Weight Influences Self-Esteem

Worley states that fat people are often excluded from social events and situations, such as the lead role in a school play and parties. This occurs because people do not want to be around fat people for the fear of embarrassing themselves (163). Psychologically, fat people can be subjected to low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety due to the way people look down on them. In the ignorance of others and pressures of society, beauty is seen in thin and toned bodies (165). Thus, rather than accepting obese people for who they are, people disgrace them in society resulting in negative psychological and social

The mindset that a person can never be "too rich or too thin" is all too prevalent in society, and it makes it difficult for females to achieve any level of contentment with their physical appearance (Serdar, n.d.). The level of persuasiveness the media has can be overwhelming for women in particular who are constantly hit with images to compare and evaluate themselves to (Achtenberg, 2006). Recent literature suggests that girls as young as 6 years old experience body dissatisfaction, as evidenced by a preference for an ideal figure that is thinner than their perceived current body size (Ambrosi-Randic, 2000; Davison, Markey & Birch, 2003; Dittmar, Halliwell & Ive, 2006; Dohnt & Tiggemann, 2004, 2005, 2006a; Lowes & Tiggemann, 2003). It is evident that the experiences have a profound effect on how we grow up, making them a critical factor in our development. Often, the self-esteem we develop by the age of five-years-old is what carries us through for the rest of our lives.

Dissatisfaction amongst today’s youth regarding their personal body image is increasingly common, warranting a necessary change in the norms and behaviours that are portrayed to Canadian youth. The necessary change that must be implemented moving forward is the portrayal of healthy and attainable body images through media. A 2012 ABC News article stated the average model weighs 23% less than the average woman (Lovett, 2012). Such an appalling statistic is something that must be tackled as we progress toward the future seeing as it showcases to the youth of today that anorexia and unhealthy body weight is seen as desirable or attractive. The relation between such a statistic and anorexia is clear.

A common issue surrounding many people’s day to day lives is their weight. Does weight define us as our identity or is it just a way to characterize someone? Discussed in Andre Dubus’, “The Fat Girl,” he writes about a woman named Louise who is overly engulfed about her appearance to the point of it being a psychological issue. Her issues originate from the input of her mother’s thoughts and later on is overly pressed by her friend, then soon her husband. During the story, Louise misunderstands that her struggles and issues are not from her weight, but from her inner thoughts and mind caused by her inner group.

America is growing as a nation, and its citizens are growing in pant size. Obesity is a growing problem in America for children and adults; therefore, steps need to be taken to promote healthy foods to stop future health problems. In hopes of decreasing obesity rates, some political leaders like New York Governor David Paterson, have proposed a tax on caloric sweetened beverages (soda tax). This will reduce the consumption of sweetened beverages, thereby reducing the weight of the individual. The money collected from this tax could be returned to communities to support programs promoting wellness.

These expectations can cause insecurities in adults, teens, and even children who normally have little to no insecurities. Young children should not have to worry about the way they look or what they are wearing. Therefore, society needs to address the problem of creating negative body images. It can start by recognizing that unreal and unnatural body image can cause eating disorders and mental disorders. “50% of teenage girls and 30% of

Growing up in a Vietnamese immigrant household, I learned early on that I would experience things differently than some of my peers. In Vietnamese culture, it is normalized to talk about appearance and weight, unlike in American culture, where the topic of weight is taboo most of the time. However, growing up it was made clear that beauty standards were highly valued by not only my family but in society as well. As a child, I was constantly reminded of how much I ate, how much I weighed, and to always look neat and put together. Although my parents’ intentions were well and normalized in their native country, their constant focus on my appearance had a major impact on my self-esteem and image.

Men and women nowadays are starting to lose self-confidence in themselves and their body shape, which is negatively impacting the definition of how beauty and body shape are portrayed. “...97% of all women who had participated in a recent poll by Glamour magazine were self-deprecating about their body image at least once during their lives”(Lin 102). Studies have shown that women who occupy most of their time worrying about body image tend to have an eating disorder and distress which impairs the quality of life. Body image issues have recently started to become a problem in today’s society because of social media, magazines, and television.

