ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the behavior of dieting, the beliefs and environmental influences drive that behavior, outside the context of actual body weight measurement, and classification. It seeks to explain why women adopt or reject the thin ideal, how this affects dieting behavior by analyzing the social construction of the thin ideal, how women respond to it through the following questions. The questions are: How are women pressured to conform to the thin ideal? How do women respond to that pressure? If there is resistance to the thin ideal, how is it expressed? The chapter illustrates the argument that women play a prominent role in the reproduction of, and resistance to, the thin ideal. It focuses on the subjective experience of dieting, the thin ideal to understand how women respond to the social construction of gendered bodies. The chapter clearly shows that women react to the thin ideal in a myriad of ways: accepting, reinforcing, and resisting the dominant discourse.
