Women Studies - the Pretty Paradox

‘The Pretty Paradox'

Contemporary American culture values beauty, glamour, and the importance of being physically attractive. This obsession with appearances and having the ‘ideal body' has led to many issues among both children and adults. These commonly include: eating disorders, low self-esteem, obsessive exercise, feeling of worthlessness, and distorted body images. In the reading ‘The Pretty Paradox,' the author demonstrates an example of this issue with an attractive News Anchor woman from Texas. This article implies how obsessed our culture has become with physical appearances, and what has resulted from it.

‘The Pretty Paradox' talks about a Television News Anchor who quit her successful job after years of hiding her bulimia. The author refers to her as Francis Leland, a tall, blue-eyed blonde with a perfect Barbie-doll figure. Even though she represented our societies the beauty standard, she felt worthless and pressured to maintain her figure. Her story is a perfect example of the phenomenon classified in the reading as ‘erotic capital.' In other words, the more attractive a person is, the more they're economically worth. Besides the media implicitly saying that being beautiful brings success, those who appear on television feel a whole new line of pressure. In Leland's case, she developed an eating disorder as a way to keep her weight down as she appeared on T.V. She knew that without her good looks she wouldn't be have her job as an anchor. I personally think she feels like she has no control over her life and career, and the one thing she can control is her weight. This Texas News Anchor struggled with bulimia all throughout her career. What was more important was maintaining her beauty for the Texas market. The ‘Erotic Capital' phenomenon continues to be a huge problem in our culture today. This article made me question which is more