Women's Body Image and Anti-Masculininity

Many young women suffer from body image issues. I doubt that there isn't a girl out that who has not looked in the mirror and thought "Ew." I was flipping through the ads as I usually do on Sunday mornings, and something caught my eye. I saw a model in a JCPenney ad with the label "plus-sized". I reread the label several times because I was certain that this size 4-6 girl was NOT in any way plus-sized. At first I was shocked, then I was angry. How the hell is that girl plus-sized? If she's plus-sized, I must be a hippo. The more I thought about it, the more it made me mad. Clearly society was confused.

What is it about rail-thin models that make them so appealing? I've always heard about the model Twiggy starting the thin revolution in the fashion industry, but I have never truly analyzed why thin is considered the ideal for women. This class really made me think about exactly why thin was in. In our discussion about femininity and masculinity, it became obvious to me that people enjoy polarizing. We want clear and easy labels that are as polar and distinct as possible so there isn't any grey area. So what is femininity to society? In a nutshell it is simply anti-masculine. If you ask any young child what the opposite of a boy is, he/she/it will certainly say girl. Thinness is desired in women because being frail is the opposite of being strong and stable. Women are the gentler sex after all. Apparently society takes the term fragile very seriously, which is now reflected in desired body types.

This whole notion angers me quite a bit. Women can brag about their womanly curves all they want, but clearly thin is in. I would love for the ideal to be a normal sized woman, but JCPenney's "plus" model has made it evident to me that change won't soon be made. Women like Oprah Winfrey, Tyra Banks, and Jennifer Lawrence have all spoken out saying that they are normal and beautiful. Marilyn Monroe is still praised for her perfect figure. Unfortunately these women have made little progress as JCPenney has made evident.