Body Image

In reference to BIID from last week, as a group we decided that there may be cultural elements involved in its formation.
Given that the emergence of BIID was out of the U.S. in predominantly male cases, the explanation for this was that people were identifying positively with amputee war victims, who were also predominantly male. Admiring the attention that these victims received, copycatting the physical appearance of these soldiers occured.
The same could be said in the 21st century of young women and men. Succesfful, affluent and filthy rich movie stars are successful and subsequently either ridiculously thin (women) or overly muscular (men) due to the scrutiny and pressure they are subjected to.
As a result, the rest of society looks to these icons and aims to copycat their appearance in order to emulate the same success as their favourite stars. this relates very much so to the Sobchack article we were reading this week.

As in this case, people focuse too much on their exterior, their outside, performative success (p. 186) and therefore become more detached from their visual image of themselves.
They get caught up in Iconomachy (of moviestars for example, or war veterans) and reject their current visual representation as acceptable. Meanings are produced from visual representation and this can not be ignored, but it must be remembered that human beings transcend and subtend the images that they produce. There is more so someone than their visual or virtual (facebook) representation.
the pictures of amputees or celebrities become aesthetic, iconic and not clinical as they were intended.

This article "Is Any Body Home?" helped me understand the underlying factors of body image disorders and how people can slowly dissasociate from their physical image. More and more so, we live in a visual culture where appearances do matter regardless of what any self help author may tell you.

You can either create you image according to God and serve him, altough I'd rather not, or through your visual appearance. it is important for your self confidence, your self awareness and even your success in a career. Body image says 'something true about your personality' and is often manipulated frantically on a monday morning before work in order to instantly portray professionalism.

Unfortunately, assumptions will always be made about your personality, self esteem, motivation, likes, dislikes etc purely on your visual appearance. 

Somthing characteristic of body disphorphic disorder, BIID and body image disorders is that our subjective imagining or ouselves and our objective imagining of ourselves can be vastly different (p. 170) As seen in this cartoon, someone suffering from anorexia will think they look fine in person but in a mirror or from the perspective of others they will be terribly unhappy with their appearance.

The most important thing to remember is that all these extreme versions of dysmorphia are changeable. They arise out of the misconception that the body is a fixed entity; people want their bodies to look a certain way of for it to stay the same. They must accept that the body is a malleable substance that is subject to constant change and influence from the environment around it (p. 203).

Bibliography : Sobchack, V. Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, Berkeley: University of Californica Press, 2004, 170-203.