Meaning of the body in czech society

Body image and midlife generation

Capture 1 - Intoduction

First capture is presenting the work and telling main goals of whole work and each capture. Lets move directly to second capture.

Capture 2 – Body in social sciences

This capture is little bit a trip to history, filosophy, sociology. There is spoken the interaction between expressions body – soul during the history. From the Aristoteles vision in initial that the soul is the main principal and forms body, through the middle ages and influence of Christianism when body is just the cover for soul, to new filosophic tendencies in the final where the soul is conceptualized as a part of human body, human body is not just a object anymore and its necesarry to „understand“ it.

Next is the interaction of body and culture. There are mentioned 3 sciences related with interaction body - culture: sociocultural antopology, sociology or gender studies.

Follows the meanings of the body as a symbol – ways how is the body used as a social or religious symbol, or control of the body in the connection with social norms; body as result of the relations of power; body in a theory of the proces of civilization; body as an object of consumption.

Author also mentioned other sciences which can be related with meaning of body as estetics, kinantropology, psychology, neurology or medicine.

The goal of this capture was to show up ways of thinking about human body.

Capture 3 – Exploration of the facts in literature

In this capture are written authors and titles of the books which the author of this work had used. At the principal author mentions two most important books which are: Ludmila Fialová: Body image jako součást sebepojetí člověka (Body image as a part of the person selfthinking*) and Sarah Grogan: Body image, psychologie nespokojenosti s vlastním tělem (Body image, understanding body dissatisfaction in men, women and children).

First publication by Fialová is about psychological and sociological meaning of body and (which would be very useful in this case) there is visible influence of her discipline – physical education. Also big importance is that this study is one of the few studies in this field deal with Czech population.

Second publication by Grogan is also about psychological and sociological meaning of body image. The importance of this publication author sees in studying man and women in the same level through all ages and in many information obtained by researches in Great Britain, U.S.A. and Australia.

Author also mentions many other publications about body image with a little summary about every mentioned, but my opinion is that it’s not necessary to write it down here, because all of these publications are listed in the bibliography.

Capture 4 – Metodology

This part is appertained to the research. Here are written all used strategies and ways how to reach the results. For me is in this case important just the part 4.1 – Selection of the respondents, locality and date of the research. The important information is about respondents: ordinary people of the midlife age (between 35 and 61 ages), just for let you imagine about which category of Czech people will be talking about.

Capture 5 – Body image

The first part of this capture is focused on the body image – definitions, meanings, explanation. The second part is parted in different objectives, where will be mentioned more results of the research related to these objectives. But lets go back to the first part.

The definition of the body image is a subjective picture of one's own physical appearance established both by self-observation and by noting the reactions of others (Paul Schilder, 1950). Is said that the body image is influenced by many sources as family, friends but also by medias.

There are 3 main terms used in relation with body image: visage, healthy, efficiency. The importance of these three components is changing with age and is dependent on sex. The way of perception of people body was investigated with questionnaire asking. The question: “In which situation do you have good feeling of your body?” brought the answer of the way of perception of body or which component people take more important. Results of the research showed up that men perceive their body through efficiency and health, women of course through visage or beauty, second part of women respondents answered that they feel good during doing any sport exercise, so through the third component – efficiency. Also impressive results is that men perceive their body more positive than women (author says that some men answered that they have good feeling of their body every time, but no women answered like that. On the other hand some women answered that they never have good feeling of their body and there was any men who answered like that).

Author also engages in the question about changing the importance of these three components related to changing age. She found out that that for ½ women respondent was visage more important in younger ages, for 1/6 of woman respondents was visage important all the time same; for 2/3 men respondents was visage more important in youth, for more than 1/3 was the visage important all the time. In the case of health ½ of women respondents said that health was important apart from changing of age, ½ answered that health is for them more important nowadays;            in men population almost 2/3 respondents said that health was important all the time apart from changing age. In the case of efficiency for 1/6 of women respondents was efficiency more important in youth, for 2/6 is more important now and for ½ was important always; for almost 2/3 of man respondents is efficiency important always. Finally it’s possible to say that the visible was more important for men and women in youth but health and efficiency is still same important during maturing.

In two following subcaptures are these components more specified.

5.1 Visage

Visage is one of the ways of communication with world. All respondents answered that it’s really important to take care of our visage, but the volume of the care was different. Author shows in that the relation between the answer and kind of society where the person lives in.

For the question if it’s necessary to look good in first meeting the answer of ¾ of respondents was positive. Visage is for many people important as a respect to other people or the expression of life position.

There was also visible the relation between visage and type of situation or kind of society where people are passing over (good looking in theater, meetings but also in work). Other way of saying is that higher social status means higher demands for visage. Take care of visage respondents mean hygiene, stylized hair, nails and beard, choice of clothes.

The answer for the question if the respondents want to say something with their visage was mostly negative. But actually is it possible not to say anything through the visage? Many women respondents just said that they choose their style of visage according to their age.

