Contemporary social and cultural expectations for young women in America have changed considerably from our mothers’ generations. Bodily alterations to female identity — as new and improved as they claim to be on television or in print, do not enrich our lives.

Youthful and glowing Hollywood goddesses are nipped by plastic surgeons, bleached by cosmetic dentists, highlighted by hair stylists, lipo-sucked at lavish spas and then showered with adoration from the American public for their efforts. After all their hard work and dedication, these women become the reigning beauty queens of modern America. They become the idealized female form: the perfect guide to womanhood.

Jessica Biel’s seductive thinness sizzles off the July cover of Cosmopolitan, and I don’t remember ever seeing a fat woman hidden among thousands of fashion photographs on Vogue’s glossy pages. The women trapped between the pages of mainstream American fashion magazines are rarely, if ever, round and curvaceous like the lovely Marilyn Monroe. The cultural construct of the female body has changed. If shapely Marilyn miraculously rose from the dead and returned to Hollywood in 2005, she would be immediately enrolled in a fat camp.

Unfortunately, obsessions grow like cancer and suffocate the confidence of many young women who don’t see the ideal of American womanhood peering back at them from their bedroom mirrors. One startling revelation that many young women need to confront, including me, is that we waste hours of our time isolating and obsessing over what we view as imperfect body parts.

Female obsessions concerning culturally-defined “bad” body parts — protruding stomachs, saggy butts, heavy hips or thighs — are reinforced and sustained by infomercials promoting ab rollers, butt blasters and thigh masters.

Believe it or not: “The Butt Blaster is a piece of equipment that holds a title known worldwide for results!” It is also currently on sale for $449.99 at the Butt Blaster store online. What will the Butt Blaster exercise engineers think of next?

In the Ames Drug Town on Main Street, dieters can choose from a wide selection of diet cocktails in pill, tablet, capsule or caplet form.

With names like Dexatrim, apple cider vinegar diet tablets, Trim Spa, Carblockers, AcuTrim or Xtreme Lean ZN-3, these products promise to bring the typical female body found commonly in Iowa one step closer to the radiant Hollywood ideal.

The Johns Hopkins Consumer Guide to Drugs for the year 2002 lists dizziness and blurred vision as two possible side effects of the prescription anti-obesity drug Benzphetamine. Several drugs like the drug Diethylpropion Hydrochloride are believed to affect the transmission of nerve impulses to the appetite-control center of the brain, while Orlistat causes fat to become indigestible in the human body. When taking Orlistat, fat gets excreted in the feces. What will the pharmaceutical industry come up with next?

Isn’t it just a bit selfish to spend so much time dwelling on body parts that are perfectly healthy and functional?

Instead of worrying about flabby thighs and saggy butts — body parts that our popular culture forbids from competing in the Miss America competition — social activist and author Eve Ensler proposes a female-led rebellion in her work “The Good Body.” Ensler urges American women to boycott mass-produced cultural messages promising happiness, prosperity and self-love in exchange for shrinking our hips down to a size six or whittling our thighs down to toothpick dimensions.

Obsessing over culture constructs of what the female body should look like in the year 2005 is silly. This pliable construct will transform again and again as time passes. Who knows, in 50 years, Marilyn Monroe’s curves may be back in fashion.

Personally, I don’t think that delectable female curves have ever gone out of fashion.