About Body Image

In the society of today, people frequently identify with particular groups. These organizations share interests in politics, sports, physical characteristics, religion, employment, and other topics (Lerner & Gellert, 1969). People therefore have individual thoughts and viewpoints in regard to these categories. These outside thoughts and convictions are what significantly affect people’s personal and professional lives. They frequently have psychological and emotional effects from these.

One of the factors contributing to the various perceptions that people have of their physical characteristics is media. It contributes into the creation of a false illusion on beauty, which affects young people confidence with regard to their looks. Personally, my personality is predominated by the physical trait of being fat.

Across the world, individuals have created different standards in relation to specific groups of people. These standards depict the skins and bones of people as the main traits for predicting the beauty of a person (Puhl & Brownell, 2001). Further, individuals have both negative and positive inferences in relation to fatness. Nevertheless, there is no consideration of the negative physiological impacts as established by the external world.

The outside world depicts that beauty belongs only to the supermodels that are slim. Unfortunately, individuals like me are not touched-up supermodels. Hence, we feel inferior or less beautiful in society. However, the same external world illustrates to me that this beauty is for the think and skinny models that do not have the challenge of self-identity and lack of being confident in relation to their looks. Consequently, my self-confidence in relation to beauty was lost at an early stage as I focused on these gorgeous models yet I am a fat person in society.

When I turned 11 years old, I started to realize a weird behavior from the people that surrounds me. At one time, I went shopping and I realized that there was a group of people looking at me because of my dress that bulged from my body. I felt agitated by this situation, but I did not have another choice a part from carrying on with my activities (Himes & Thompson, 2007). Further, I was embarrassed and did not have another choice other than pushing my abdomen downwards and pinching my skin. It is such outside world, which makes individuals lack self-confidence to move on with their life. Since this time, I started hating my body because I am fat. On the same note, I have also being exercising a lot to reduce fat content in my body. This includes watching on my diet to ensure that I fit in society of the skinny and slim people who are considered to be beautiful.

I have come across expressions of negative personality. These include being associated with traits such as being greedy, lazy, slow, smelly and stupid. Such traits have played a significant role in making me unmotivated person in society when accomplishing different tasks and goals in life. As such, I have always focused on overcoming the anti-fat bias by ensuring that I do not become an obese person. This is done by engaging in extreme exercises and reducing the amount of food that I take. This is because the bias evokes negative emotional feelings, which are characterized of disgust that limits my potential to act in an effective manner in society.

A great deal of the negative perception towards the obese individuals in society is supported by the media. For example, the media focuses and glorifies thin models, actresses and actors, as well as public figures. This occurs while the overweight individuals are ignored the public appearance in the media outlets. The media also considers the thin individuals to be more attractive than the fat persons. Hence, a social perception is spread where the fat individuals are considered to be less attractive in society.

Moreover, I have also found that my peers always laugh at me when I am not able to accomplish specific tasks in a quick manner as compared to the thin persons. This is linked to their developed negative perception towards the fat individuals in society. In addition, I always see at times some people looking at me and start gossiping. I associate such gossip with my body weight. Hence, it has always being my focus to ensure that I work extremely hard to reduce my body weight so that I feel accepted in society and not isolated.

Conclusion

In conclusion, have a big body makes a person to be characterized as a fat person. Such an individual is then considered to be less beautiful in society. This is something that makes a person lose self-esteem. Moreover, the outside world has negative perspectives in relation to the people whose bodies are considered to be fatty. The outcome of this has being the extreme isolation of the social members in different categories in society. Therefore, the negative perception towards fat individuals has to be changed so that the society can have a chance of doing things successfully.

References

Himes, S, & Thompson, J.K. (2007). “Fat stigmatization in television shows and movies: A

content analysis”. Obesity. 15 (3): 712-719.

Lerner, R & Gellert, E. (1969). ”Body build identification, preference and aversion in

children”. Developmental Psychology. 1 (5): 456-462.

Puhl, R, & Brownell, K. (2001). ”Bias, discrimination, and obesity”. Obesity Research. 9 (12):

788-805.