One part of the questionnaire was about “making body nicer” through make-up, hair styling, shaving legs and underarms. Most of the respondents think that these activities are normal. Negative answers were related with tattoo and piercing, plastic surgeries and liposuctions. It doesn’t mean that people criticized plastic surgeries in general, just answered that they wouldn’t undergo that. By contrast most of them criticized tattoo and piercing in general.

Generally men are taking care of their body mainly through sport exercise, reduce of alimentation (diets) and visits of hairdresser (but just because society demand it). Women excepting sport exercise and reduce of alimentation were spoken mainly about hairdresser, make-up and shaving legs.

Arise from results that almost all men are satisfied with their visage but almost 1/3 of women respondents are not satisfied with their visage.

5.2 Health and efficiency

Almost all of respondents perceive direct relation between health and efficiency. There were two points of view: 1. people need to be healthy to be able to do sports; 2. people get healthy through doing sports. Respondents talked about health in relations with healthy life style (moving and alimentation). 2/3 of respondents said that they try to live healthy and different idea of healthy life was visible. Men think that they can live healthy through the sports and right alimentation, women added more aspect of healthy life such as strain and happy mind, avoidance of cigarettes and alcohol, enough of sleep and relaxation.

Although the fundamental topic of interview was visage, results show up that health is the most important component of the body image for most of the respondents.

Capture 6 – Beauty

Author mentions two influences related to sensation of beauty: social ideal of beauty and criterions and standards of each person. Most of respondents didn’t make any difference between physical and psychical beauty but felt beauty as a harmony of both.

Some questions were focused to opinion what people think about attractive people. The answer to questions “attractive people are more successful in society”, “attractive people are usually slim” and “attractive people can find their partner easier” were mostly positive.

Other question was focused on the reason why people want to be beautiful. Main answer was that they feel good when they look good and that they want to be beautiful for other people especially for their partners.

Capture 7 – Sensation of fatness

The beauty goes hand in hand with emphasis to slim figure. Results say that slim figure has really big role in life of almost all women respondents, men don’t make so big emphasis to slim figure in their life. Any of the women respondents didn’t related fatness and beauty.

Respondents mentioned three aspects how can they feel fatness: less flexibility of body, negative reactions of other people and small clothes which used to fit them time before.

The answer of the question if respondents would like to change something on their body was mostly positive. All of them wanted to be more slim (respondents with lower education wanted to be slim more than the respondents with higher education), ½ of respondents would like to change the shape of heir figure.

People didn’t perceive the fatness bad just in case of them self but also in case of other people. They didn’t criticized fatness in general but in case of their potential partners.

Generally women perceive the fatness much more negative than men and slim figure take as a goal they want to reach or reality that they want to keep.

Capture 8 – Growing old

From results arise that people don’t perceive growing old as something bad. They take it as a natural process in human life. Most of the respondents feel them self as an age they really have. The only one difference between men and women was that men related growing old with loosing of physical efficiency and women with changing of visage.

Author also tried to find out if people think that growing old means loosing of attraction. Most of the answer was positive.

The most common consequences of growing old were mentioned canities, wrinkles, thickening, flabbiness, less efficiency, sicknesses.

Impressive thing for me was the point of solving the problem of canities. As men as women said that growing old is related with canities, different opinion was but with solving this problem. Women normally colour their hair but men were fundamentally against that.

Capture 9 – Influence of medias

This capture wasn’t really important for me, because it is focused much more to the psychological aspect of feeling body and thinking about that.

Capture 10 – Conclusion

Goal of this work (as author says) was to find out how the generation of midlife age feels its body.

Main conclusions of the work are:

As men as women take more importance to health than to visage and efficiency (men take more importance to efficiency and women to visage).

Both gender perceive physical and psychical part of body in harmony but with growing age also grows the importance of psychical aspect of body (which doesn’t mean that they don’t care of the other aspect of body).

Most of respondents were satisfied with their body, women were more unsatisfied than men and the reason was usually fatness.

At the end of the conclusion author mentions 4 kinds of feeling or perceiving of body:

1.      Diets, loosing of weight and beautifying of body.

2.      Sport, motion and healthy life style.

3.      “Add: Finding ideal man/woman”.

4.      Intellectual status – no care of questions related with body.

Author’s interpretation of these lineas:

1.      Person get emphasis to physical appearance

2.      Person get emphasis to health of body and it’s efficiency

3.      Person get emphasis to physical appearance and perceive other people through it.

4.      Person get emphasis to psychical aspect more than to physical.

So at the end – how people in midlife age in Czech Republic feel their body? Generally they feel good with their body and if they don’t they don’t say.

Comment

Nowadays the meaning of the body is very important in human communication. When you see one person you can imagine which kind of person it is before he/she says anything before, for me its also kind of nonverbal communication. Human body is beeing borned in specific culture or society, which forms it and also forms the meaning of the human body in its cultural context.

I choose this work because I think nowadays there is such a big emphasis on the appearence of body and this work is good for show up what is the „good-looking body“ for czech society.

This work had been worked out by Bc. Monika Hrčková at the University of Pardubice in Czech Republic. It‘s kind of research (by questionaries) with precedent synthesis of meaning of body in social sciences.

I’m going to make a summary of this work and i’ll focus in the results of the research to show up little the way of thinking of czech people.