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Part One of a Three-Part Series.

Written by Allison Bolt.

The ideal female form has been portrayed throughout history. In art history class, we are overwhelmed with female nudes and their different symbolisms. Women seem to have always been on display, their bodies always under a microscope.

Contrary to popular thought, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing, historically speaking. Art history shows us that women's bodies were portrayed for their beauty, fertility and prosperity. Today, society is consumed with dieting, working out, losing weight and fitting the current definition of the ideal body type. Far too often, this obsession surpasses the healthy. When exactly did portraying the female body begin to have adverse effects on society, such as the ones we see today?

We could possibly trace the creation of an "ideal body type" to the first time society gained a celebrity, someone that seemed larger than life and the perfect woman. Florence Lawrence was the first female to be considered a "movie star." Her career peaked in the early 1900s when suddenly all eyes were on her. With the emergence of the entertainment industry, it wasn't long until the glamor of Hollywood consumed the middle to late 1900s. The glamorous movie stars of Hollywood seemed larger than life, and society was greatly influenced. What woman wouldn't want to look just like Marilyn Monroe?

At the same time, maybe the real problem began when photos and images of the larger-than-life celebrities began being edited. Their bodies being shaped up a little here, and smoothed out a touch there. Soon, wanting to look like a star became physically impossible without Photoshop.

The media's effect on body image in our society is undeniable. However, maybe the blame for recent unhealthy practices has been misplaced. We often blame the media for creating these negative body image effects by how it alters women's bodies with photoshop, but if we take just a few steps back, before Florence Lawrence's premier on the big screen, we find a similar negative body image climate. In fact, we find extremely unhealthy weight loss and body modification techniques. The difference is these women weren't comparing themselves to supermodels in fashion magazines, or skinny movie stars whose bikini photos are plastered across tabloids.

A lack of hard evidence to prove that women were working toward one ideal body type, as well as a lack of photoshopped media influence, brings up a new question. Is the recent body image struggle directly related to media influence, or is it a natural part of the human condition and always will be?

Today, we are appalled by the increase in diseases such as anorexia and bulimia, the use of waist trainers resembling corsets and obsessive workout practices. A quick examination of history can reveal that we are not the only society to use unhealthy practices to obtain a perfect body. Historically speaking, our practices are far less horrifying. In this series, we will discuss body modifications that took place throughout history, compare them to our own and then decide whether or not body image issues are truly a primal part of humanity.

Let's begin with Chinese foot binding, which began in the 12th century. Foot binding lasted for 10 centuries and was seen as a visual representation of social status. The prime age for binding a young girl's feet was between the ages of four and six while the bones were still soft enough. While the process lasted only two to three years, the effects were lifelong. The process involved binding the toes under the sole with tight ribbons, as well as binding anywhere that grew too large. Bound feet held a promise of marriage to a wealthy man. This process of foot binding involved crushing the foot, extreme pain, a more difficult way of walking and even infections. All of these terrifying effects of foot binding were all based upon social status. A mother bound her daughter's feet to ensure her future and wealth.

Corsets are a more relatable body modification treatment in our society. We can relate them directly to the popular "waist trainers" that we see celebrities, such as Kim Kardashian, promoting. The origin of corsets can be traced back to the beginning of the 16th century. The waist reducing corset continued through the late Victorian era, although it could be argued that it still hasn't ended completely.

Corsets were traditionally made with a lace-up back and boning constructed from whalebone, steel, or wood. These materials created the perfect hourglass figure for the woman's gown. Corsets were also extremely damaging to the female form, so much so that organs shifted in the body with enough wear. However, this was commonly endured to attain the ideal female figure. Although the waistline height on a woman's torso changed multiple times over the centuries, the corset remained practically unchanged throughout the years.

