Summarize the social significance of gender. Address eating problems and bodybuilding as part of your analysis
What will be an ideal response?
Gender is a social construction with important consequences in everyday life. Gender stereotypes hold that men and women are inherently different in attributes, behavior, and aspirations. Stereotypes define men as strong, rational, dominant, independent, and less concerned with their appearance. Women are stereotyped as weak, emotional, nurturing, dependent, and anxious about their appearance. The social significance of gender stereotypes is illustrated by eating problems. The three most common eating problems are anorexia, bulimia, and obesity. With anorexia, a person has lost body weight due to a compulsive fear of becoming fat. With bulimia, a person binges by consuming large quantities of food and then purges the food by induced vomiting, excessive exercise, laxatives, or fasting. With obesity, individuals are 20 percent or more above their desirable weight as established by the medical profession. According to sociologist Becky Thompson, explanations regarding the relationship between gender and eating problems must take into account a complex array of social factors, including gender socialization and women's responses to problems such as racism and emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Bodybuilding is another gendered experience.
Bodybuilding is the process of deliberately cultivating an increase in the mass and strength of the skeletal muscles by means of lifting and pushing weights. In the past, bodybuilding was predominantly a male activity. Today, an increasing number of women engage in this activity.
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