2016年12月大学英语四级阅读理解习题及答案(14)

　　Questions 46-55 are based on the following passage.

　　Beauty and Body Image in theMedia

　　A. Images of female bodies are everywhere. Womenand their bodyparts--sell everything from food to cars.Popular film and television actressesare becoming younger, taller and thinner. Some have even been known tofaint onthe set from lack of food. Women's magazines are full &articles urging thatif they can just lose thoselast twentypounds, they'll have it allthe perfect marriage, loving children, great sex,and a rewarding career

　　B. Why arc standards of beauty being imposed on women, the majorityofwhom are naturally larger and moremature than any of the models? The roots,some analysts say, are economic. By presenting an ideal difficult toachieve andmaintain, the cosmetic and diet product industries arc assured of growth andprofits. And it's noaccident that youth is increasingly promoted, along withthinness, as an essential criterion of beauty. If not allwomen need to loseweight, for sure they're all aging, says the Quebec Action Network for Women'sHealth inits 2001 report. And, according to the industry, age is a disasterthat needs to be dealt with.

　　C. The stakes are huge. On the one hand, women who are insecure about their bodies arc more likely tobuybeauty products, new clothes, and diet aids. It is estimated that the dietindustry alone is worth anywherebetween 40 to 100 billion (U.S.. a year selling temporary weight loss (90% to 95% of dieters regainthe lostweight.. On the other hand, research indicatesthat exposure to images of thin, young, air-brushed femalebodies is linked todepression, loss of self-esteem and the development of unhealthy eating habitsin womenand girls.

　　D. The American research group Anorexia Nervosa & Related EatingDisorders, Inc. says that one out of everyfour college-aged women usesunhealthy methods of weight control--including fasting, skippingmeals,excessive exercise, laxative (泻药. abuse, andself-induced vomiting. The pressure to be thin is also affectingyoung girls:the Canadian Women's Health Network warns that weight control measures are nowbeing takenby girls as young as 5 and 6. American statistics are similar.Several studies, such as one conducted by MarikaTiggemann and Levina Clark in2006 titled "Appearance Culture in 9- to 12-Year-Old Girls: Media andPeerInfluences on Body Dissatisfaction," indicate that nearly half of allpreadolescent girls wish to be thinner, andas a result have engaged in a dietor are aware of the concept of dieting. In 2003, Teen magazine reported that35percent of girls 6 to 12 years old have been on at least one diet, and that 50to 70 percent of normal weightgirls believe they are overweight. Overallresearch indicates that 90% of women are dissatisfied with theirappearance insome way. Media activist Jean Kilbourne concludes that, "Women are sold tothe diet industryby the magazines we read and the television programs we watch,almost all of which make us feel anxiousabout our weight."

　　E. Perhaps the most disturbing is the fact that media images of femalebeauty are unattainable for all but a verysmall number of women. Researchersgenerating a computer model of a woman with Barbie-doll proportions,forexample, found that her back would be too weak to support the weight of herupper body, and her bodywould be too narrow to contain more than halfa liverand a few centimeters of bowel. A real woman built thatway would suffer fromchronic diarrhea ( 慢性腹泻. and eventually die frommalnutrition. Jill Barad,President of Mattel (which manufactures Barbie., estimated that 99% of girls aged 3 to 10 years old own atleast oneBarbie doll. Still, the number of real life women and girls who seek asimilarly underweight body isepidemic, and they can suffer equally devastatinghealth consequences. In 2006 it was estimated that up to450,000 Canadian womenwere affected by an eating disorder.

　　F. Researchers report thatwomen's magazines have ten and one-half times more ads and articlespromotingweight loss than men's magazines do, and over three-quarters of thecovers of women's magazines include atleast one message about how to change awoman's bodily appearance--by diet, exercise or cosmetic surgery.Television andmovies reinforce the importance of a thin body as a measure of a woman's worth.Canadianresearcher Gregory Fouts reports that over three-quarters of the femalecharacters in TV situation comedies areunderweight, and only one in twenty areabove average in size. Heavier actresses tend to receive negativecomments frommale characters about their bodies ("How about wearing a sack?" ., and 80 percent of thesenegative comments are followed by cannedaudience laughter.

　　G. There have been efforts in the magazine industry to buck (抵制，反抗. the trend. For several years the Quebecmagazine Coup de Pouce hasconsistently included full-sized women in their fashion pages and Chatelainehaspledged not to touch up photos and not to include models less than 25 yearsof age. In Madrid, one of theworld's biggest fashion capitals, ultra-thinmodels were banned from the runway in 2006. Furthermore Spainhas recentlyundergone a project with the aim to standardize clothing sizes through using aunique process inwhich a laser beam is used to measure real life women's bodiesin order to find the most tree to lifemeasurement.

　　H. Another issue is the representation of ethnically diverse women inthe media. A 2008 study conducted byJuanita Covert and Travis Dixon titled"A Changing View: Representation and Effects of the Portrayal ofWomen ofColor in Mainstream Women's Magazines" found that although there was anincrease in therepresentation of women of c01our, overall white women wereoverrepresented in mainstream women'smagazines from 1999 to 2004.

　　I. The barrage of messagesabout thinness, dieting and beauty tells "ordinary" women that theyare always inneed of adjustment--and that the female body is an object to beperfected. Jean Kilboume argues that theoverwhelming presence of media imagesof painfully thin women means that real women's bodies have become invisible in the mass media。 The real tragedy, Kilbourne concludes, is that many womeninternalizethese stereotypes, and judge themselves by the beauty industry'sstandards. Women learn to comparethemselves to other women, and to compete withthem for male attention: This focus on beauty and desirability"effectivelydestroys any awareness and action that might help to change that climate."