Tackling the popular conceptions of the thin ideal

If Marilyn Monroe were alive today, she would be too fat to be a model.

And Julia Roberts' body in several scenes of Pretty Woman was not her own. A body double was used throughout the movie and on the front cover of the video because Roberts' own body was not considered thin or curvaceous enough.

Has society gone too far with today's thinness ideal?

Members of Guidance for Understanding Image, Dieting and Eating, a student-run organization on campus, think so.

On Saturday, GUIDE organized a day-long conference on body image that included workshops, activities and discussions featuring professors, health workers and counselors.

"We want to educate students and people about the issues so they can make changes in their communities," Wharton sophomore and GUIDE member Sara Rabold said. "It's through education and awareness that change will occur."

Held in both Irvine Auditorium and Houston Hall, about 80 people attended the conference, including students from a number of other universities, including Princeton and Villanova.

The conference was brought to a close by keynote speaker Ophira Edut. Edut, who lectures on body image and who has written and edited books on the same topic, feels that the issue of popular ideals of the female body is a huge problem in society.

"I think of body image as feminism's unfinished business," she explained. "We need to look at the connection between women and control over bodies."

But body image problems do not only affect women in the United States. Instead, these problems are spread far and wide across the globe, affecting people of all cultures, ethnicities and genders.

"There is a myth that women of color don't have body issues," Edut explained. "So many women from so many backgrounds are just struggling to be themselves."

"People really care about this issue in other cultures as well," Communications Professor Joseph Cappella said in a conference workshop. "In South Korea, about 13 percent of the population has had surgery to improve their facial image."

Body image issues also affect men, especially gay men, according to Counseling and Psychological Services Counselor Elan Cohen.

"Gay men have the same kind of [body image] issues as do heterosexual women," Cohen said. "Boys learn that they've got to be muscular, they've got to be big."

So how is the ideal created, and how do people learn about it?

Cohen explained that the ideal is seen in the toys -- like Barbie and G.I. Joe -- people played with as children and through parents encouraging them to be big and strong or thin and slender.

But the biggest way is through the media, since the average American is exposed to 1,500 advertisements a day. Many advertisements consistently show women of one body type.

"Ads sell beauty, desirability and thinness," Cappella said.

"Advertising has become part of our landscape, so we just take in the message," Edut added.

Students Together Against Acquaintance Rape representatives blamed many of these ads for perpetrating a "rape culture" by bombarding people with portrayals of women as weak and helpless, by objectifying women and by showing them as enjoying being sexually manipulated.

STAAR member Sara Levy said, "When women's bodies are made to look inhuman, we're making it easy for them to be traded, assaulted or victimized."

But the media cannot be held completely responsible for body image issues, Rabold said.

Advertisements "tell us this is the ideal body image, this is how you must be -- and we believe them," she said.

Experts say people can start changing the thinness ideal by changing the views of friends and family members.

"If you come from a home where your father and mother respect each other, there's more of a chance that you will find those ads inappropriate," explained Nancy Weiner, a mother of a Penn student, who attended the conference.

Cappella stressed that students should actively pass on the importance of being satisfied with one's image

"Especially pass it on to young people," he said.

However, to create a change in the culture, one must first rid oneself of dissatisfaction with one's own body, according to Edut.

"There is a huge separation between our bodies and our inner selves that we need to bridge," she said.

Cohen explained that the thinness ideal is nearly impossible to achieve, especially by those who are genetically incapable of it.

"Anytime you compare yourself to other people, you're going to lose," Cohen claimed. "Do you want to lose?"

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