In the past 30 years, childhood obesity has doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents, and its growth is steadily going upwards. The causation behind this upward trend can be blamed on a multitude of new variables in society. To begin, the popularization of fast foods in today's media has allowed companies easily target to young customers and promote their unhealthy products (“Childhood Obesity”). Childhood obesity doesn’t only cause physical problems like cardiovascular diseases and joint problems, but it can also be detrimental to a child's self esteem and psychology overall. With society promoting the ideal figure through various social media outlets, studies show that children are beginning to diet as young as the age of 10 (Moorhead).

Whether it’s magazine covers, instagram, twitter, on television or just on the world wide web in general, everywhere we look we see stunning models. Models that are incredibly thin and can look good in anything. Our society is obsessed with how perfect they look, yet at the end of the day women everywhere looks in the mirror and doesn’t see the body of the girl she sees on social media. Even though women come in all shapes and sizes in nature, the expectation to have a skinny, perfect body just seems to be the expectation for our society nowadays. Society puts too much pressure on females to have the perfect body.

Meaghan Ramsey's TED Talk "Why thinking you're ugly is bad for you" is a powerful speech about low body confidence. Ramsey talks about how society's pressure to be perfect is one of the main reason for young girls' (and boys') low body confidence and how these feelings of low esteem can impact their lives and futures. I chose to analyze this speech because I have experienced low body confidence and I have felt those feelings of low self-esteem. In Meaghan Ramsey's speech "Why thinking you're ugly is bad for you", she discusses how low body confidence is undermining academic achievement, damaging health, and limiting the economic potential of today's youth who are growing up in a world of social media. Ramsey has a strong start to her speech, using a photo and a story about her niece to gain the attention of the audience.

These different stages include the developmental process of someone as they grow from infancy to late adulthood and covers how they view themselves socially. Each stage is important, and failing to succeed developmentally in one of these stages (also called a crisis) can cause a domino effect for the other stages to come. Childhood obesity can have an impact on the way a child may think others view him or her, which in most cases can be negative. “Obesity may have enduring effects on how children think and feel about themselves and on their social behaviors and peer reputations, and these effects may not readily reverse even when weight is lost” (Woody, E.Z, 1989). The effects of childhood obesity are long term.

For example, girls will style their hair to “become more attractive” (Berger 2014), or they will purchase ‘minimizer,’ ‘maximizer,’ ‘training,’ or ‘shaping’ bras, hoping that their breasts will conform to their idealized body image” (Berger 2014). This all appears to be harmless activities, yet when body image is only addressed outwardly and not psychologically, there can be an increase in poor and destructive behaviors. For instance, body image dissatisfaction can lead to poor self-esteem, which can create a cycle of increased body dissatisfaction, followed by decreasing self-esteem (Stapleton et al., 2017). Ultimately, a teenage girl can find herself in a cycle of “depression, eating disorders and obesity” (Stapleton et al., 2017). On study in 2012 revealed, “Two-thirds of U.S. high school girls are trying to lose weight, even though only one-fourth are actually overweight or obese” (Berger 2014).

This article talks about obesity being considered as a social issue. Obesity is not just considered as a health issue. It is also considered as a social issue. For obesity, there has been some serious backlash against certain advertisements, magazines, etc., recently which display what people deem as unrealistic portrayals of body size or shape. In turn, it is argued that these unrealistic portrayals lead to things like depression, self-depreciation, lack of self-esteem, and other disorders like anorexia nervosa.

In this research, self-esteem is measured by the Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale. It is a ten-item Likert-type scale with items answered on a four-point scale; from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Five of the items have positively worded statements and five have negatively worded ones. The scale measures state self-esteem by asking the participants to reflect on their current feelings. This scale is then is divided into two levels; high self-esteem and low self-esteem.