The online reading entitled “Body Project” talked about how young girls completely shape their identity around their body and how others view their body. The article talks about society’s shift from a religious to a secular society. Dieting first came into affect in the 1920’s young women started becoming more health conscious and began researching new ways to loose weight. Like Yvonne Blue many girls believe that by changing the configuration of their body that it will create a new image that would grant popularity and status in school for themselves. Last class we talked about the show the Swan that had a brief stint on Fox. A lot of the women that were on the show still had issues after being made over. The problem that I see with a lot of girls is that they think if they change something about there body then they would be happy but once they change it they are still unhappy. I think the real question should be, is self-esteem derived from ones self or from others? I have two brothers no sisters and few female cousins so with the exception of my mom I grew up without a female perspective. I believe that self-esteem to a certain extent comes from ones self but most of my female friends believe that their self-esteem is completely dependent upon others. I know we have the media telling us what Sexy or attractive should look like but I believe that if we could somehow make the shift from having others determine our self-esteem to creating it ourselves young girls would put less emphasis on their bodies.
I largely agree with Sterling's comment that in general girls and women's self confidence comes too much from others. I think that our society emphasizes different characteristics of men and women and those that are important to female self-identity are often associated with their physique and therefore are very dependent on others. As the readings showed, "ideal beauty" changes drastically through time; therefore society completely shapes a female's feeling of attractiveness. Hundreds of years ago, the larger a woman was the more beautiful and attractive she was because it showed she was able to eat plenty of food. This complete dependency on society's shaping of beauty clearly shows that most girls derive their self esteem from society (e.g. others).
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