Body Image Problem: Is Technology to Blame?
by When culprits of body image problem are being probed, it is almost always expected to see either the mass media or our culture of obsession to slimness as first on the list. Though these were not absent in Annie Bradford Rispin’s “Here’s looking at you: is body image being taken too seriously?”, the essay is unique in that the author introduced a rather new suspect for which to blame this concern: technology.
If there is anyone to blame for the body image problem, it should only be both the mass media and our culture and nothing more, as they are our most direct source of information. Indeed, being thin is generally “in” in industrialized Western societies. Come to think of it: why don’t we hear cases of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia from the Third World countries? People there do starve but involuntarily. Over the years, we have taken health and fitness to the extreme. Slimness is almost synonymous to physical fitness and beauty. We see more and more people, young and old alike, going to the gym, slimnastics classes, figure salons and diet centers, which in turn feed these industries. We see calorie-counting moms telling their children to watch their diet and thus the culture is being perpetuated. And when someone innocently tells us we gained a little weight, we immediately plunge into a dieting frenzy.
If our culture is favoring slimness, the mass media is incessantly promoting it. Worse, its power to shape our minds is so enormous – we can never seem to avoid it wherever we go. When was the last time we saw chubby models? They have always been ridiculously thinner than the average woman. A study has found that models have become increasingly thinner over the years, from 8% thinner than the average woman 25 years ago to 23% today (qtd. in Derenne and Beresin, “Body Image,” par. 13).
As explained, culture and technology are the only factors directly influencing our mindset. They set and repeatedly reinforce unrealistic standards which we blindly follow. Technology doesn’t. It’s static. It’s silent. It is simply a tool we use to communicate, be it in a good way or bad. We don’t need to point fingers to more persons or institutions or any medium of communication to explain the exponential rise in the diagnosed cases of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia and the worsening body image problem. It is just due to the fact that the media has found better ways to enter into our consciousness as technology and communication are getting better and better. It has gone beyond broadcast and print media and into the internet.
But why do they continually persist in the first place? It’s because we like what we are seeing; the media simply adds fuel to the fire. In retrospect therefore, we are shamefully at the starting point of this entire dilemma while technology’s direct involvement vis-à-vis our self evaluation is not even well pronounced. As Reville puts it, “to fear technology is to fear ourselves” (“If We Fear,” par. 3).
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