From: Kate Distin (memes@distin.co.uk)
Date: Wed 11 May 2005 - 12:55:09 GMT
Scott Chase wrote:
>
> --- Kate Distin <memes@distin.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>>I guess what you've been talking about wrt men is
>>the extreme version of
>>capitulating to body-image pressures. But wrt women
>>in general I don't
>>know how you can even begin to think that there is a
>>sort of group
>>immunity to these pressures. I'd say the opposite
>>is the case. No,
>>more than that, I'd say that the sort of
>>conversations that most women
>>have actually contribute towards these pressures.
>>How many women do you
>>know who do not wear make-up, depilate the bits of
>>their body dictated
>>by their particular culture, buy fashionable
>>clothes, diet . . . ?
>>There may be only a minority who take these things
>>to extremes and
>>suffer from body-image distortion disorders, but
>>there is a vast
>>majority who buy into the more general cultural
>>messages about
>>body-image acceptability.
>>
>>Obviously this is partly due to a biological drive:
>>in my culture being
>>attractive is defined in these ways, so I'd better
>>be like that or I
>>won't get a mate. But there is a huge cultural
>>element too. You asked
>>below about friends, parents, etc. An illuminating
>>anecdote: as part of
>>a module on Islam that I was teaching to a class of
>>11 year olds, we
>>were discussing the reasons why someone might
>>voluntarily go through the
>>hardships of fasting during Ramadan - and the first
>>suggestion of both
>>boys and girls at this young age was "to lose
>>weight". This cultural
>>stuff kicks in much earlier than we realise.
>>
>>Secondly, I think that for women the biggest
>>influence on the extent to
>>which they buy into the dieting/makeup/fashion/etc.
>>pressures is their
>>mother. Biggest influence *by far*. From mother we
>>learn what it means
>>to be a woman. The *only* women I know who don't
>>care about fashion or
>>makeup are those whose mothers didn't either. The
>>*only* women I know
>>who don't diet have non-dieting mothers. And these
>>women are in a tiny
>>minority. By contrast those women whose mothers are
>>more conventional
>>in their enjoyment of fashion, etc. may not grow up
>>with the same tastes
>>in these things as their mother (the particular
>>shape of their tastes in
>>clothes, makeup, body image is probably more
>>influenced by their age
>>peers than their parent) - but they will largely
>>grow up with the same
>>level of interest in them.
>>
>>The implication is that we get a level-of-interest
>>in these aspects of
>>body-image, as part of the family-script package.
>>This is maybe a sort
>>of immunity-level: it dictates to what extent we
>>will later be
>>susceptible to the fashion/body-image memes that
>>abound in the culture
>>we find beyond the family. Women who have learnt
>>from mother that these
>>things matter a great deal will have low immunity,
>>whereas those whose
>>mothers don't care will have higher immunity.
>>
>>What this can tell us about women who take any of
>>this to extremes I
>>don't know.
>>
>
> On pages 60-1 Pope, Phillips and Olivardia say (The
> Adonis Complex_): "Women, in contrast, have learned in
> recent years to be more candid about their body image
> concerns- and they've grown stronger in their ability
> to reject societal messages that appearance is
> all-important". Flipping back to the endnotes I don't
> see any citations to back their claim, but one of the
> authors Katharine Phillips is a woman, so this notion
> apparently didn't strike her as too odd to make it
> into the book. Earlier in the book they stress that
> women have more awareness of the isue and there are
> some safety nets for them to sekk support and
> professional help.
>
Well, to be fair I didn't back my claims with any citations either, so I
can't really criticize them for that. Re-reading my last message just
now I was surprised to see how cross I sounded - not my intention, so
sorry about that.
To a certain extent I agree that there's been a societal shift: for
example, away from finding it acceptable to comment on the appearance of
a newsreader/politician/academic just because she's a woman. It's the
extent to which this impacts upon most women most of the time that I'd
question.
> I think I ran with the ball a little. One point I had
> considered was the impact of feminism on womens' views
> about social pressures. Are feminists, in general,
> less susceptible to body image concerns than the rest
> of the female population?
>
>
Hmmm. Feminism is one of those odd words that can mean lots of
different things depending on who hears it (an interesting memetic
conundrum in itself), so I suspect the only accurate answer is: I don't
know.
>
> At first glance their comparison of GI Joe dolls on
> page 41 was rather amusing, but other visual
> comparisons on subsequent pages are far more
> compelling, especially the way the Han Solo and Luke
> Skywalker dolls have changed over the years, a very
> timely topic given how the new Star Wars film is about
> to be released and I've noticed some marketing
> spillovers into video gaming and other stuff. Movie
> crossovers into fast food advertizing are what usually
> ticks me off.
>
>
Very good memetically, though. How long will the Burger King ban last
in our household? Parental willpower vs the power of the dark side.
Watch this space.
Kate
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed 11 May 2005 - 14:11:13 GMT