We have just finished reading two separate articles, but on the same topic. The first article of text we read was called "In the eye of the beholder." This was basically saying that we have a global standard that is highly influenced by the western region (the U.S.). And to be "beautiful" we has to be skinny. The second reading was titled "Morality of fat." The most important message I got out of this article was that there are many people that want to be skinny and be "beautiful" but loose determination or will.
I personally thought that the first article was a lot easier to understand. My favorite quote that came out of this text was "There is a global standard of beauty, and it is one which is very western influenced." The reason that I thought this was such an important quote was that our whole conversation was based around this one quote. It really made me think, not only is it messed up that we have to convince people to be underweight here but now other nations are following our horrible example. Some good points that were made in our conversation was that even though there are people that feel a need to do whatever it takes to be skinny (i.e. anorexia, bulimia) there are people who initially don't start out with these thoughts in their heads but the media puts them in there subconsciously. We all made great points about this difficult topic and it really made me think that, we have a serious problem on out plate and if we don't do something about it soon, I think it will be the leading cause of death.
The second text we had to read was titled, "Morality of fat". This one was kind of hard to figure out the main concept of this one, the idea that I got from this was that that many people thought that by trading one kind of fat for a nother, for instance "If they dont have the burger, they are going to have the fries." I agree with what this article is saying, I think the main reason that people do this is because they are simoky uneducated and have no guidence to tell them whats right from wrong.
ME AND MY FAMILY IN HAWAII...
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Alex (Robert/A-Rob),
I would first like to start off by saying, lovely post! In your post you described a certain quote from the article “In the eye of the beholder”, which was the same quote that I picked out in my response to this article. I also found this quote to be a key concept in the article and our seminar conversation, because although I believe that cultures have their own perception of beauty, it is becoming more obvious that there is only one ideal of beauty that is being projected. I too find it “messed up” that in American society today people connect “beauty” with the idea of thinness and being “healthy”. However, just because a person is thin, doesn’t truly mean that they are healthy. It is the process that a person takes in order to become healthy that truly makes them a healthy being. It upsets me even more that while so many Americans believe this, our beliefs are being impinged on to other cultures. I also agree with the point that “…there are people who initially don't start out with these thoughts in their heads but the media puts them in there subconsciously.” Although I don’t hold the media entirely responsible for the “beauty epidemic” we have now, the underlying messages that the media conveys in their advertising promotes thinness and has lasting effects in our minds. Many of us don’t realize the effect that certain images we see on tv or in a magazine, make impressions in our minds to support the belief that being beautiful is being thin. We do have a “serious problem in our plate” because if not enough positive advertising is there to help protect us as a public, then this problem could escalate into something even bigger. We as a society, must try to have a stronger will in order to stray away from indulging in things that could have negative effects on us. Having a stronger will would protect us against ourselves…
Sidenote: I too enjoyed all of our seminar conversations. It helped broaden my thoughts and ideas as we as a class shared our ideas with each other. I hope to have future seminar conversations with you and the rest of our class =]
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