Impact of Beauty Standards on Women's Self-perception

The dominate ideological belief of the North American beauty standard is predominately associated with being fair skinned, thin and youthful (Johnston, 304). The hegemonic body norms found in society has created diet culture. Diet culture to me is a society that places excessive importance on thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue. This means an individual can spend their entire life believing that they are irreparably broken because they do not coincide with the impossibly thin “ideal.” Diet culture also promotes weight loss, which influences individuals to spend a lot of time, energy, and money trying to shrink their bodies. I argue that diet culture in North America is inherently flawed and damaging to women. I suggest that valorization of thin bodies is a socially constructed mass which is not “natural” or universal (Johnston, 305). The sociological theory that I will use to frame my essay off is symbolic interactionalism as to me it captures the essence of the social impact of weight loss products.

My focus of this essay will be to describe and illustrate the ways in which society created the stigma that surrounds obesity as well as, exploiting the characteristic for monetary gain. Capitalist use the weight loss industry and diet culture to exploit and profit off of obesity. To understand the social significance of weight loss products, we must first explore how body ideals have been created by society and the effects these standards have specifically on female social sense of self. Lastly, I will conclude with how capitalism is the main benefiter of the weight loss industry through the concept of body work.

Symbolic interactionalism is a theoretical microsociological perspective that emphasizes how our social world is created by relationships and interactions in our daily lives, these interactions then construct meaning and self-identity (Johnston, 278). The concept of the looking-glass self that was put forward by Charles Cooley insinuates that the concept of self is an imagined sense of ourselves based on how we believe others perceive us. This theory suggests that the actions and expressions of how others interact with us is an indicator or a reflection of how we see ourselves (Johnston, 278). There is body of evidence in everyday interactions that shows the effects of fat shaming that goes far beyond rude remarks, stares and looks that fat people hear, the hurtful comments strangers make about their bodies and the “funny” memes and jokes featuring overweight people. It turns out that fat prejudice differs from other forms in ways that make it especially difficult to overcome (Kolata, 2016). These interactions overweight people face have a huge impact on the way that they see themselves. This stigmatization causes fat people to actually loath, blame and shame themselves as well as carry the same feeling towards other obese people (Kolata, 2016).

Body work is a concept in sociology that refers to the labor that people perform on themselves or pay for in order to manipulate their bodies to improve their physical appearance (Johnston, 306). Obese people then are constantly in a situation where they feel that being overweight is a fundamental flaw in which they need to find a solution however, they do not have to look for options for long. This is because there are an overwhelming number of weight loss products that promise to fix that “flaw” that is so disgusting and unacceptable to possess. Regardless of weight, age or class we are constantly exposed to a tremendous number of weightless products such as diet pills, waist trainers, diet plans, prepared diet foods, surgeries, fat burning teas and so much more. Sociologist Mike Featherstone transcribes that “within consumer culture, the inner body and the outer body become conjoined: the prime purpose of the maintenance of the inner body becomes the enhancement of the appearance of the outer body” (Johnston, 306). Since thinness has been equated with health by society it is interesting that a number of these products actually have negative effects on health. For example, the waist trainer has a number of health risks such as skin irritation, breathing issues and numbness yet it is still commonly used because it is advertised by a number of influencers. The most outrageous part is that most of these weight loss products would not yield lasting results.

Social construction of beauty ideals is not only for creating categories to interpret the world: these categories are deeply shaped by social inequalities, and work to advance the interests of dominant groups. (Johnston, 308). These ideologies have been present in North American society dating back to the early 1900s. The book The Body Project by Jones Jacobs Brumber (1997) compares the diaries of two girls 100 years apart. The first entry was of a girl in 1982 who described her self-improvement goals which were intangible as they focused on her character, work ethic, morals and actions. The girl whose diary was written over 100 years had a substantially different set of values and goals. This girl’s idea of self-improvement was based on physical appearance and tangible goods such as losing weight, getting a new haircut, buying new clothes and makeup (Johnston, 307). This historical comparison reveals a shift in the ideals of self-improvement from internal advancement of one’s character to an external betterment of one’s physical appearance.

Our physical and social location have a strong impact on how we experience the effects of North American beauty standards. Intersectionality draws attention to how multiple social aspects of our social come together to shape social advantages and disadvantages. Women disproportionately feel the effects of diet culture as beauty is closely associated with femininity. Racial inequality also perpetuates inequality in beauty because whiteness is also an appreciated beauty standard. This intensifies the disadvantages black overweight women experience. Hegemonic body norms and the valuation of thinness forms the thoughts of individuals as well as influences actions (Brock, 'Looking Good', 2020). The constant dissatisfaction overweight people have in relation to how they look permits the mechanisms of consumer capitalism. Culture of bodily lack which can be defined by the shortfalls in one’s appearance motivates body work and consumption (PP 11, S8).

This now has an influence over individual agency and is the driving factor for the production and demand for weight loss products.