Turn on your TV. Flip through the channels. Now stop and look at the programs on MTV, E!, VH1, BRAVO, The CW…and even ABC Family. Do you see any fat girls? Better yet, do you see any girls that AREN’T stick skinny? Do you see any “normal” girls? The answer is probably no. Through what I have seen a character is either “the fat girl” on a TV show, or ridiculously skinny.
You can see this “idea of beauty” in many shows that are targeted at teenage girls. For example, 90210, Gossip Girl, Real Housewives, America’s Next Top Model, Hellcats, The City, The Hills, and ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars.
While watching these shows do you ever stop to think how it is affecting you? After you finish watching 90210 are you thinking, “Wow, I really love myself, and I think I’ll go get some Doritos” or are you thinking, “I am not pretty enough… I am not thin enough…and I need to go buy clothes, which will make me cooler.” That may seem like an outlandish statement, but for many girls it’s the latter. The bottom line is that these shows are very influential whether we think they are or not. Agreeing with my view, Bordo states, “We recognize, consciously or unconsciously, that the image carries value and qualities that ‘hit a nerve’ and are not easy to resist. Their power, however, derives from the culture that has generated them and resides not merely “in” the images but in the psyche of the viewer too.” There used to be a time when if a girl saw a model in a magazine, for example, Twiggy, it would be accepted that she was skinny because she was a model. Girls didn’t actually aspire to look her like. Today, that has changed completely. Girls on the runways in Paris are the same size as the actors that portray American high school students on TV.
A show I would like to focus on is ABC Family’s Pretty Little Lairs. Pretty Little Liars is an American mystery teen drama television series created by Marlene King that is based on the popular series of novels written by Sara Shepard. The series follows the lives of Spencer Hastings, Hanna Marin, Aria Montgomery, and Emily Fields, four girls whose clique falls apart after the disappearance of their queen bee, Alison DiLaurentis. One year later, they begin receiving messages from a mysterious figure using the name "A" who threatens to expose their secrets — including long-hidden ones they thought only Alison knew.
Before her disappearance, Alison had influenced and “changed” each of the girls, eventually bringing them all together. For Hanna Marin, this “change” had been her weight. Alison encouraged Hanna to make herself purge after eating. She convinced her that if she were skinnier, she would be prettier, and would fit in more. Even after “A’s” disappearance she is still in control of the girls. A knows that it’s not how others see Hanna, it’s how she sees herself that makes her vulnerable to “oink, oink” insults and the pressure to binge and purge. This shows how the media engages with the idea of the internalized gaze. Just as Bordo talks about, Hanna’s former fatness represented the shame of being “too much” in our society; too hungry, too present, too overbearing, too needy, overflowing with unsightly desire.
In Bordo’s article she says that we all live in a dominant culture that not only surrounds us with its versions of what is beautiful (still Anglo-Saxon, despite the allowance of “erotic” touches like full lips) but often recoils from what we are.
The National Eating Disorders Association cites data from the 1990s in which 42 percent of girls in grades 1-3 reported a desire to be thinner. That was over 20 years ago, and this desire to be thinner has been increasing.
In the most recent episode of Pretty Little Liars, A convinces Hanna to eat a whole box of cupcakes and then tempts her to purge—but Hanna proves A wrong by refusing to take the second part of the dare. I think “A” can represent the American media and the strong influence it has over all of us. When Hanna refused to purge, I believed it showed her standing up and refusing to accept the ideal and norms society and the media places on us. I think every girl needs to be encouraged to stand up just as Hanna did. Even though we are repeatedly bombarded with images of skinny girls with the perfect hair, perfect clothes, and seemingly “perfect image” we need to take a step back and not feel pressured to be like them. Every girl needs to know that no matter what size, shape, or color she is… she is beautiful.
I’d like to end with a quote from Adrienne Rich about “assimilation”
Change your name, your accent, your nose; straighten or dye your hair, stay in the closet; pretend the Pilgrims were your fathers; become baptized as a Christian; wear dangerously high heels, and starve yourself to look young, thing, and feminine; don’t gesture with your hands… To assimilate means to give up not only your history but your body, to try to adopt an alien appearance because your own is not good enough, to fear naming yourself lest name be twisted into label.
Works Cited
Brown, Adriane. Class Lecture. “The Body and the Gendered Gaze Power Point”
.Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.
Bordo, Susan. “Never Just Pictures”
http://www.sidereel.com/Pretty_Little_Liars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03uwFedQbfI
First of all, I like your blog’s wallpaper! I am hoping to see Kesha live in Detroit. You said several things in your post that I have to agree with. However, I have never watched Pretty Little Liars. I would like to comment on America’s Next Top Model even though it was not the focus of your post. There are never ANY fat girls on there. It is obvious why, because it is a modeling show and we all know models are stick-thin. Even the ones referred to as “plus-size” are not fat. A plus size model is about 5’9” and a size 9. A size 9 is not a plus size; it is not even anywhere near fat. I would consider that to be normal.
ReplyDeleteIt really upsets me that almost half of first to third graders wanted to be thinner. I can understand a high school or college student wanting to be thinner but young girls who haven’t even developed into “fat” or “skinny” yet? Those kids need to be reached out to about being confident with themselves. If they wish to be thinner than it should be for the right reasons. I have a feeling they want to be thinner to fit in. “Fat” (or should I say, not a size 2) people can fit in too and they do fit in! I wish the media did a better job of supporting that notion.