https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.058
Regaining Body Image Positivity and Self-Acceptance: A Study on Social Gaze in Laura Dockrill’s Big Bones
VAISHNAVI C. S.
Research Scholar
Department of English and Centre for Research
Sree Ayyappa College for Women, Chunkankadai
Affiliated to Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, India
Abstract: Body Studies has become prominent in the stream of humanities. Contemporary issues of femininity have pertained more on the way in which the body image of women is fixed by the structured norms of culture and society. Anorexia Nervosa has become the strongest psychic ailment in the current society as hysteria was during the early decades of the twentieth century. Thus, adopting body image positivity is mandatory to make oneself feel optimistic and to challenge the beauty standards pertaining to gender.
Laura Dockrill’s Big Bones unravels the story of Bluebell, a confident girl in her teens and her strong views that question the ideologies of society and the medical industry when they nurture girls and women to adapt an image of the female body related to social constructs. The study explores Big Bones by substantiating it with the perspectives of Naomi Wolf to provide a solution for the problems related to female body image. The objective of the study is to explore the fabricated conventions of female body standards, the ways to maintain body image positivity and to achieve the freedom and individuality of beauty. The paper further unravels the factors attributed to family sectors and the pressure they place on young children to maintain conventional beauty standards.
Keywords: Body image positivity, self-acceptance, beauty standards, gender, societal constructs
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