scholarly journals The GIRL Curriculum: Co-Constructing Learning About Body Image Through Empowering After-School Programming

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 216-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brianna Meza ◽  
Risto Marttinen
Keyword(s):  
School Personnel ◽  
The Body ◽  
Perceived Barriers ◽  
After School ◽  
Physically Active ◽  
Young Girls ◽  
The Media ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
School Programming ◽  
The Ideal

From a young age, girls experience many influences that may negatively impact how they view their bodies. Many girls are subject to teasing by peers and feel pressure to conform to gender norms. Moreover, the media perpetuates an unattainable and unrealistic image of women, referred to as the ideal female body. Since peers and the media are prominent influences, researchers have implemented curricula as interventions to help girls navigate perceptions of their bodies in a healthy way. Building on prior research, the GIRL curriculum was developed as a semi-structured, co-created curriculum that aimed at engaging girls in critical analysis of media’s representation of female bodies in society. Furthermore, the GIRL curriculum aimed to help girls identify and navigate their possible perceived barriers to physical activity. This curriculum was developed as a response to a lack of resources available for teachers, after-school personnel, and others who work with young girls to engage with the girls about issues of the body in a physically active setting. This program article focuses on the development and implementation of the GIRL curriculum and provides insight, through qualitative analyses, into how a curriculum could help young girls improve their understanding and perception of their bodies and feel empowered. A copy of the co-created curriculum is presented. The researchers urge future practitioners to co-create the curriculum with their participants in order to create opportunities that would allow young girls to view their bodies in a more positive light and feel empowered through a variety of activities.

scholarly journals Dancing in a culture of disordered eating: A feminist poststructural analysis of body and body image among young girls in the world of dance

PLoS ONE ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. e0247651
Author(s):  
Nicole Doria ◽  
Matthew Numer
Keyword(s):  
Eating Disorders ◽  
Body Image ◽  
Adolescent Girls ◽  
The Body ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
Negative Body Image ◽  
Young Girls ◽  
The World ◽  
Poststructural Analysis ◽  
The Ideal

Eating disorders among adolescent girls are a public health concern. Adolescent girls that participate in aesthetic sport, such as dance, are of particular concern as they experience the highest rates of clinical eating disorders. The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of young girls in the world of competitive dance and examine how these experiences shape their relationship with the body; feminist poststructural discourse analysis was employed to critically explore this relationship. Interviews were conducted across Canada with twelve young girls in competitive dance (14–18 years of age) to better understand how the dominant discourses in the world of competitive dance constitute the beliefs, values and practices about body and body image. Environment, parents, coaches, and peers emerged as the largest influencers in shaping the young dancers’ relationship with their body. These influencers were found to generate and perpetuate body image discourses that reinforce the ideal dancer’s body and negative body image.

scholarly journals From female computers to male comput♂rs: Or why there are so few women writing algorithms and developing software

2020 ◽  
pp. 001872672091472
Author(s):  
Rana Tassabehji ◽  
Nancy Harding ◽  
Hugh Lee ◽  
Carine Dominguez-Pery
Keyword(s):  
Software Development ◽  
Qualitative Interview ◽  
The Body ◽  
Theoretical Position ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Women Writing ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
The Ideal

Software development is one of the few professions in Europe and the USA from which women are disappearing. Current explanations range from unproven assumptions that women cannot write algorithms to insights into the misogynistic culture of this profession. This article argues these explanations are inadequate, and illuminates how forms of masculinity constituted within software development put women in the ambivalent position of being either female or a coder, but not both. Using a poststructural theoretical position to analyse materials from a qualitative, interview-based study, we identified three constitutive ontologies of the person circulating within the profession. The Comput♂r is presumptively male and can merge with the machine, although a subset, Geeks, cannot demerge from it. The Human, presumptively female, can communicate with people but not the machine. The Ideal developer claims the best of both, that is, adept at writing algorithms and communicating with people. These ontologies are informed by a theory of the body circulating within software development whose norms are unattainable by women. Female bodies are envisaged as ‘flesh’, and male bodies as a futuristic merger of body and machine. This Janus-faced theory excludes female developers from practising their profession.

scholarly journals Shaping Girls: Analyzing Animated Female Body Shapes

Animation ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-36
Author(s):  
Rebecca Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Body Image ◽  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Young Girls ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Inverted Triangle ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Body Shapes