Switching over to a more stomach churning method of gaining the ideal female body, the early 1900s brought the "tapeworm diet." The tapeworm diet was advertised as a "nutrient absorption" product and promised weight loss with "sanitized tapeworms." It's easy to understand why ingesting tapeworms would be a bad idea for weight loss. They can cause dangerous blockages, cysts and sometimes death. Unfortunately, this diet is also still around in our society today. It is extremely rare as well as illegal in many countries.

As we can see, unhealthy body modifications have been around since at least the 12th century. Most of these were extremely damaging to the body, simply for the sake of attaining an "ideal female form." These unhealthy yet socially acceptable actions to achieve a particular body type, without the presence of celebrities or media, brings about the central question of this series: is striving for the ideal body type simply a part of the human condition, rather than brought on by the media of our society today?

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Should we stop blaming the media, Part I: A historical confrontation of modern body image issues

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Part One of a Three-Part Series. Written by Allison Bolt. The ideal female form has been portrayed throughout history. In art history class, we are overwhelmed with female nudes and their different symbolisms. Women seem to have always been on display, their bodies always under a microscope.

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Nostalgic feelings have recently caused me to reflect back on my freshman year of college. No other year of my life has been filled with more ups and downs, and highs and lows, than freshman year. Throughout all of the madness, one factor remained constant: my roommate. It is time to thank her for everything. These are only a few of the many reasons to do so, and this goes for roommates everywhere.
You have been through all the college "firsts" together.
You were even each other's first real college friend.
If you think about it, your roommate was there through all of your first college experiences. The first day of orientation, wishing you luck on the first days of classes, the first night out, etc. That is something that can never be changed. You will always look back and think, "I remember my first day of college with ____."

Months before move in day, you were already planning out what freshman year would be like. Whether you previously knew each other, met on Facebook, or arranged to meet in person before making any decisions, you made your first real college friend during that process.

SEE ALSO: 18 Signs You're A Little Too Comfortable With Your Best Friends

The transition from high school to college is not easy, but somehow you made it out on the other side.

It is no secret that transitioning from high school to college is difficult. No matter how excited you were to get away from home, reality hit at some point. Although some people are better at adjusting than others, at the times when you were not, your roommate was there to listen. You helped each other out, and made it through together.
...but you also saw each other during your highest highs.
Remember the first week when we stayed up talking until 2:00 A.M. every night? Late night talks will never be more real than they were freshman year. There was so much to plan for, figure out, and hope for. Your roommate talked, listened, laughed, and cried right there with you until one of you stopped responding because sleep took over.

After seeing each other during the lows, seeing each other during the highs was such a great feeling. Getting involved on campus, making new friends, and succeeding in classes are only a few of the many ways you have watched each other grow.

There was so much time to bond before the stresses of college would later take over.

No matter what, you always bounced back to being inseparable.

The "remember that one time, freshman year..." stories never end.

The unspoken rule that no matter how far apart you grow, you are always there for each other.

Your old doom room is now filled with two freshman trying to make it through their first year. They will never know all the memories that you made in that room, and how it used to be your home. You can only hope that they will have the relationship you had together to reflect on in the years to come.

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Body Image: Stop Blaming Society and Start Loving Yourself

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Nostalgic feelings have recently caused me to reflect back on my freshman year of college. No other year of my life has been filled with more ups and downs, and highs and lows, than freshman year. Throughout all of the madness, one factor remained constant: my roommate.

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March 18, 2015 - People often claim to ignore advertisements, but the messages are getting through on a subconscious level, pioneering author and ad critic Jean Kilbourne told an audience at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health on March 3, 2015. Kilbourne, best known for her groundbreaking documentary on images of women in the media, Killing Us Softly, went on to deconstruct the subconscious messages in food and body image-related advertisements and to describe how they create a "toxic cultural environment" that harms our relationship with what we eat.

The event was sponsored by the STRIPED program (Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders), which is based at Harvard Chan and Boston Children's Hospital, and co-sponsored by the School's Health Communication Concentration and Department of Nutrition. Kilbourne praised the work of STRIPED in her talk, calling it "a terrific program that is making a difference."

