Obesity is shown to emotionally affect women more severely than men. Number of surveys and studies has revealed startling yet true fact that obese women tend to have a feeling of lower self esteem and negative body image than women who are normal weight. With repeated failures of weight loss plans and diet plans, women are embarked by a feeling of incapability and low self-esteem.
Body image for women remains one of utmost importance and makes her confident about what it looks like to her and how looks to others. The relationship between body image and self esteem is complicated yet both are closely associated with obesity.
It is not new if an obese woman thinks the way, “I am fat, I look funny” “So I am not worthy of anything”. Though these are not researched well but improved body image has direct impact on a woman’s self-esteem.
Therefore, it is important for women to learn to love themselves and to create a healthy and smart lifestyle for them that do not emphasize weight loss as the only measure of good health.
Society does matter
Whatever the society is, a woman is always brought up a message that she must be beautiful to be valuable. From a tender age, women are encouraged to be delicate, frail or “ethereal.” If a woman is not meeting those so called “acceptable” body size then she must be ready to face discrimination and prejudice in society.
It is very common to observe that women are very conscious about their eating habits. It is taught to them from a young age that what to eat and what to avoid to keep a good figure and keep off fat.
Today when we are living in an age of equality and empowerment, women are still starving themselves through diet and weight preoccupation while assuming that they can go well along with their better fed i.e. male counterparts. Thus, the increasing stress on thinness in our culture not only oppresses women, but it also serves as a form of social control or better say social check.
