Media and the Body

While discussing media and the body in class today one thing that came to my mind was how different cultures have different notions of what the ideal woman body is. Looking at any western magazine today it is apparent that the ideal woman is on the verge of being unhealthy and has a body type that is drastically different from the average woman. Even different groups or cliques within the west have different ideas of what a woman should look like or should wear. Sometimes a culture's idea of what is beautiful can be so distorted and unnatural that women actually alter there bodies. In ancient China they believed that having small feet was attractive so at a very young age females would bind their feet so that they would not grow to their natural size. In more recent European history women wore corsets which would damage their vital organs just to accentuate the smallness of their waste. It is strange to me that although we are all humans we have different views as to what the ideal woman should look like; it seems like something that should be universal, but is not.