The average American encounters 3,000 advertisements every day, and spends a total of two years watching TV commercials in their lifetime, Kilbourne said. At the center of many of these ads is an image of idealized female beauty. Models are tall, slim, and light skinned, and digitally altered to ever-more unrealistic proportions.

"Women and girls compare themselves to these images every day," Kilbourne said. "And failure to live up to them is inevitable because they are based on a flawlessness that doesn't exist." The American ideal of beauty has become so pervasive that 50% of three- to six-year-old girls worry about their weight. And on the island of Fiji, the arrival of television heralded a boom in dieting among women and girls who before then hadn't realized that there was something wrong with them.

While advertising creates a disconnection between women - and men, to a lesser extent-and their bodies, it also offers food as a comforter and a proxy for human relationships, Kilbourne said. She showed images of ads offering chocolate as a substitute for a lover, and cookies presented as a way to get love from your children.

Alongside the chocolate ads are others that shame women for having an appetite for food, such as one that showed a pair of cinnamon buns hanging off a slim model's hips. These images normalize disordered behaviors around food such as bingeing and guilt. "The bulimic is the ideal consumer," said Kilbourne.

Kilbourne called for a transformation in the way we think about food. "The solution to obesity isn't to make girls hate themselves," she said. Instead of focusing on weight or BMI, they should be helped to turn their focus on being healthy and having energy. "If we learn to eat healthy, natural, preferably local food with pleasure, and if we exercise with pleasure, our bodies will get to the weight and shape and size that they were genetically meant to be."

But real change won't happen child by child, Kilbourne said. Public health practitioners need to focus prevention efforts on the environmental level. She called for warning labels and taxes on diet products, greater transparency in the use of Photoshop in advertising and fashion spreads, and media literacy education in schools, among other measures.
Photo: Emily Cuccarese

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Advertising's toxic effect on eating and body image

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March 18, 2015 - People often claim to ignore advertisements, but the messages are getting through on a subconscious level, pioneering author and ad critic Jean Kilbourne told an audience at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health on March 3, 2015.

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UMKC Women's Center - Advancing gender equity

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By Armelle Djoukoue

With the advent of Photoshop in the design industry, it has been easy for the media NOT to keep it real. Photoshop has allowed advertisers to give cover models a little superficial nip and tuck or body sculpting where it doesn't really exist. These false images can affect the way readers see beauty in an unrealistic way, impacting self-esteem and their own body image.

The more women and girls watch television or look at magazines full of unattainable and idealize images of women created by "photoshopping", the more anxious and insecure about their appearance they become. The pressure to attain the "perfect body" has women now spending millions of dollars a year on unnecessary plastic surgery and harming their bodies by becoming anorexic or bulimic.

In recent years, researchers have tried to understand the determinants of body image disturbance among young women. High exposure to media has been shown to have a large impact on women's self-esteem in western societies. Nowadays, with the use of Photoshop, women have been tricked into thinking that flawless beauty does exist. But in reality, this type of perfection is simply unattainable. Even celebrities have imperfections, but that's not what we often see in the magazines.

Some celebrities, such as Brad Pitt and Kate Winslet, have taken action against digital altering of their bodies. Brad Pitt broke one of Hollywood's golden rules in a recent issue of W Magazine by revealing all his flaws and wrinkles. He even personally requested to be photographed by Chuck Close, who is famous for his extremely detailed portraits that reveal all skin flaws. Winslet was also one of the first to break ground when she took action against GQ magazine for digitally altering her body in its photographs that made her look unrealistically thin.

Perhaps if more celebrities become more secure with their own body image and demand that their photos be printed without photoshopping, everyone else will follow suit. And more women and girls will realize that there is no such thing as "perfect" beauty.

