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by **happening fish** » 6/14/2005, 8:19 pm

The F-word. Three letters that little girls around the world are taught to hate and fear. My younger sister used to refuse to utter that word at all, in relation to anyone, so deeply ingrained was it in her that it was a terrible, offensive thing to be. How can it be that until only the last century, “women’s natural amplitude was their beauty” (Wolf 185), but now any trace of heaviness is seen as disgusting, embarrassing, “expendable female filth” (Wolf 192)? The ‘problem’ of weight loss is disguised as a medical issue, but this prognosis is rendered transparent when we realize that the overwhelming majority of slimming information is directed squarely at women, for whom it is utterly natural and unavoidable to have a greater percentage of body fat than their male counterparts. In fact, Wolf cites studies that suggest that women would do better to refrain from dieting and found that being overweight made “only a fraction of the difference for [women’s health] than it made for men” (177). Clearly then, this is not truly about health. Weight control is also sold under the pretence of a natural beauty standard in which it is normal and desirable to be very slim, and any deviance from this is through the neglect or weakness of the woman. But Wolf references a Glamour survey in which “45 percent of the underweight women thought they were too fat” (176). Men have spent centuries being attracted to full-bodied women, and that predisposition can hardly have done an about-face in a single generation. This, then, tells us that something more cancerous is at work in the minds of the world’s female population than a simple desire to attain a “normal” appearance. When a woman’s very identification with female success lies past the reaches of health, of attainability, when it drives her to starve herself to death, as so many have, it is clear that something has gone terribly wrong. As Crosbie puts its, “mimetic interests are one thing… psychotic self-scrutiny is something else entirely” (183). The roots of the problem exist deep in societal scripts, and the only way to alter the annals of cultural influence is to effect a fundamental change in the nature of the issue’s surrounding discourse. This is best done by reaching out to a new generation with the damaging discourses of society not yet embedded in their consciousness.

The first step, then, is to understand how and why the discourse on female body ideals has become so toxic to its targets. My first memory of hating my body is from many years ago. I was about six years old, healthy and utterly normal, standing in my leotard in dance class and wondering why I seemed to have more of a tummy than the stick-like child next to me. I remember complaining to my mother, and I remember her quickly appeasing me and dismissing the notion. What I cannot remember is what it was that I had absorbed from my surroundings that had lead me to the conclusion, so horrible to my childish mind, that I was fat. To infiltrate the consciousness of such a young child, the societal messages must have been incredibly pervasive and unrelenting. What could possibly be the target of so much money spent on advertising and effort focussed on directing public discourse? Wolf argues that this “cultural fixation…is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience” (177). Indeed, in this era of supposed liberation and equality for women, the messages we receive continuously from the media deal unashamedly with perpetuating and promoting female subjugation. They encourage women to be silent, they emphasize female sexual passivity, and they glamorize violence (Simon 43-45). Closed mouths, abused bodies: women under control.

Compare the intensification of these sentiments with the state of women over the past century and we come to Wolf’s conclusion regarding the motivation to starve. She outlines how feminine body ideals became more restricted and linear in direct coincidence with the rise in female power. As women started voting and wearing pants, they were obliged to lose their curves and more closely resemble men. A brief regression in the 1950’s brought back the plumpness codified by Marilyn Monroe, before plummeting to new body weight lows in the revolutionary decades that followed (Wolf 176). With relative acceptance into male-dominated spheres of power, women have been pressed into a body image that denies them the ability to be sexually aggressive, creates anxiety and emotionality, and steals away their free thoughts and time (Wolf 180). In other words, no amount of proving ourselves worthy of professional and social equality will suffice: women must sacrifice their dignity and their selves. As a result of this trade-off, anorexia is spreading rampant throughout Western society and bleeding into the rest of the world, killing 150,000 women a year in the United States alone (Wolf 175).
The pressure to be thinner and thinner comes from every direction. It comes from those who don’t know you and wish only to judge and categorize you. It can also come from those who are closest and have nothing but the best intentions. When I hit puberty and started to fill out, it revolted me. I felt so incapable of controlling my body and so sickened by how much I had bought in to the desperate desire to conform to body norms that I gave up on myself entirely and gained weight steadily as the years went on. From my parents, my supposed source of unconditional love, I got daily unsubtle remarks that only solidified the connection I had created between food and guilty shame. Wolf astutely points out that this relation with guilt is born of the recognition that our bodies have been taken from our grasp and handed to society, with hunger being “a social concession exacted by the community” (Wolf 177).

The ethical dilemma here is a problem of how to handle the root of the identified problem. If the basis of the issue does indeed lie in patriarchal society, how would we go about affecting a change that would strike deeply enough? It is exceedingly hard to lay the blame anywhere in particular, as it could be argued that everyone who ever growled at their love-handles or settled for a salad were an implicit part of continuing the poisonous discourse. The purpose of ethical reflection, however, is not to point fingers but to look beyond the problem for possible solutions. The path to effective change needs to be carefully considered. It is easy to swing to the other end of the spectrum and make liberal “big is beautiful” type statements, but these are just a knee-jerk reaction. They are set up to fail from the very beginning by how they slide into easily-mocked stereotypes, much like the political left has been trivialized and reduced to a bunch of tree-hugging hippie jokes in the past. Instead of falling into the comfortable realm of extremes and stock characters, it is essential to move slowly but deliberately to a shift in the very mindset. The key to this is the new, unformed generation of children. Mothers must not let their daughters see them staring forlornly at the scale, or refusing to be seen in a bathing suit. It is not an easy proposition to alter the thought patterns of a whole society, but if we can shift our children’s perspectives a bit and encourage them to do the same, then we might create a cumulative effect on the health of the female nation. Most importantly, however, the true foundation of our starving culture must become widely realized. From personal experience I feel confident in saying that most women are happy to simply accept health or beauty as the basis for their fixation on the subject, being too afraid of what they might find if they dug deeper into their compulsions. A young woman curled over the toilet is trying desperately to believe her own lies about why she cannot bear to have food in her stomach. It is crucial that we engage in more careful introspection and ask the pertinent question of where our loyalties truly lie: do we really act in the best interests of our selves, or have we allowed our environment to guilt us into paying penance for being born female?

by **thirdhour** » 6/15/2005, 12:46 am

by **nikki4982** » 6/15/2005, 1:08 am

by **closeyoureyes** » 6/15/2005, 1:18 am

Females do have HUGE body image issues, I agree. But it isnt men who should change, women, too, set high standards and men struggle with similar issues, its a two way street.

by **nikki4982** » 6/15/2005, 2:13 am

by **Random Name** » 6/15/2005, 8:49 am

by **Henrietta** » 6/15/2005, 12:53 pm

by **Rusty** » 6/15/2005, 5:34 pm

Wow, that was very well done. I'm impressed. There is a stereotype for everyone nowadays. But really, girls get it the worst. It's sick the way people are portrayed, but society/the media tells us that we must all fit this "perfect" image. Girls must be skinny etc, while guys must be buff and "manly". Personally I feel the media is bullshit and I hate the way it portrays people, and the messages it sends. I also dislike the way guys talk about some girls they see, but on the other hand I seem to the be the only one here who has heard girls talk about other girls. I also find that girls tend to be a lot harsher when they do say something, but they also make comments about guys as well.