Lesson 7: Physical Self

The Physical Self: Body Image and Self Esteem

Understanding the self includes understanding the surroundings and what
influence our outlook in our beauty. Culture may seem to have an effect also on how
people view themselves and how they construct their images and boost their self-esteem.
Physical aspect of the self may provide also understanding and the importance of beauty.

The impact of culture on body image and self-esteem: The importance of beauty

▪ After going through all the concepts and theories that may affect the person’s view of his physical
self, there’s another factor that strongly impacts this perception, his cultural milieu. Culture is
defined as a social system that is characterized by the shared meanings that are attributed to people
and events by its members.
▪ There are a lot of movies in the past that is about the body. One of the most successful horror
movies of the 1950s entitled Invasion of the Body Snatcher, wherein human beings were replaced
with new bodies and devoid human emotions. Another is the The Stepford Wives that took the idea
of body replacement. In this movie husbands were killing their wives and replacing them with
robots who look exactly like them, but perfectly submissive. Some other movies about body
includes Shallow Hal (2001), Huge (2010), 200 pound Beauty (2010) and Imperfect (2019).

▪ The makeup of a body are collection of cells, combined into organs, which themselves operate in
systems. In humans, that body typically takes on a form with two arms, two legs, a torso, and a
head. But the question is, is there such thing as universal decontextualized body? The answer is no.
bodies are shaped in countless ways by culture, by society, and by the experiences that are shared
with a social and cultural context. Since it is also shaped by history, there are always changing ideas

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 about it. It can be assumed that body is contingent – meaning molded by factors outside the body,
and the internalized into physical being itself.
▪ A significant aspect of culture that strongly influences adolescents who are in a face-to-face
encounter with their physical selves is how their culture conceptualizes beauty. Young adolescents
are forced to adhere to society’s definition of beauty lest they be labelled ugly or “pangit” in local
dialect.
▪ This is what is called the social constructionist approach to understanding the physical self. This
suggest that beauty, weight, sexuality, or race do not simply result from the collection of genes one
inherited from one’s parents. Instead, these bodily features only take on the meaning that they have.
A person may have a certain set of facial features, or weigh a certain number of pounds and
attractiveness will come from time and place which they live.
▪ These meanings occur within a set of culturally constructed power relations which suggest that, for
example, women must be attractive in order to be valuable. But this process does not just happen
after we enter culture. How those features will be interpreted will then be shaped by culture, but
the features themselves will already be present. Meaning what occurs is that once something comes
to take on cultural meaning, it becomes naturalized: people think that things are the way that they
are because they have always been that way. These meanings have been created, and that they can
change, and that there’s nothing natural at all. Even something that seems to be rooted in the body
as disability is partially socially constructed.
▪ This differs from what might be called an essentialist view of the body. Essentialism means that
bodies are defined entirely by their biological make-up – bones, muscles, hormones, and the like.
Much of human behavior can also be reduced to many of those biological functions, it is referred
by social scientist call this reductionist that idea that complex human behaviors can be reduced to
something as simple as, for example, hormones. This simply means that we cannot understand the
biological organism without first understanding social, cultural, and historical context in which it
exists.
▪ Another example of how norms of masculinity and femininity shape not just behavior, but public
perceptions are those people who did activities of the other gender. They were praised at the same
time criticized just by doing what is not expected to their gender. With this, the idea that is the body
is marked with culture and society is the term social skin to refer to the ways in which social
categories become inscribed onto physical body. Through the social skin, the body becomes the
symbolic stage on which dramas of society are enacted. This idea is from the anthropologist
Terence Turner (1980).

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▪ Another anthropologist, Mary Douglas (1973) said that the body is the most natural symbol for and
medium of classification, and thus rules associated with controlling the body and its processes
emerge as a powerful means of social control. She is the one who centralized the analysis of the
body focused on traditional societies. Therefore, the physical body is a threat to social body.
Further, she finds that societies with strict social limits would regard boundaries with caution
including bodily boundaries.

