Blog 9 (make up)

Obesity has become a very common charactersitic among the American people. With all the food possibilities, fast lifestyle, and large portions, I can see what leads to America's growing lifestyles- pun intended. Yet, the media and advertisers take a different spin on the all- American.

People are seen as fit and healthy when males are extremely cut and muscular while women must be extremely lean and thin. In the modeling industry, it was interesting to observe the differences between males and females and how essential these notions of maleness and femaleness have become embedded to that industry. After being exposed to shows like Tyra Banks's America's Next Top Model, Janice Dickinson's Model Agency, Make Me a Supermodel, there also exists the struggle of dealing with the the such essentialized characteristics of what a model really looks like.

Janice Dickinson is an exceptionally infamous supermodel herself with lots of plastic surgery- it's obvious. With her new recent tv series of starting her modeling agency, we see how intense and specific the weeding out process is when doing castings. She is one to typically favor the body type that most American's don't have- overly muscular, fit, extremely skinny, tall- while still having "the face." Even the models that do pass to "fit" her agency struggle as she pokes and prods at their bodies constantly white threatening to drop them if they don't get their body back on track. She challenges them and like it isn't hard enough already, models begin to turn on each other in realizing this is a battle for the survival of the "fittest" in the ideas of what is the "fittest" body types for her agency. With that the models themselves deal with the pressures of one another in competition for remaining with Janice's Agency. This further creates the tension of believing what the body type must be- something that one is not and must strive for. These exclusionary ideals become a continuous examinatin of what is real versus what is constructed socially. When did "plump and pasty" start to look so bad?? Wasn't that a sign of luxury? I guess this aspect has taken its toll on the food that runs through the American body as a whole.

The social construction and constant interjection of body type when obesity is more common factor in determing the body type of the real American bodies. With social construction battling obesity, it's hard to really see them fighting against each other in a binary. They in themselves are battles that both must be delt with in their own realms before expecting a duel between them. If obesity and social construction doesn't change its ways in America soon, there's always the rise of "body construction." Could that be the two working for and against one another in some sense...