When reading chapters seven and eight from Peggy Orenstein book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, it was interesting and yet horrifying to see it written out on paper. The chapter that really stuck out to me was chapter eight, Its all about the cape, was still the issue of girls and their weight. I know from growing up I have heard all about physical appearances and how it should be maintain in a healthy way. During my late high school days and even into early college days, going on diets was the newest trend and even television shows were participating in them. The latest gossip was about which diet people were on and who was going home on, The Biggest Loser. It was great that America wanted to start being healthy again, but by doing so we were …show more content…
Most Americans today either have a smartphone or tablet or even a laptop where they can easily access whatever information they like. Google has been best for that and when a young girl has that access they can see anything and everything they want, the latest trends in fashion and make-up tutorials so they can keep up with the now. Common theme with all of these is how beautiful these people look and how thin they are. They follow their favorite celebrity on Instagram and see how great they look and know that it look good they have to look like them. There are now set beauty goals that girls look up too, whether the parents approve or not, and are comparing themselves too. The girls then will need that certain make-up or certain style clothes to help them look good and also need to go on extreme diets to help them maintain their physique. These are all things the Orenstein was worried about with her daughter and yet she already knows that no one likes the fat people. Being taken back by this she knows that she never talks about her body weight or weight in general in front of her daughter so where could she have learned these cruel obsessions? It could be from her daughter attending school and other girls may not have a parent like Orenstein and do talk to children about weight and appearances without realizing that it could have potential harm to
Cinderella Article titled “What’s Wrong with Cinderella” written by Peggy Orenstein, covered five areas about the “Princess” trend in the 21st Century. Orenstein states facts, feminist views and third party, reasoning to support and oppose her views on the princess craze. The opposing data does not prove there are long or short term health or well-being effects or damages from the data collected. Orenstein gives an inter-dialogue with the pros and cons of marketing to young girls on its health effects and its well-being damages to young girls that experience the princess craze. Orenstein agrees young girls are not allowed to be themselves.
Cinderella Ate My Daughter follows the life of Peggy Orenstein, a journalist as she takes on the impossible task of raising a child. As one source puts it, “Orenstein spends the 256 pages of Cinderella Ate My Daughter asking paradoxical questions and playing devil’s advocate. Despite the many questions and few answers, one thing remains clear: consumer culture has infiltrated every aspect of our lives, beginning at birth. Nearly every stage of life has been externally defined, marketed, and consequently, commoditized” (ACSD). After Orenstein explains how through marketing and media, girlhood is conceptualized, she describes the internal implications that defining girlhood can have on girls.
We use celebrity ‘news’ to perpetuate this dehumanizing view of women, focused solely on one’s physical appearance” (Anniston). Young girls do not have a mature understanding of how those magazines work and how to make a wise judgment about the standards of beauty diffused by magazines. That leads them to try to imitate the pictures in magazines (most of the time those pictures are photoshopped) and try to be in perfect shape with a skinny body and a flat stomach and a low weight. When they can not reach that body and fulfill the standards, they develop psychological issues and have a health
Teal Pfeifer in her short story “Devastating Beauty” discusses the effect of portraying skinny ladies/models that are wear dress size 0 or 1 as the ideal body size in most advertisements. The author points out the fact that,this can be damaging to most women, especially young women who view these adverts. The young women who see these adverts begin to feel displeased with their bodies, and a vast majority of them venture into different kinds of diet. She further emphasized that adult females are not the only ones affected, but also young girls (Pfeifer 2). According to Slim Hopes, about 80 percent of girls below the age of ten have either been on a diet before and have stated that they want to be skinner and more pretty.
Ever wonder how hard women worked in order to obtain the same rights as men? Can you imagine being a female during the nineteenth century and marching to protest the right to vote? Throughout our history, the ability of women has been questioned. Many individuals view women as inferior to men and feel that women are incapable of fulfilling the roles that were originally designed for men. But, even now in the twenty-first century, women still face prejudice and are seen as simple objects.
Anorexia survivor Erin Treloar said “my eating disorder was perpetuated by retouched magazine photos”. Beauty standards has such a giant effect on women emotionally, psychologically and physically. The pressure on women to be thin leads to unhealthy weight loss practices (Battle & Brownell, 1996), eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia (Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe, & Tantleff-Dunn, 1998) and low self-esteem (Tiggeman & Stevens,
“Many teenagers feel that the best way to gain social acceptance and avoid being ridiculed by their peers is to achieve society’s ideal body,” (“Introduction to Dieting”). By having such presumptions about their self-image, teenagers change the way they see themselves and in turn, cause problems for themselves. In an interview, forty-seven percent of girls wanted to lose weight because of media influences while only twenty-nine percent of them were overweight (“Introduction to Dieting”). By creating these unrealistic expectations, social media gives teens false hope about their body image, which reflects how the women in Brave New World see
The short story by Andre Dubus follows Louise from age nine up until the time she becomes a mother. It gives insight to the damage that can be done when loved ones force negative body images on young children. Louise’s mother starts her on a self-destructive path, which Louise will never overcome and continually affects her life. This is reinforced by the similar opinions of her relatives and friends who make her feel that she will only be truly loved if she is thin. The prevalent theme of Dubus’ “The Fat Girl” is the destructive way society views food addiction and how it adversely affects women.
In 2011, Peggy Orenstein published Cinderella Ate My Daughter to examine how princess culture impacted girlhood. “What Makes Girls Girls?” is a chapter in this book that delves into the implications of sexual difference and whether or not it is rooted in biology. By studying various research projects conducted by professionals, Orenstein discovers that, ultimately, a child’s environment plays a key role in behavior. To pose the question of whether the concept of gender is inherent, Orenstein references several examples that have sparked a considerable amount of discussion about how a child’s gender expression is molded by upbringing.
From an early age, we are exposed to the western culture of the “thin-ideal” and that looks matter (Shapiro 9). Images on modern television spend countless hours telling us to lose weight, be thin and beautiful. Often, television portrays the thin women as successful and powerful whereas the overweight characters are portrayed as “lazy” and the one with no friends (“The Media”). Furthermore, most images we see on the media are heavily edited and airbrushed
In the poem, When The Fat Girl Gets Skinny, by Blythe Baird, the poet addresses the issue of social ideology and how these trends affect young women. Told in a first perspective point of view, the poet supports her theme by describing how teenagers are being affected, establishing a social conflict of false need to achieve trends by identifying motifs for teenager’s actions, incorporating the use of life experiences from the past to the present tense and finalizing with a shift to highlight positivity in change of habit. Baird’s purpose is to illustrate a major conflict among young women who are being affected by social idolization of being skinny. She creates a mood of hopeful in order to inspire young teenagers who are currently harming
In Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber’s article, “The Spread of the Cult of Thinness: Preteen Girls, Adolescents, Straight Men, Gays, Lesbians, and Ethnic Women,” she explains the extremes people go to achieve the high standards set by the society in Lorber’s article. With such high standards set by society, men and women will have the urge to join the Cult of Thinness. Society demands
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.
This self-view can lead teenage girls to begin extreme dieting, exorcising or develop a full-blown eating disorder, such as anorexia (Berger 2014). Therefore, it is important for society to encourage young girls to know that they are beautiful just the way they
Everyone is fixated with the way they look. Family and peer pressure along with media lead to establishment of unrealistic expectations, which instigate body dissatisfaction. Young girls starve themselves to loose weight in order to look like their peers,