▪ In sociology, how the body operates as a focus and symbol has been understood as well. In the
fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, the civilization process includes the beginning of
Europeans to internalize many of the external forms of social control; however, shame and
embarrassment took place, controlling their behaviors from within. This control of behavior from
within was made as theory by Erving Goffman (1982) which is called the Dramaturgical theory.
The theory suggest that we are all actors on a stage, and much of what we do is engage in
impression management during which we must monitor and adjust our own behavior in accordance
with how people want others to perceive them.
▪ A woman is what she wears – this statement is from the work of Janes Gaines on fashion (1990)
which implies that women are often defined completely by their clothing –. In this study, it suggest
that people have body images. Body image can be described as a representation of how individuals
think and feel about their own physical attributes. Body image is both internal (personal) and
external (society).
▪ This includes (1) how a person perceive his body, (2) how a person feel about their physical
appearance, (3) how a person think and talk to themselves about their bodies, and (4) a sense of
how other people view their bodies. Though sometimes how a person looks has possibly never held
as much as societal importance or reflected so significantly on our perceived self-worth.
▪ Body image is the mental representation one creates, but it may or may not bear close relation to
how others actually see you. Body image is subject to all kinds of distortion from internal elements
like our emotions, moods, early experiences, attitudes of our parents, and much more. The mass
media has increasingly become a platform that reinforce cultural beliefs and projects strong views
on how we should look, that we as individuals often unknowingly validate it. With such strong

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 societal scrutiny, it is easy to see how the focus is on negative body image. Nevertheless, it strongly
influences behavior. Preoccupation with and distortions of body image are widespread among
American women (and to a lesser extent, among males), but they are driving forces in eating
disorders, feeding severe anxiety than can be assuaged only by dieting.
▪ Having a sense of understanding that healthy attractive bodies come in many shapes and sizes,
and that physical appearance says very little about the character or value of a person, a person can
have a positive body image. How to get to this point depends on the acceptance and esteem that a
person have for himself. This can be related to the meaning of self-esteem. In which, it is related
on how much a person like himself, how they recognize or appreciate their individual character,
qualities, skills, and accomplishments. Like body image, self-esteem can also be based on how a
person think other people look at them as a person.
Self-esteem is the over-all evaluation that a person has of himself which can be positive or
negative, high or low. Self esteem is a measure of the person’s self-worth based on some personal
or social standard. It is a global evaluative dimension of the self.
▪ Self-esteem is how valuable to himself and others he person perceives himself to be. Needless to
say, people with positive or high self-esteem are happier, have sense of accomplishment and
purpose and relate well with others.

▪ The impact of culture on body image and self-esteem had been very crucial for sometimes people
depend on this as when they define beautiful. It has been assumed that preferences for beauty are
gradually learned through cultural transmission and exposure to contemporary media.
▪ Charles Darwin in 1871 became one of the first persons, if not the first, to think and write
extensively about human beauty from a biological point of view, concluding that there is no
universal standard of beauty with respect to the human body and attempts to determine underlying
dimensions of beauty are futile. However, in 1985, contrary to Darwin’s beliefs, Samuels and Ewy
showed that both 3-month-old and 6-month-old infants looked longer at male and female faces
previously rated as attractive by adults, suggesting that infants have the cognitive ability to
discriminate attractiveness. These findings have been further supported, and it has even been shown
that young infants show preferences for attractive faces, measured by looking time, that transcends
gender, race, and age. Problems and other issues will arise when a person’s definition of body
image is different from the understanding of beauty.

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 ▪ Young people put so much pressure on themselves to attain unrealistic ideal to the point of risking
mental and physical health is unacceptable. The following are some aspects in culture that may
have led to some misconceptions:
1. Society’s ideal for the perfect physical form for men and women.
2. Images of perfection brought by all types of media i.e print, television, film, and
internet.
3. Since a standard has been set by society and reinforced by media, any characteristic
that does not conform to the standard is labelled as ugly. Body diversity in size and
structure due to genetic heritability is not tolerated.
▪ These misconceptions strongly affect how the young form their body image and its influence on
their self-esteem. Knowing that adolescence is the period of where self-identity is formed, it is
important for adults in the environment to listen to this young people and provide proper guidance
and support.
▪ Yes, beauty is important. But being beautiful still depends how a person defines beauty and the
standards he sets to meet this definition. It is a big mistake to base beauty on some else’s standard.
People are different and each one is uniquely beautiful.

References:
Arcega, A M., Cullar, D. S., Evangelista, L. D. & Falculan, L. M. (2018). Understanding the Self. Malabon
City: Mutya Publishing House Inc.

Douglas, M (1973) Self-Evidence. Accessed July 24, 2020. https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-

assets/66916_book_item_66916.pdf

Gaines, J (1980). Material Possession. Accessed July 24, 2020.

https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/452/452_chapter_02.pdf

Gazzingan, L. B. et al. (2019). Understanding the Self. Muntinlupa City: Panday-Lahi Publishing House,
Inc.

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