Big chest, small waist and voluptuous booty.
Such are characteristics of what the ideal female body is in today’s society, or at least that is what the media is constantly portraying.
In order to obtain this image, some women are undergoing plastic surgery, slaving away at the gym or using waist trainers for that hourglass figure that is hard to achieve on their own.
“There are two different types of waist trainers,” sales associate of Exotica Lingerie Barbara Mary said. “There is a steel bone and spiral boning; both are made of metal.”
Mary said that the steel bone, the skeleton within the garment, is the element of waist trainers that people complain about the most.
I realized the ridiculous trend was growing when I saw that my 48-year-old mother had one in her closet.
“Our society sees women as beautiful figures if they have a full hourglass body, which celebrities aim for or have,” senior psychology major Lisa Can said. “In this day and age, with all the technology we have, it is easy for women to compare themselves to others, which leads to crazy weight loss trends.”
California State University, Long Beach lecturer Dr. Rosie Kar said that there is a long history, colored by Eurocentric aesthetic standards, of wanting to achieve an “ideal” hourglass figure.
“Cosmetic or popular garments worn by celebrities and whatnot are very different than medical devices prescribed by physicians for people who have recently given birth,” Kar said.
Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies professor Jonathan Wysocki said that conventions of attraction are limited to a narrow set of factors.
“These factors are determined by the men who deem what is sexy,” Wysocki said. “[These are] the men who run the media as well as the fashion, beauty, diet and fitness industries.”
Wysocki said that in an ideal society, we would value a wide variety of woman’s choices to present themselves visually. But in order to get to this point, we as a society would need to not care as much about the way a woman looks.
“Women see themselves as objects in this society, and then adhere to the centuries-old conventions set by men,” Wysocki said. “This fashion trend is connected to the fact that we live in a patriarchal society that dictates dominant messages about ideal beauty.”
Kar said that people need to keep in mind that people like celebrities that photograph themselves using waist trainers and then post those images on social media are often given monetary compensation for doing so.
“Capitalist endeavors and business ventures are famous for preying on insecurities, and for many people, weight/body image is something very serious,” Kar said.
According to an article by Marie Claire, the 500-year-old device crushes your organs, compresses your lungs and fractures your ribs.
Having a device that can restrict my breathing and potentially deform and move my organs does not sound so ideal to me.
Truthfully, I’d rather be overweight than harmful to my body to conform to what ideals society sets out.