The debate over whether television and film affect girls’ body image has been contentious. Researchers argue that film and television negatively affect, only partially affect, or do not affect girls’ body image. These studies have one common limitation: they approach animated female bodies as if they are the same because they are, mostly, thin. In this project, the author seeks to extend and complicate this existing scholarship by analyzing bodies in 67 films produced by several American animation studios from 1989 through 2016. In this study, she classifies 239 female characters as one of four body types: Hourglass, Pear, Rectangle, or Inverted Triangle. Her argument is two-fold: (1) over the last 30 years, there has been a shift from a singular dominant shape (Hourglass) to the dominance of several body shapes (especially Pear and Rectangle); and (2) young girls may be affected by characters their own age who have been largely ignored in studies thus far. The author argues that young girls see diverse images of bodies rather than the singular image that scholars study. Girls’ body image may be affected by animation, but animated images are so diverse that this effect may be difficult to determine. A more nuanced understanding of the body shapes animation utilizes may allow researchers to study the more complex messages that girls do or do not internalize.

Suicide and the Media

Crisis ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 163-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Warwick Blood ◽  
Jane Pirkis
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Causal Association ◽  
Media Messages ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Media Portrayal ◽  
The Media ◽  
Actual Suicide ◽  
Multiple Meanings

Summary: The body of evidence suggests that there is a causal association between nonfictional media reporting of suicide (in newspapers, on television, and in books) and actual suicide, and that there may be one between fictional media portrayal (in film and television, in music, and in plays) and actual suicide. This finding has been explained by social learning theory. The majority of studies upon which this finding is based fall into the media “effects tradition,” which has been criticized for its positivist-like approach that fails to take into account of media content or the capacity of audiences to make meaning out of messages. A cultural studies approach that relies on discourse and frame analyses to explore meanings, and that qualitatively examines the multiple meanings that audiences give to media messages, could complement the effects tradition. Together, these approaches have the potential to clarify the notion of what constitutes responsible reporting of suicide, and to broaden the framework for evaluating media performance.

Updating long-held assumptions about fat stigma: For women, body shape plays a critical role

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaimie Krems ◽  
Steven L. Neuberg
Keyword(s):  
Body Shape ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The Body ◽  
Theoretical Assumption ◽  
Obesity Stigma ◽  
Obese Female ◽  
Three Samples ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Different Parts ◽  
Fat Stigma

Heavier bodies—particularly female bodies—are stigmatized. Such fat stigma is pervasive, painful to experience, and may even facilitate weight gain, thereby perpetuating the obesity-stigma cycle. Leveraging research on functionally distinct forms of fat (deposited on different parts of the body), we propose that body shape plays an important but largely underappreciated role in fat stigma, above and beyond fat amount. Across three samples varying in participant ethnicity (White and Black Americans) and nation (U.S., India), patterns of fat stigma reveal that, as hypothesized, participants differently stigmatized equally-overweight or -obese female targets as a function of target shape, sometimes even more strongly stigmatizing targets with less rather than more body mass. Such findings suggest value in updating our understanding of fat stigma to include body shape and in querying a predominating, but often implicit, theoretical assumption that people simply view all fat as bad (and more fat as worse).

Visual body processing’s associations to Body Mass Index and internalization of societal beauty ideals

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Cazzato ◽  
Elizabeth Walters ◽  
Cosimo Urgesi
Keyword(s):  
Body Mass Index ◽  
Body Mass ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
The Body ◽  
Configural Processing ◽  
Cultural Ideals ◽  
Beauty Ideals ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Processing Mechanisms ◽  
Attention To Detail

We examined whether visual processing mechanisms of the body of conspecifics are different in women and men and whether these rely on westernised socio-cultural ideals and body image concerns. Twenty-four women and 24 men performed a visual discrimination task of upright or inverted images of female or male bodies and faces (Experiment 1) and objects (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, both groups of women and men showed comparable abilities in the discrimination of upright and inverted bodies and faces. However, the genders of the human stimuli yielded different effects on participants’ performance, so that male bodies and female faces appeared to be processed less configurally than female bodies and male faces, respectively. Interestingly, altered configural processing for male bodies was significantly predicted by participants’ Body Mass Index (BMI) and their level of internalization of muscularity. Our findings suggest that configural visual processing of bodies and faces in women and men may be linked to a selective attention to detail needed for discriminating salient physical (perhaps sexual) cues of conspecifics. Importantly, BMI and muscularity internalization of beauty ideals may also play a crucial role in this mechanism.

