Japanese Notion of Beauty: Bulimia
In Japan, women are practicing beauty in a way that they have never been able to before as the aesthetic of beauty is shifted becoming “inclusive.” Japanese women have now cultivated a culture where women are depriving themselves of food in order to fit in the model of “inclusive” beauty that has been set for them. More and More Japanese women and girls are bulimic, in order to fit in to the ideal notions of beauty; this is now a dietary practice that has become the reality of many of Japan’s women. This reality is a reality of beauty that Japanese women see themselves needing to fit into as the culture of being skinny is rising and marked as beauty.
The Japanese female culture is constantly surrounded by the images of ideal beauty in the form of super-slender females in magazines, on television, and in metro advertising. Inescapable Japanese women engage in the dietary practice of bulimia in order to belong to a specific space, and that space is beauty. There has been a rise in the percentage of women between the ages of 15 and 19 who are underweight from 13.5 percent to 20.4 percent, and the number of women in their twenties increased from 14.4 to 20.4 percent. In a society today where the outside appearance speaks volumes, this practice of bulimia takes on a role of importance in the lives of many women in Japan, as slim-slender physiques are the accepted images within inclusive beauty.
Some Japanese women have had to practice bulimia in order to be recognized as desirable and fit the reality that is constructed by cosmetics, media, and icons. These distributions are the drivers of thinness, enabling this practice of bulimia in Japanese women. This cultural weight obsession that is occurring in Japanese women is a form defining body image in the Japanese culture to ideally become and stay a part of the inclusive form of beauty.
The Japanese female culture is constantly surrounded by the images of ideal beauty in the form of super-slender females in magazines, on television, and in metro advertising. Inescapable Japanese women engage in the dietary practice of bulimia in order to belong to a specific space, and that space is beauty. There has been a rise in the percentage of women between the ages of 15 and 19 who are underweight from 13.5 percent to 20.4 percent, and the number of women in their twenties increased from 14.4 to 20.4 percent. In a society today where the outside appearance speaks volumes, this practice of bulimia takes on a role of importance in the lives of many women in Japan, as slim-slender physiques are the accepted images within inclusive beauty.
Some Japanese women have had to practice bulimia in order to be recognized as desirable and fit the reality that is constructed by cosmetics, media, and icons. These distributions are the drivers of thinness, enabling this practice of bulimia in Japanese women. This cultural weight obsession that is occurring in Japanese women is a form defining body image in the Japanese culture to ideally become and stay a part of the inclusive form of beauty.
Agency, ISABEL REYNOLDS, Reuters News. 2001. “Eating disorders in Japan on rise, could reach.” The Globe and Mail (Canada), June 26 http://0-www.lexisnexis.com.helin.uri.edu/us/lnacademic/frame.do?reloadEntirePage=true&rand=1273223647451&returnToKey=20_T9286278911&parent=docview&target=results_listview_resultsNav&tokenKey=rsh-20.449155.40685517405 (Accessed May 7, 2010).
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