Yesterday, as I was sweating and straining my way up a mile-long
hill on my bike during an 18-mile ride that I would have called impossible 2
months ago, I was simultaneously listening to a Tedx talk by about body image
and how it contributes to the epidemic of eating disorders in the U.S. today.
The gal presenting the talk related how, as a
not-even-very-pudgy 10 year old, she was ridiculed and excluded by her
classmates, which of course led to 20 years of incessant dieting and fear of
food, which led to the day she actually DID reach her goal weight, and then
burst into tears because being 125 pound was supposed to make her life perfect.
She blamed ‘society’ for the pressure she felt, for the anti-fat prejudice that
she faced, and for the abuse she took as an overweight person.
And because thinking about 2 things at a time isn’t enough
for me, my mind wandered off to the question of, what’s in it for “society” to
want us to conform to physical norms?
I mean, really, “society”, in America, is barely a thing; we
have so many subcultures that celebrate beauty completely differently that
saying that “society” wants us to be thin, blonde, and big-boobed or whatever
is too reductionist to bear close scrutiny. Or at least that’s what the
20-something black dude at the gas station the other day, who enthusiastically
went on and on about the size and shape of my not-thin ass and what he’d like
to do to it, led me to believe.
But, yes, even though there are 100 standards of beauty,
there are definitely standards, and even though many of those standards are
literally unreachable by 99% of the population (guys, you do know that women
don’t actually have 26” waists and 48” busts in real life, right? That’s either
surgery or photoshop you’re looking at there. Or she might be a CGI character
in a video game you’re playing. In any case, there’s an excellent chance that
such a combination will never, ever be sitting across from you at dinner, just
as the even-tempered, non-‘roided-up guy with the 6 pack abs and the great hair
and perfect teeth and biceps I can hang off of will never be sitting across
from me), we still manage to expend enormous energy and money trying to reach
them.
I see what’s in it for ADVERTISERS. Implying that by wearing
their makeup/underwear/clothing/scent/ etc. I can become that unreachable sort
of beauty in the commercial makes me insecure enough to maybe try it. Lord
knows I’ve spent my thousands on health and beauty “aids” over the years, and
yet I’m still not thin or blonde.
But the problem—the thing that drives girls AND women (and
now boys and men, because apparently self-loathing is contagious) to anorexia
and bullemia and dying for a beauty ideal that they don’t even understand—isn’t
advertising. Companies have the right to advertise, and to do what they can to
persuade use to purchase their products and keep their doors open and their
employees paid and their stakeholders rewarded. It’s that we don’t teach
ourselves, or our kids, how to keep their guard up against messages that say,
“You’re not enough, and you’ll never be happy until you reach this ideal.”
This gal in this Tedx talk suggested that the way she does
this is that every time “those” thoughts start creeping in (“I have NOTHING
that fits, I’m going to have to go buy fat clothes, these jeans make my ass
look like Rhode Island” and on and on…) is simply stop and replace them with
things she LIKES about herself and her body.
I don’t think I’m in any danger of becoming anorexic or
bulimic, but I am DEFINITELY in danger of letting the fact that Christy
Brinkley still looks like a mannequin at 63 make me feel like I’m not
trying hard enough, even though I know, intellectually, that those pictures are
almost certainly photoshopped AND that she’s a mutant. So I’m going to spend a few days
intentionally countering the internal and external messages that I’m getting
that tell me I’m not good enough. Starting tomorrow.
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