This Thanksgiving did more than rob me of my voice. It rattled my confidence.
I was moseying merrily along, my same-weight-as-always self, feeling pretty good. I am running a half-marathon this weekend, and I know I am stronger because of my training over the past four months.
But then, someone I know happened to mention something about my weight and how I don’t look as thin as I did last year. The comment knocked me back a few thousand steps, and I have spent the weekend talking myself out of the “you don’t deserve [fill in the blank] because you’re not thin” cave. The good news is that the incident gives me an opening to talk about the beauty myth.
When it comes to beauty and its stranglehold on women, there’s a lot to write about. You pretty much know the drill: Thin is valued; other is not.
What I learned in class, though, is a theory to understand why. Turns out, some feminists believe there is a relationship between female liberation and female beauty. Here’s the essence: As women have broken through glass ceilings and gained power, images of females have gotten thinner. Women gained power, and eating disorders and cosmetic surgery soared. Women gained power, yet the images of us in magazines look frail. As Naomi Wolf writes in The Beauty Myth, there is a “violent backlash against feminism that uses images of female beauty as a political weapon against women’s advancement.” We may have left the domestic life behind, but on the way to the office we ran smack dab into the “gaunt, youthful model” that was put in our path to remind us not to get too big for our britches (so to speak).
I am so freakin’ naïve. I never connected the two – that being thin is society’s way of keeping women powerless. I’m not sure I buy the cause and effect, but my gut tells me there something to this ideology.
You don’t need to look far to see what the beauty myth looks like. Virtually every cover of every magazine invites you to join the ranks of the thin. If that's not enough, we have websites like Miss Bimbo where the aim is to be the coolest, most intelligent, talented and happy bimbo in the whole world. (For those of you with kids, it’s Webkinz for women.) At Miss Bimbo you learn that your bimbo's healthy weight is 127.6 lbs. If she strays too much above or below this weight then it affects her happiness.
Unfortunately, it’s all too true. My weight affects my happiness. And I cannot name one good friend who feels differently. While I understand the argument Wolf and others make, for some reason it doesn’t make me feel any better.
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I just got back from out on the town, and with a father in law who was raised in the depression era. (1920s) Everything I put in my mouth... raisins even, he was like, no calories there! (Sarcasm) know that I am naturally thin and it's easier for me to stay that way - but who is this old man telling me "calories?"... I found it to be very old fashioned, boundary issue. Stay off my body.
I think food, like money, is a power thing for people. It's also like alcohol and other "drugs" of choice. I try to think of food as food, a necessary rejuvenation for a human body. (Cellular healing, strength, energy) Men and the skinny women thing is very sad, for sure. The thinner you are, the more tired you are, and the more you have to relinquish your power to food. You can see how that would be a way to keep people down. (Power imbalance) "watch it" and "willpower" and such. If you are all wrapped up in that, you don't have time to think about good stuff like how to cure cancer or be love on the planet.
I ate wendy's for lunch...ha!
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