For the past three days,The Keep it Real Campaign sponsored by Miss Representation has been asking advertisers and the media to do away with Photoshop and print at least one unphotoshopped picture of a model. One photo may not be enough to fix someone's self esteem, but maybe it will help advertisers understand the damage that they are doing to the physical, emotional, and mental health of many women and girls when they don't keep it real.

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Keep it real challenge: Photoshop's impact on body image - UMKC Women's Center

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By Armelle Djoukoue With the advent of Photoshop in the design industry, it has been easy for the media NOT to keep it real. Photoshop has allowed advertisers to give cover models a little superficial nip and tuck or body sculpting where it doesn't really exist.

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Opposite opinion

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From Sophia Bush's war on Urban Outfitters and the #aeriereal models campaign to obese Barbie and magazines airbrushing skinny models to look fatter, the body image debate has captured our attention for years... and for good reason.

Statistics show that approximately 92 percent of women are unhappy with their bodies and resort to dieting to achieve their ideal body shape. Unfortunately, only 5 percent of women naturally possess the body type often portrayed by Americans in the media. More alarming is that these numbers aren't exactly shocking. In fact, it's what we've come to expect.

Yes, there are hundreds of reports that prove what a major influence media has on shaping perceptions; I'm not trying to dispute the massive effect media has and could use for good instead of evil. But can we continue to blame the media for every negative thought girls have about themselves? Should we not instead be looking to and encouraging parents, teachers, community leaders, clubs and curriculums to stand in the gap and provide the positive role models that the media has failed to produce?

Now is the time to get fed up with waiting for change to magically happen and start being the change you want to see.

Rather than demonizing the media, we can tell our girls...

1. It's people who run the media -- not robots or aliens or some impenetrable force. And as a person, you can help change its messages about body image.

2. Don't let the media own real estate in your mind. Ultimately, you have the power to turn off the television, put down the magazine or stop shopping at that store.

3. You may not be able to escape the media's reach, but you don't have to live by its rules. Only you choose what to believe about yourself.

Rather than buying into the media's body image messages, we can tell our girls...

1. The incredible thing about beauty is that can't be singularly defined. So why bother holding ourselves to flimsy standards that don't guarantee happiness?

2. Imagine how much better we'd feel about ourselves if we re-channeled the energy we waste on obsessing over our looks to achieving our goals.

3. Self-esteem, inner beauty, respect and ambition are always in trend, no matter your shape, height, size or weight.

Rather than letting media consume us, we can tell our girls...

1. Realize that celebrities are not the only source of role models: Explore the incredible (and often forgotten) women trailblazers throughout history, get to know local women in your town, from doctors to dance instructors, who are doing what they love, and focus more on how you can be a better role model than how others are failing at it.

2. Change your diet: What you feed your mind will be reflected in your attitude. Garbage in, garbage out. Your palate might be comfortable with certain music, movies, people and places, but that doesn't mean those things are doing any good for your system. Put your brain in neuro boot camp and start gravitating towards positive influences that inspire you and allow you to inspire others.

3. Listen with intent: The easiest way to make the biggest impact is to listen in a new way. Become actively aware of the stress, problems and frustrations surrounding you and react with a plan. If you recognize the triggers that battle with your self-esteem and body image you'll be better prepared to overcome them.

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Stop Blaming the Media for Our Body Image Issues

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From Sophia Bush's war on Urban Outfitters and the #aeriereal models campaign to obese Barbie and magazines airbrushing skinny models to look fatter, the body image debate has captured our attention for years... and for good reason. Statistics show that approximately 92 percent of women are unhappy with their bodies and resort to dieting to achieve their ideal body shape.

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Melissa Oldham charts how media representation of ideal body shapes, driven by the need to maximise profits, leads to negative body images in women and men.
Feminine beauty, particularly in the western world is synonymous with thinness, whilst the male cultural ideal is to be tall, broad and muscular. This article will examine how the media shapes our cultural norms and the negative impact this can have on body image concerns in females and males.

