised versions of reality, often photoshopped to perfection, but still we agonise over the difference between them and us, often in minute detail.
“In the visual media, women are depicted as objects to be evaluated piece by piece,” says Professor Marika Tiggemann, from Flinders University’s School of Psychology. “Women see perfection around them and compare themselves bit by bit.” The dissection of the female form in advertising, where bottoms, legs, breasts and mouths are isolated and glorified, is known as ‘bodyism’. Similarly, women single out aspects of their bodies, typically for negative attention. A recent HealthSmart poll, for example, revealed that women are most critical of their bellies, waists and thighs.
The media is often portrayed as the bogeyman in the body image debate, but experts believe they are only part of the picture.“We blame media for disseminating unrealistic images of women, but they are not the only influence,” says Professor Susan Paxton from La Trobe University’s School of Psychological Science. She says that the media reinforces messages that women are getting from family from an early age. “There is evidence that by age three, children prefer thin people to those that are not so thin. When given the option of picking a picture of a plump or thin person to be their friend, they opt for a thin person.”
The way in which parents view their bodies also impacts on their children’s attitudes. “A mother who is always dieting or being critical of her body is sending a clear message to her daughters,” says Tiggemann. “That sense of body dissatisfaction is passed on from parent to child.” The anti-obesity push is also unhelpful. “It has shifted the focus onto weight and looks, and away from health, “she says. “The message is that fat is bad, thin is good, and thinner is better.”
This notion has recently been proved to be untrue. Results of a 12-year study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that while being overweight decreased longevity, subjects who were fat and fit, i.e. did 30 minutes of walking most days, were at no greater risk of dying. Other studies have shown that a slender, inactive person is twice as likely to die as an overweight active person.
So we can be fat, fit and fabulous. The problem is that thin is the new beautiful, and everyone wants to be beautiful. Research shows that attractive people are typically thought to be more intelligent, more confident, more socially skilled, and morally superior. ‘To be beautiful is to be blessed’, quite simply, appears to be hard-wired into our DNA.
While our cultural obsession with beauty isn’t likely to disappear any time soon, there are signs of a shift in attitude and, ironically, it’s advertising and media driving it. The TV series Ugly Betty puts an average girl in the office of a fashion magazine and suggests that if thin is the new beautiful, then real is the new fabulous. Ordinary women also star in Carson Kressley’s series How to Look Good Naked, a touching and inspiring show that sees the flamboyant stylemeister empower average women to “accept, embrace and accentuate” everything they see in the mirror.
Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign featuring women of all shapes, sizes and ages has also struck a chord with women. “It started when someone in the global team was flicking through a magazine and decided the images of perfect women were inspirational, but unachievable,” says Candice Fernandez, Dove’s Marketing Manager for Skincare. The first campaign for Firming body products “featuring fabulous, real women in their underwear” was clever branding, and a refreshing change.
Body image experts say that campaigns such as Dove’s are helping to level the playing field. “All the women in the Dove ads may be curvy or older, but they are beautiful,” says Professor Tiggemann who welcomes the more realistic trend. She remains unconvinced, however, that it’s enough to transform deeply entrenched values.
“It’s very difficult to shift attitudes,” she says. “We need more specific, individualised campaigns to teach strong media literacy; to educate young people about the role of advertising; and to instil self-esteem in young women through something other than their looks.”
Certainly, it’s a goal well worth pursuing. Just imagine a day when every woman is smiling because she got up, looked in the mirror and felt great about herself regardless of her dress size. Who knows? Today the mirror - tomorrow the world.
