Sociological Imagination Paper

1657 Words7 Pages
The Sociological Imagination is a book written by the American Sociologist, C. Wright Mills, in 1959. The book focuses on the concept that Mills created to help describe the insight offered by the discipline of sociology. Mills defined the sociological imagination as “…the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society” (C. Wright Mills, 1959). In other words, “the sociological imagination is what we need to use to understand how societies control and change their members and, at the same time, are constantly changed by the actions of their members” (L. Tepperman & P. Albanese, 2014, p. 3). Using this concept properly will allow someone to shift from one perspective to another and have the ability to perceive situations…show more content…
Body image is the way someone sees themselves and imagines how they look. It is common to struggle with body image, no matter who you are because of how society has portrayed women. When scanning through a magazine there is typically a trend found between the models displayed. The women are usually stick thin, tanned, with perfect hair, beautiful eyes and perfectly straight white teeth. Young girls have started comparing their own bodies to the ones of the highly photo shopped and unrealistic women and has resulted in use of unhealthy techniques in attempt to make themselves “fit in” and look more like the women that are being advertised. Although there have been many attempts to change societies views, female body image continues to be negatively influenced through many aspects within our…show more content…
This makes a large impact on someone’s self esteem and body image just by comparing themselves to models or celebrities, but when girls start comparing themselves to their friends and peers, it leads to additional emotional damage. There are multiple websites online and on phones that allow people to share their photos for everyone to view, ‘like’ and comment on. Receiving ‘likes’ is and encouraging experience, especially on an image that displays someone’s face or body. Typically, girls will find themselves focusing on how many ‘likes’ they received on a photo and compare them to how many other girls have. This can cause jealousy and competition between friendships and bring down girl’s self confidence. Comparing appearance to friends is not the only thing in friend groups that negatively effect body image, but conversations including ‘fat talk’ can also lead to and increase of body dissatisfaction. Fat talk is a form of negative body-related conversation about self-degrading, thin-ideal endorsing topics. Fat talk is not the thoughts that go through and individuals mind about their body but instead, the body-related comments someone says to others about themselves. Fat talk can involve anything criticism discussed about body parts and the explanation of wanting to change their appearance through physical activity or dietary changes, such as planning to restrict
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