2020-05-12 09:42:17
‘Body image’ is one’s perception of his/her body. And this perception can affect the psychology and behaviour of the said person. The perception is constantly in turn and changes because of the cultural environment and to some degree because of genetic backgrounds. Body image can be characterized by four traits: 1- your affective body image, 2- your cognitive body image, 3- your perceptive body image and 4- your behavioral body image.
All the terms above are self-explanatory. affective meaning the way your body makes you feel, cognitive meaning how your body image affects your thought process, perceptive is the way you see it and behavioral is what behaviors your body image forces you to perform.
One could argue that humans have always had a wrong collective body image throughout the centuries, for as every century passes by, we seem to not see what was beautiful as beautiful when it is recalled! So why should we constantly accept the norms and conform to the trended beauty standards? is it for acceptance? That discussion is out of our scope, but what we can rely on, is that beauty must be a subjective matter, and mischievous entities such as the fashion industries benefit from generally distorting the mass minds to conform to their standards of beauty. Taking it from breast sizes to the general outlook of one’s body shape. We must remember companies do not care about us; all they want is money. So when the Barbie company was criticized about how slim their dolls were, and how it was affecting the perception of children’s bodies, since the sales were at stakes, they confirmed with the public and made dolls for many more body types!
So why care about all this, when every aspect of it seems flawed and so easily molded? It is because we were told to do so! from the time we are born till the time we learn to speak; we are constantly fed with propaganda about the perfect body image from the media. The media makes mass confusion. sometimes it says fat people need to stay fat to accept their body, which promotes body positivity, but totally neglects health risks, sometimes it tells them to slim down, but neglects the fact that some women have genetic problems and can’t do so, so they get more psychologically pressured, and some other times it tells perfectly normal sized people they need to be skin and bone! This is the problem! the media will always have a say on it (where it should not) and will always play with the people’s body perception.
We need to keep in mind that what we may think is right, might be totally wrong since we are human. You might think all the people prefer large breasts, but that is just conventional wisdom and far from the truth (article linked below about men’s perception of breasts). English and Malaysian researchers showed full-body photos of women to 361 men, who rated their attractiveness. Women with large breasts were not considered the most attractive. The honor when to the women with medium-size endowments.
Michael Castleman writes a conclusion about men’s perception for breast size; “Some evidence also suggests that oppressive attitudes toward women may play a role in men’s size preference. Recall the 361 Englishmen who considered women with medium-sized breasts the most attractive. The researchers also asked them to complete a survey that explored their feelings about women in society. The most sexist showed a strong preference for large breasts, while the more egalitarian men preferred smaller breasts. So do men really want women with big boobs? Some do, at least in fantasy, hence the joke about the woman who gets the job. But many prefer women with medium or small breasts, and many others don’t care. It turns out that men’s feelings about women’s breasts are more complex than the stereotype would have us believe.”
Checkout the article; https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/all-about-sex/201306/boobs-mens-complex-feelings-about-womens-breasts?amp
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