The Sandspur

Issue date: 2/26/07 Section: Opinions

Tuesday I found myself downstairs in Dave's half paying attention to a group meeting, R
Spaces I think it was. But that isn't the point. The people who were running the meeting were talking about feminism and body image. They showed a Dove soap ad which showed how the media and how easy it is to completely change the way a woman looks.

So I asked myself, why does the woman in the ad need to be made beautiful? Isn't she beautiful enough as is? The group talked to
a couple people in the audience, but due to the noise of people eating and talking, I couldn't hear the responses. But it got me to thinking though.

I look around at Rollins, and I see all these
beautiful people, whether they make themselves look beautiful or they just naturally are, I'm not sure. But I wonder how many of these people feel the need to
make themselves look good just because who they are with.

Why do we feel the need to impress those around us by dressing up for something as
routine and boring as class? Is it really necessary to get all dressed up with a face covered in make up just to go to the library or to get food? Why bother anyway?

As a woman, it is almost like I'm forced to get dressed up for my classes or else I get dirty looks for wearing jeans that don't hug
my every curve and a sweat shirt. Nobody wants to talk to the girl who doesn't bother getting made up for class.

But why? Just because a girl doesn't wear her shortest skirt and lowest cut top to class doesn't mean she's a boring person. It just means that she'd rather go to class
comfortable instead of trying to impress others. Sometimes I even find myself laughing at how my roommate feels the need to look a certain way just to go watch
movies with her boyfriend.

Being happy with one's body image is not easy. And the pressures that are put on a
woman to look beautiful or sexy or whatever are heavier than almost every other pressure I can think of. Magazines like Cosmo and Glamour rarely show a woman who might be considered curvy. The recent news with Tyra
Banks being called fat is completely ridiculous. Not only is Tyra Bank's height
above average for a woman, even when she was called fat, her weight was still below average for a woman who is 5'10". The media is one of the biggest sources of pressure on a girl's body image.

So maybe that is why women feel the need to look good. Because of the media and because
the guys around us make us seem like monstrous looking creatures when we don't dress up, we feel the need to make ourselves look pretty.

The R Space meeting leaders seemed to have the right idea of getting the audience to realize that there is a problem, but that is
just the beginning. Overcoming the issue of poor body image is a hard one, but it's a fight worth getting into with ourselves because once we have achieved it, it has a tendency to stay with us even through the hard times.

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