“Cellulite,” the very word that makes many women pinch their thighs in horror, is actually not a medical term, Catherine Collins explained Thursday. “Vogue Magazine” can take credit for the name.
Collins presented this fact and others as part of her lecture, “Images of Women: Changes in Women’s Bodies in the Media.”
Collins, who has been presenting this lecture and accompanying slide show since 1993, is the Director of Health Education at Wellesley College. There, she has worked with her students to develop an historical and contemporary look at women in the media.
“If 80 percent of women in the United States are dissatisfied with their bodies, it is important that we identify the source of this dissatisfaction and begin to resolve this problem,” Collins said. Her discussion highlighted the fact that media imagery continues to put women at even greater risk.
Collins said that the problem is not limited to teenage girls anymore. Women at a range of ages, including young girls, are being affected. Even cases involving men are on the rise. According to Collins, eating disorders are often passed down from parent to child through eating habits or by the way parents talk about their children’s bodies’.
The presentation, sponsored by WesWell and Focus on Eating Disorder Understanding Prevention (FED UP), centered on student reactions to media images of females. The slides began with the Venus de Milo and continued through Marilyn Monroe and Christina Aguilera. Many of the images were of fashion advertisements, cover girls, and movie posters.
Though none of the information was necessarily new, Katherine D’Ambrosio ’06 was struck with how much thinner idealized women have become over time.
“Our ideal of beauty has changed drastically,” she said.
In addition to showing and discussing these images, Collins emphasized media literacy and “the analytical skills that allow one to discern and resist or deconstruct appropriate messages.” She encouraged students to be aware of their emotional response to ads as well as to protect their younger peers from falling victim to media images directed at them.
“The room was full…the organizers should feel very proud of their efforts,” said Rachel Curtin ’04. “Body image and eating disorders are concerns of many Wesleyan students which was evidenced by the turn out and the heated discussion following the show. I was really interested in learning about the objectives of media literacy and the implications of using it toward empowerment.”
Many students shared their disgust at certain advertisements and their fear that their younger sisters and relatives were increasingly affected by such messages.
The mostly female group of nearly 150 discussed from personal experience the ways that media images and “standards of beauty” have affected their own lives. Students said that the sources of these “ideals” were images in magazines and on television, in addition to standards promoted by their families and peers. In addition, many of the students present commented on their high school environment where there was a great deal of competition over body image.
Collins also focused part of her presentation on standards of beauty for minority women.
“In addition to the generic beauty expectations, whiteness has come to represent attractiveness,” Collins said.
According to Collins, this causes non-Caucasian media to focus on “whiter” images and exports Western ideals abroad.
“Since negative body image is a transnational problem, it was especially interesting to hear the stories of students of different backgrounds and stories of students who have studied body image issues when abroad,” Curtin said.
In addition to body image for non-Caucasian women, Collins also discussed the issue of the gay body image.
“Women who identify themselves as lesbian or bisexual tend to be invisible, because they are, and society is, still trying to figure out what woman means to them,” she said.
Collins advocated education as the first step towards deconstructing these images for all women and anyone affected by media imagery. In her view, the “black magic” of the media has only become more dangerous in the 10 years she has been researching this topic.
“They are playing with our minds even more,” she said.
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