Obsessed with Impression Management: A Critical Sociology of Body Image in Capitalist Society

I can not tell you how many times in my life I have said "if only I were thin. " I honestly feel that life would be much easier for me if I were thin. The key word is "easier. " I think that thin and beautiful people reap the majority of the benefits in this society and I, of course, am not one of them. I have felt this way for as long as I can remember and I really believe it to be true. My weight is something that has always been an issue for me. I can not really understand why I don't lose weight. I know I can do it, like a person who knows she can ace a test if only she studies for it. That is how I feel. I know I can do it. I know it is all in my mind and seems to be just an issue of will power but I can't seem to go down to the weight I desire. Why? Sometimes I think that it is genetics, but then I look at my sisters. Sometimes I think that it is the demand society puts on me to lose weight so I feel that I have to--that the only reasons I even feel like I need to lose weight is because that is what has been thrown at me in the mass media all of my life. From television, to magazines, to my home life, weight has been a constant underlying factor in my life and it just never goes away. From the age of five years old and on I have had a weight problem. One of my main memories of my childhood is my grandmother placing food strategically out of my reach at the dinner table so that I would not overeat. My entire childhood and life thus far has been based on looks. This is true for both the girls and the boys in my family. This is something that is very important to everyone and they pride themselves on our being a good-looking family. Not to brag, but I do have a very good-looking family and none of them is overweight except for me. It all started with my grandmother. Her mother had to be institutionalized in a mental institute and her father just could not take care of three children on his own. He put them into an orphanage. This is where my grandmother stayed until she was eighteen years old. From that point on she was on her own and she believes that her looks got her what she needed in life and if she did not have them she would not have been able to survive. That frame of mind has traveled down the generations in my family--from my mother and aunt and now on to my cousins, sisters, and myself. Sociobiology explores how the body and physical experiences are of central importance to the individual and social life, while the Sociology of the Body explores how our attitudes towards our bodies are socially constructed (Wallace and Wolf, 369). My whole life can be explored using these notions. I am not only an outcast in society because of my weight, but I am the only one like this in my family as well. My whole life has been an emphasis on the body and physical experiences. I can clearly remember walking out of the door at twelve years old and my mother saying to me "put some lipstick on for goodness's sake, you're going out. " In most families, someone that age would not be allowed to wear makeup, but I was taught at a very early age that if you go out of the house, you should have makeup on your face. This brings me to Phenomenology. This is a sociological perspective that begins with the individual and his/her own conscious experience and tries to avoid the prior assumptions and prejudices. It really asks us to question our way of looking at and being in the world. This perspective asks us to assume the role of a stranger by "putting ourselves in other peoples shoes" (Wallace and Wolf, 276). There are three major concepts of phenomenology and all these aspects support the notion that reality is socially constructed. The first is externalization. This is where individuals, by their own activity, create their social worlds. The second is objectivation. This is the process by which the person apprehends life as an order ed or prearranged reality. The third is internalization. …