research Current on the beauty culture has to be re-evaluated. It is believed that women strive to succeed in the thin culture, where every woman has an ideal image of a skinny, tall, and beautiful women as the perfect type. However this is not true, because problems such as eating disorders and addictive plastic surgery occur in non thin cultures. Current scholarly approaches include three models that categorize eating disorders. The first model is the biomedical model where it is used to explain why people have eating disorders and possible treatment. Under this model, eating disorders are physiological meaning they occur inside the body. This may be the case in some situations but it does not describe all women. This model ignores social and cultural factors, which influences many people to have eating disorders. The second model is the psychological model. This model based eating disorders as a disease occurring only in white, middle class women. Since there is little to no research done on eating disorders in minority groups, this model ignores women with problems that don't fit the criteria for the disorder. This is very dangerous and in many cases causes misdiagnosis and ignorance from doctors to the minority groups. This model uses emotions, mind processes and cultural factors to determine why eating disorders started and uses therapeutic treatment. This model is effective because our consumer culture strives on being perfect by purchasing and having the best material products which ultimately make you look beautiful too. The third model is the feminist model which says that eating disorders are gendered and are mainly for females. They believe that eating disorders result from women's role in society and thin culture. It is expected for women to look perfect in order to succeed as if it were a requirement in our society. This model limits eating disorders to only females which ignore many instances with male eating disorders. These models are important in understanding gender and feminism. If it is believed that only women suffer from eating disorders or low self esteem, then would a male transgender immediately feel self conscious and fat when he dressed into a women? Gender is a separating male and female into groups in relation to culture. If a man crosses over to the other gender, then he must have an eating disorder. This is usually not the case because eating disorders and other image problems are not gender based. The current models in research do a good job of covering many angles as to why eating disorders come to be, but they don't allow much room for individual choice. They say that these problems either result from something happening in your body, your mind, or result from a strict culture. These models don't discuss how sometimes it is a person's choice to be skinny for other reasons than feel the high expectations of society. Many people use eating or not eating to cope with problems such as sexual abuse, poverty and race or class discrimination. Cosmetic surgery also is used to deal with these issues. Even though it may be someone's personal choice to change how they look, it still adds on to the growth of the beauty culture. For example, bell hooks explained how straightening hair was not to be whiter, but it was a ritual between her family and friends that was a transition into adulthood. It was her choice to do that as a child, but others around her just thought she wanted to look whiter. Many African American women do straighten their hair to get a better job or to be accepted by others. It shows how even an individual choice to one person, can be interpreted completely different to someone else. With cosmetic surgery, someone could get a nose job because they broke their nose or can't breathe right, but others may interpret it as they are vain and want to have better facial features. Our beauty culture is all around us and is hard to get away from. Especially with the help of mass media, beauty industries are finding their way into our lives. Another example is Barbie. Even though she seems like a harmless toy, she has actually changed our whole society into thinking what the perfect body is. Instead of having average American women, everyone wants to look like Barbie. With all her success, women feel that they could only be successful if they have the looks and the right body size. Our beauty culture has infected our minds and women no longer appreciate what they are born with.
Social construction theory has been brought up in many readings and many lectures. Social construction theory is a concept or practice which may appear natural to those who accept it, but in reality is an invention of the culture. In social construction, things are not natural but natural things can be changed. Many sex and gender ideologies arise from the social construction theory. An ideology is a shared belief of a culture that perpetuates systems of power. For example, social constructs believe that homosexuality only exists because of human creation of the meaning. It is not natural to be gay, but a person can turn gay in result from their culture or society. Social construction is more open minded that essentialism because essentialism says everything is biologically determined. This is not always the case since there are many variations of gender or sex which can not be biologically produced. A very strong example of how social construct shows that homosexuality, desires, or other concepts are artificially created is of the Sambian ritual. In this ritual, it is a rite of passage for a young man to perform oral sex on an older man in order to move into manhood. Our society would look at that and say that they are gay. However, for their culture, this is a normal act and is not considered gay. Well then, who is right? Social construction allows us to see sex and gender in many views and allow other cultures to be evaluated. Sex and gender are not always into male or female categories and social construct allows for many variations to be accepted.