SEMINAL BREAKTHROUGH IN TACTILE PICTOGRAM DESIGN FOR VISUALLY IMPAIRED IN TRAIN STATION

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-60
Author(s):  
Fariz Fadhlillah
Keyword(s):  
Public Transportation ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Great Opportunity ◽  
Train Station ◽  
Impaired Ability ◽  
Semiotic Approach ◽  
The Media ◽  
Impaired Person ◽  
Pictorial Form ◽  
The Ideal

One of the ideal public transportation facilities for the visually impaired in daily activities is trains. To be used at maximum, there is a need for communicative media to support the independence of orientation and mobility for the visually impaired in the train station. The media plays a role in supporting visually impaired individuals to know where they are, where to go, and how to reach the destination. The previous result regarding visually impaired ability to identify pictorial form which is designed with Primadi Tabrani’s ancient visual language semiotic approach shows a great opportunity for a pictogram to be the solution. However, the challenge is how to make the visually impaired person understand the meaning description that has been designed into tactile pictogram by touch. Basic consideration in designing process is the clarity of visual form when being touched, which is influenced by the way the shape is drawn and the tactile height

BODY PRACTICES OF WOMEN IN THE LIGHT OF FEMINIST DEBATES

2018 ◽  
pp. 129-156 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Regulation ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Phenomenological Tradition ◽  
Academic Feminism ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Body Practices

The paper provides an analysis of the structuralist and phenomenological traditions in interpretation of female body practices. The structuralist intellectual tradition bases its methodology on concepts from social anthropology and philosophy that see the body as ‘ordered’ by social institutions. Structuralist approaches within academic feminism are focused on critical study of the social regulation of female bodies with respect to reproduction and sexualisation (health and beauty practices). The author focuses on the dominant physical ideal of femininity and the means for body pedagogics that have been constructed by patriarchal authority. In contrast to theories of the ordered body, the phenomenological tradition is focused on the “lived” body, embodied experience, and the personal motivation and values attached to body practices. This tradition has been influenced by a variety of schools of thought including philosophical anthropology, phenomenology and action theories in sociology. Within academic feminism, there are at least three phenomenologically oriented strategies of interpretation of female body practices. The first one is centred around women’s individual situation and bodily socialization; the second one studies interrelation between body practices and the sense of the self; and the third one postulates the potential of body practices to destabilize the dominant ideals of femininity and thus provides a theoretical basis for feminist activism. The phenomenological tradition primarily analyses the motivational, symbolic and value-based components of body practices as they interact with women’s corporeality and sense of self. In general, both structuralist and phenomenological traditions complement each other by focusing on different levels of analysis of female embodiment.

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hem Borker
Keyword(s):  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Marriage Education ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
The Media ◽  
Education And Employment ◽  
A Site ◽  
Anthropological Literature ◽  
Educational Journeys ◽  
The Ideal

This ethnography provides a theoretically informed account of the educational journeys of students in girls’ madrasas in India. It focuses on the unfolding of young women’s lives as they journey from home to madrasa and beyond. Using a series of ethnographic portraits and bringing together the analytical concepts of community, piety, and aspiration, it highlights the fluidity of the essences of the ideal pious Muslim woman. It illustrates how the madrasa becomes a site where the ideals of Islamic womanhood are negotiated in everyday life. At one level, girls value and adopt practices taught in the madrasa as essential to the practice of piety (amal). At another level, there is a more tactical aspect to cultivating one’s identity as a madrasa-educated Muslim girl. The girls invoke the virtues of safety, modesty, and piety learnt in the madrasa to reconfigure conventional social expectations around marriage, education, and employment. This becomes more apparent in the choices exercised by the girls after leaving the madrasa, highlighted in this book through narratives of madrasa alumni pursuing higher education at a central university in Delhi. The focus on journeys of girls over a period of time, in different contexts, complicates the idealized and coherent notions of piety presented by anthropological literature on women’s participation in Islamic piety projects. Further, the educational stories of girls challenge the media and public representations of madrasas in India, which tend to caricature them as outmoded religious institutions with little relevance to the educational needs of modernizing India. Mapping madrasa students’ personal journeys of becoming educated while leading pious lives allows us to see how these young women are reconfiguring notions of Islamic womanhood.

Embodiment in Ezekiel

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhiannon Graybill
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Bodies ◽  
The Body ◽  
The People ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Constructing Meaning ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter shows how embodiment plays an important role in constructing meaning in the book of Ezekiel. The text contains a number of bodies, including human bodies (Ezekiel, the people of Judah), supernatural or divine bodies (Yahweh, the cherubim, various divine messengers), metaphorical bodies (the female bodies in Ezekiel 16 and 23), foreign bodies (various foreign nations), and animate “dry bones” in Ezekiel 37. The body is central to the practice of prophecy in the book. It is likewise fundamental to performances of gender and to the negotiation of the relationship between Yahweh and the people, including Ezekiel himself. Focusing on the body also highlights the significance of masculinity in the text, as well as its instability.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document