Nowhere is the thin female ideal more evident than in popular media. The bodies of characters on TV and in films are not reflective of the general population, because overweight characters are significantly underrepresented and underweight characters are overrepresented. This is especially true for female characters who are more likely to be underweight than male characters. In a very interesting and novel study researchers measured the size of mannequins in a number of high street clothing shops. They found that whilst the male mannequins typically appeared to be a healthy size, female mannequins often appeared to be representative of an unhealthily thin body. In similarly depressing news, many models havea Body Mass Index which is indicative of having an eating disorder. These inaccurate representations present a distorted and unrealistic view of women's bodies, which could reinforce weight bias and body image concerns.

Many studies have examined how 'thin ideal' advertising impacts on body image concerns in women and studies usually do this in one of two ways. Some studies simply examine the relationship between the number of hours that people are exposed to different forms of media (e.g. time spent watching music videos, reading magazines or watching TV) and body image concerns. Although these studies reliably show that women who spend more time watching or reading popular media will be more likely to have body image concerns, there are problems with this method. Because media exposure and body concerns are measured at the same time, we cannot say that media exposure leads to heightened body concerns. Rather, it could also be that women who have heightened body image concerns are drawn to viewing beauty magazines or music videos in search of some 'thinspiration'.

However, other studies have used experimental paradigms in order to work out the causal direction of the relationship. Many studies show women advertising featuring very thin models or a control condition. The nature of the control conditions does differ across studies. Sometimes, adverts are shown which feature no bodies whatsoever and other times the images are experimentally manipulated in order to make the models appear larger. Regardless of the exact methodology the results of these studies paint a very reliable and convincing picture: exposure to thin ideal advertisements increases negative mood, weight concerns, body dissatisfaction and levels of depression in women. Similarly, young girls had lower body esteem and greater desire for a thinner body shape after playing with Barbie dolls than more average sized dolls or other toys.

Historically the body image literature has focused almost exclusively on women as body image concerns are largely thought to be a female condition. In recent years there has been a shift towards looking more at male body image concerns and it is starting to look like men might also feel dissatisfied with their bodies, but in a different way. Body dissatisfaction scales typically look at whether people feel fat or overweight and those who report feeling overweight or fat are classed as having higher body dissatisfaction.

However, as discussed previously, the body ideal for men is mainly focused on muscularity, not fatness. As such, when a body dissatisfaction scale focuses on feeling overweight women will generally have higher scores of body dissatisfaction than men. However, more recently researchers have started adapting traditional body satisfaction scales with questions which ask about muscularity. In these studies the apparent gender gap in body satisfaction is significantly reduced. It seems men are worried about their bodies, but unlike most women, men want to be bigger or more muscular.

Some researchers suggest that male body image concerns could be a result of a tendency in advertising to increasingly objectify the male body. Advertisements frequently feature images which objectify men (does anyone remember the Diet Coke man?) and an advent of male health magazines and lads' mags mean that men are exposed to idealised versions of the muscular Adonis more than ever.

In the same way that thin ideal advertising can have a negative impact on female body satisfaction, exposure to advertisements featuring large and muscular men could have a negative impact on male body satisfaction. Some researchers set out to experimentally test this idea. They showed men adverts featuring attractive male models that were either muscular or not. Following exposure to the muscular models men were more dissatisfied with their own bodies and more likely to want to be more muscular than those who saw the attractive but non muscular controls.

The gender discrepancy in body ideals is reflected in the clinical body image disorders which are most frequently experienced by men and women. Women are more frequently diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) than men are - around .2-.5% of women suffer from AN whereas less than 10% of individuals with AN are male. Individuals with AN often have an intrusive and persistent dread or fear of fatness. The primary driver of AN is extreme weight loss. AN sufferers will deliberately and severely restrict their food intake, will often engage in compulsive and excessive exercise and may purge the food they do eat through forced vomiting or ingesting laxatives. There is no consistently successful treatment for AN and under half of individuals with AN do not fully recover. AN can result in reoccurring episodes of hospitalisation and in extreme cases can result in death. Numerous studies have linked long-term exposure to very thin bodies and the 'thin ideal' to eating disorder symptomology in women.

