Body Image Perception

Betty Before

In its fifth season, Mad Men tackles a timeless problem for women: Weight. Although it may be hard to believe, but the show made a reference to Weight Watchers as therapy group sessions where women go to weekly meetings to track their weight loss progress. In this season, Don's ex-wife Betty gains a lot of weight and becomes extremely insecure about her looks and her body. Boredom, jealousy, and insecurity dominate Betty's life as a 1960s housewife on her second marriage, and she's turned to bags of Bugles to pass the time. Now determined to lose the weight, the former model turns to a new diet plan gaining popularity with women like her at Weight Watchers.

Betty After

That does not sound like a new problem, because weight has been an obsession for women especially with the outrageous media depictions of skinny celebrities in movies and magazines. It seems as though the problem has actually increased in the recent years, and that is proven by all the weight loss programs available. 

We now have DietWatch, Spark People, The 17 Day Diet, eDiets, and a lot more! Click on the link below to see a list of weight loss programs with ratings and full descriptions: 

http://www.freedieting.com/diet_plan_reviews.htm 

Dima el Charif, a George Washington student, and an avid exerciser, shared her thoughts on the subject: "The relationship clearly is that women compare themselves to other women. They tend to compare themselves to celebrities, therefore many women feel like their bodies are not enough." 

The struggle with weight and body image can be good, and can also be dangerous as Dima asserts "on one hand, this could help people hit the gym more often, on the other hand it sets unrealistic expectations to what they can get out of it" 

There is another serious factor that adds to the problem, which is the standards that women have to look up to. They see sexy and fit women on the cover of popular magazines and billboards, but they tend to forget that most of these images are actually photo shopped and edited to look a certain way. The media has made it very difficult for women to be happy and satisfied with the way they look, and that is the real problem here. Here are some examples of cover magazines that we see every day: