(Un)Pretty: The Struggle of Teenagers in Alor Fighting Against Body Shaming Seen from Popular Culture

Abstract

Body shaming happens in teenagers and shows how vulnerable teenagers are in maintaining the effect of popular culture. Body shaming can happen whether in fat or skinny people either in teenagers or adults. This thesis contained a short story about how a teenager in Alor fought against body shaming, especially those who are skinny. Nive Sarah as the victim of body shaming has to feel the suffering due to body shaming that has been done by those closest to her such as family and school friends. They become slaves of the beauty standards embedded by social media causing Nive Sarah, whose appearance does not match these standards, to become their target of body shaming and causing the girl to suffer psychologically.

Body shaming seen from popular culture is the theory that the writer would apply in this story as the theory suits the ideology and the purpose in writing this story which is giving the perspective of how popular culture affected people’s thinking of beauty and causes body shaming for those who do not fit the beauty standard that social media made.

To support this thesis, the writer is going to use a story and a film. The first one is a nonfiction book Imperfect: A Journey to Self-Acceptance by Meira Anastasia. The second and last is The Fat Boy Chronicles by Jason Winn.

Through this thesis, hopefully, the readers could have the knowledge of how social media shaped and embedded the beauty standard, have the insight into how body shaming affected the victim’s life, and respect for each other’s appearance.