Conversely, a lesser known condition known as 'bigorexia' or Muscle Dysmorphia (MD) is a clinical condition which affects significantly more men than women. People with MD, or 'bigorexia' as it is commonly known, become preoccupied with trying to gain muscle. Individuals with MD perceive themselves as being slim or weak when in reality they have very muscular physiques. Sufferers of MD spend hours strenuously working out, prioritise their gym time over everything else, compulsively check their appearance in mirrors and spend hours each day scrutinising areas of their body that they perceive as being inadequate.

MD can lead to steroid abuse in order to attain the unattainable. MD can destroy lives and can lead to social isolation, social anxiety, unnecessary cosmetic surgery, depression, heart attacks and even suicide attempts. Diagnoses of MD have increased in recent years. Whilst some researchers suggest this is just due to more knowledge of the disease and more accurate diagnoses, other researchers suggest that the increasing trend to male objectification and the promotion of the muscular male ideal is responsible for the increase.

In a landmark decision this week, France has banned emaciated models from walking the catwalk and all models will now need to provide a doctor's certificate attesting to their health with a particular focus on their weight. France's Minister of Social Affairs and Health said that this decision was based on the fact that exposing young people to unrealistic and dangerously thin models can have a negative impact on their self-worth and self-esteem. This is undoubtedly a fantastic move by the French Government, but why has it taken so long?

When the link between thin or muscular ideal advertising and negative affect and body image is so well researched it is difficult to see why companies would continue to use this form of advertising. The old adage is that "thin sells" and the ex-editor of Australian Vogue Kirstie Clements suggests that thin models are used because clothes hang better on very thin models, who do not have curves that could disrupt the line of the clothes. Many fashion designers have supported the notion that clothes look better on thin models in interviews and essentially what they are saying is they are more concerned with how good their clothes look and how much they sell than they are with the negative impact this has on the body image concerns of their consumers.

The move towards very muscular male models is less clear but it is possible that the media industry is playing on the natural human trait of social comparison. We compare ourselves to others on a daily basis in order to get some idea of how we rank in the grand scheme of things. When thin or muscular models are held up as being the ideal we feverishly consume media to find out more about them, how we rank against them and how we can look like them. This can translate into going out and buying the products that these Gods and Goddesses are advertising. Indeed there is some evidence that adolescents seek out images of men and women with 'ideal' bodies who they want to emulate and some studies find that ads which feature more beautiful or idealised models promote a more positive evaluation of the product and can increase an individual's implicit motivation to buy the product.

Advertisements which promote unrealistic body ideals for men and women are irresponsible and can have a very negative impact on body image concerns, mood and in extreme cases can contribute to the development of clinical disorders. The advertising world should move away from objectification and using models with unattainably beautiful bodies, just for the purpose of maximising profits.

Perhaps it is time to use our influence as consumers and campaigners to question and challenge the use of very thin or very muscular models in popular media.

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How the media shapes our cultural ideals of body shape

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Melissa Oldham charts how media representation of ideal body shapes, driven by the need to maximise profits, leads to negative body images in women and men. Feminine beauty, particularly in the western world is synonymous with thinness, whilst the male cultural ideal is to be tall, broad and muscular.

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Nike Women - Better For It - Inner Thoughts

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Going to talk about how the media influences how people precieve themselves.-- Created using PowToon -- Free sign up at http://www.powtoon.com/ . Make your own animated videos and animated presentations for free.

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The Power of Advertisement | Sofia Rodriguez-Dantzler | TEDxYouth@AnnArbor