Discrimination
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Discrimination is the act of making assumptions either in favor or against a person based on the group or the category to which that person belongs. Although individuals should be evaluated by their personal merits, in reality, the society judges others based on aspects such as appearance, gender, sexuality, race and religion. Discrimination is the labeling and classifying of people into generalized groups. In “The Lure of the Body Image,” Susan McClelland discusses the victims, sources, and reasons of discrimination to reveal the increasing importance of body image in todays society.
Body images most strongly influence young females and males who feel the need to change their appearance for various reasons such as aesthetics or sexual appeal. McClellands article focuses on males as the victims of discrimination. Due to discrimination, men are pressured to maintain a certain physique. Furthermore, women prefer certain types of men, putting further pressure on the males. This commonly accepted representation of how individuals should appear affects everyone. McClelland reveals the consequences of commercialized images and discrimination on society as people abuse and damage their bodies to obtain these stereotypical images. Some individuals are willing to achieve these images by taking steroids, plastic surgery, liposuction and dieting.
The article discusses the sources of discrimination, especially media such as television, internet and magazines. The media corrupts our minds with a stereotypic image that society sets as a standard to compare itself with. The image that the media portrays is sometimes not realistic
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and difficult to achieve. When individuals see that perfect figure, they think they are only average. As a result, media forces a viewpoint based on prejudice, and causes individuals to pursue this image at any costs, attaining the desired look. In “The Lure of the Body Image,” McClelland examines the Calvin Klein models in their advertisements, who are “buffed up” and “beefy” men. When other men see these models, they become self conscious when they do not meet these standards. The result of the pressure is that it pushes individuals to start working out and dieting. It usually “takes a lot of sweating and spending to achieve a hard-body look”(4), and sometimes, extreme or drastic measures are taken such as surgery and steroids.
McClelland ultimately reveals the reasons for discrimination,