i need to lose weight

12/1/2024

Sometimes I think about how being a woman in our culture is truly difficult. There are many reasons why: economy and labor, patriarchy, gender inequality, healthcare, reproductive rights, and violence. I want to hone in on body image. We, particularly we women, seem to be defined by our bodies. Our sense of self-worth is vastly impacted by how we appear, or how we think we appear. I think our society is to blame. Whereas many influences within the family system can contribute to body image issues, social media has played a significant role in perpetuating our assessment of perfection, or simply body satisfaction. I haven’t met any woman in my adulthood who is satisfied with their weight: from the very slim to the overweight person. A negative body image leads to low-self-esteem and depression. Research reveals that over 90% of women are unhappy with their bodies. I’m sure you have experienced this within yourself or with your peer group and friends: a repeated and familiar conversation about the need to lose weight and the undoing of any compliments given regarding appearance with a response of what needs to be fixed. My motto has become “easier said than done”. It’s my way of conveying empathy around this struggle, and it happens to be true. We all know there are things we would like to be different; things about ourselves we would like to change. But it can be very hard to just change. Yet we have to start. What would it look like to put the energy that we give to our bodily weight on to something else? How do you think you would spend that emotional energy elsewhere? Might the time you spend on assessing your appearance distract from something even harder (to process, to feel, to do? I propose that the real start to change is to uncover what the fear is regarding making the change, ie: fear of failure; fear of feeling good (yes that can be); fear of contending with other challenging feelings? Start the work on yourself. If we could “just do it”, we would have already. Go deep.

2 Comments

Sr. Alisa

9/18/2025 02:50:03 pm

Reading this post, many concepts regarding body imaging truly resonated with me. I was able to make many connections to the unit on "Oppression of Woman" in the course Diversity. The extensive pressure on woman to concentrate on their appearance and how they present themselves truly leads to a lot of low self-esteem in many people. I personally even would say that the 90% of women being unsatisfied with their bodies may even be an understatement, because the pressure from social media and society makes it hard for any woman to accept their bodily features even if they are pleasing.
I was also able to connect the issue of body imaging mentioned in this post to an issue I observe in my Indian community. When a woman reaches their mid 20s families usually seek out wedding proposals. However, more than the personality characteristics, there is emphasis placed on how the woman looks. Due to the preference for women who are thin, the older family members may even upfront tell a woman to stop eating because no one will want to marry them if they are fat. The emotional struggles they may feel due to the constant shaming may have inhibited them in being their true self in so many ways as they are trying to please society by physically trying to emulate societal expectations on what a woman should look like.
I don't think it is easy for a woman to reallocate the energy she places on worrying about her appearance to something constructive with extreme social pressures constantly around her as the situation I mentioned before. However, if someone comes to the internal realization that worry will not change anything rather than harm one's emotional health and accepting oneself is the best solution, overcoming societal pressure would be possible. Though it is hard to change societal viewpoints, for this issue I think there has to be efforts to educate people on valuing a person based on their characteristic rather than the shape of a person's body starting elementary level, because it is the convictions one obtains as a child that guide their views as an adult.

Jenna

9/19/2025 01:59:15 pm

Reading this blog, I was not expecting it to take the turn it did on asking myself why I put such an emphasis on my appearance. The importance of the way women look has been going on for decades, and I feel that it is socialized in us women to focus on our physical appearance so much. I know I can be hard on myself in many aspects of my life, including my physical appearance especially when it comes to me weight. It’s interesting how the amount of energy I spend on stressing on what I’m eating, or what to wear to hide certain things I don’t like about myself, is taking me away from putting my energy into other areas of my life. Personally, I think it is about control. I feel there is a lack of control in certain areas of my life, so I feel my physical appearance is all I can control, which is why I put so much emphasis on it. It is possible it feels easier to critique the physical parts of myself because society already expects that of me being I am a woman. There are personal and social motivations on why I emphasize my physical appearance so much, but it could be hiding much more serious things I don’t want to acknowledge.

i need to lose weight

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