Size Zero

It’s not a big shock to grasp at the idea that media has a lot to do with how women perceive themselves. Women become brainwashed by photoshopped images of women who look like “Barbie dolls”, when the models themselves most likely do not look like the images in the magazines and posters. When young girls are exposed to these types of marketing, they are influenced more easily and it has a great impact on the choices they make as they mature. An example of a weight loss brand known as "Slim Fast" has definitely found ways to contradict their viewpoints in ads where they show woman who don't need to be stick skinny to look fit, while in other ads they're too overweight to fit into a small dress that they need to lose weight quickly before the day of the party. Writers Susan Bordo, Maggie Wykes, Barrie Gunter, and Naomi Wolf all express in their articles examples of how women are manipulated by advertisements that implement body issues and poor health choices that benefit corporations.

"My husband didn't think I could lose the weight" - Wife
"Boy was I wrong!" - Husband


Hunger as Ideology by Susan Bordo is an article that explains the importance that food has on women. Overeating becomes a coping mechanism for some women as a way to suppress distraught feelings and emotions, while not eating at all for others is a quick route to achieve a certain body image. These categories of women can be derived from a common background which can be traced back from childhood. As Bordo mentions in her opening example of a commercial that “affronts with its suggestion that young girls begin early in learning to control their weight, and with its romantic mystification of diet pills as part of the obscure, eternal arsenal of feminine arts to be passed from generation to generation”, brings about the significance of youth and it’s power over their viewers (99).

The beginning half of Bordo’s article actually made me realize how a similar advertisement I once saw when I was age nine affected me. I specifically remember the channel and the program I was watching because the commercials always did a wonderful job at targeting their audience. The commercial featured two young girls shopping for dresses for a party that would match the dolls they were holding. In one shot, the camera zooms into the size of the dresses the girls were picking out and it said “size 0” with large enough words that made it easy for us to read. A transition is made to both the girls grown up and shopping together once again picking out clothing that were still a “size 0” with their dolls in hand. I remember thinking that it was normal to be that size and to remain that size for practically the rest of your life. If such a commercial had that big of an influence on me, I’m very sure that it affected many other girls as well and perhaps they did not grow out of that mentality as I did. A simple advertisement for a doll chose to take a more personal route to a subliminal issue of body image when it was not necessary. The company should have kept more focus on their dolls and not the idea of what the doll will do for these young girls because “any fool knows that advertisers manipulate reality in the service of selling their products” (Bordo, 104).

In Maggie Wykes’ and Barrie Gunter’s article Conclusion: Body Messages and Body Meanings, tackles the cause and effect of what overeating and under-eating does for relationships, work, and daily activities in general. Statistics such as “41 percent felt the media was responsible for dictating public perceptions of the ideal body shape. 51 percent felt the media was one of the many factors” prove the domino affect media has in society (Wykes & Gunter, 205). Advertisements are practically unavoidable. Whether you choose not to watch television or read a magazine, one way or another, an ad will sneak its way to a person’s conscious unless they live on a secluded island with no little to any technology.



The way women are portrayed in television as “heroines” sometimes may not be taken as seriously as the strong roles that male action superstars play. “Women are mere ‘beauties’ in men’s culture so that culture can be kept male. When women in culture show character, they are not desirable, as opposed to the desirable, artless ingénue” states Naomi Wolf in her article Culture. Even when women portray an independent action hero, they are shown to be overtly sexual and their focus is directed towards their body and “how hot they look” when they’re in a fighting scene because “a beautiful heroine is a contradiction in terms, since heroism is about individuality, interesting and ever changing, while ‘beauty’ is generic, boring, and inert” (Wolf, 59). This statement determines as what critic John Berger says, “…not only the relations of men to women, but the relation of women to themselves” as what they should be in the eyes of men when they are being independent and strong (Wolf, 58).

Many of the battles and struggles a woman faces with her body results from the many mediums of media, which make them go from the “women who eats, only ‘not so much’” to women who eat more than they should. The quote by T. Adams that Wykes and Gunter states in their article, “Each one of us has a complex lifelong relationship – with our body. We exult in it, feel betrayed by it and, given the chance, would change some aspect of it” is a perfect saying for what many woman believe to be true (Wykes & Gunter, 204). Majority of Americans do not look the way celebrities are portrayed as perfection in ads or movies or how models are embraced in the fashion world as the perfect beings to promote clothing that is made for the people. An everyday “real woman” would not be able to sell half as much clothing or makeup as a Victoria Secrets model because after all “today, all that we experience as meaningful are appearances” (Bordo, 104). When commercials on television and ads in magazines are selling products for women, are they trying to consume just our money or basically our souls? Sometimes it sure feels as if I sold my soul to certain makeup companies that make me feel like without their eyeliner, I rather have no eyes to begin with.