The Most Magnified Facte of Physical Appearance

The Most Magnified Facte of Physical Appearance

Alex Johnson
For generations, physical appearance has dictated the way people are viewed and treated. More specifically, the most magnified facet of physical appearance is without a doubt the never ending issue of weight and being thin. Whether it’s maintaining, attaining, or sustaining a thin physique, the conflict of weight has haunted the lives of billions of people, usually acting as a barrier between that person and happiness. The remedies for excess body fat have reached such extremes, as told by Susan Bordo in the essay “Never Just Pictures” taken from her book, that nearly everything appears to revolve around losing weight or keeping it off. On top of that, the extent to which people, especially women, will go to achieve a certain size has reached the highest possible degree: fatality at the expense of being thin.
The way media portrays what a beautiful body should look like places absurd amounts of pressure on women and men to emulate what they see in the airbrushed, unnatural, borderline inaccessible images of “the perfect body”. There is no escaping these pictures because they are everywhere like insects buzzing in your ear, the infomercials, ads, articles, shows, magazines, supplements, telemarketers all manifesting weight loss can never just be squashed or tuned out. According to Bordo, “…infomercials hawking miracle diet pills and videos promising to turn our body parts into steel have become as commonplace as aspirin ads.” This is an irrefutably true statement. The inevitable topic of weight cannot be overlooked, thereby planting the idea in people’s minds that they can always improve their figure no matter how toned or ideal it may be.
With all these methods and supplements available, it should seem like losing weight can be achieved with somewhat ease. However, that is not the case. Millions of people dealing with weight issues resort to eating disorders, involving binging or starvation. The idea of starving oneself and the appearance of...

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