The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body

[babylonsister]

http://www.alternet.org/story/50661/

The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body

By Courtney E. Martin, AlterNet. Posted April 18, 2007.

Thinness and beauty are prerequisites for perfection, which to today's young women appears to be the only road to happiness. Under that logic, women's bodies have become places where that drive for perfection -- however self-destructive -- gets played out.


This article is excerpted from "Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters" by Courtney E. Martin. Copyright 2007 by Courtney E. Martin. Reprinted by permission of Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster, Inc.


There is a girl, right now, staring in a mirror in Des Moines, scrutinizing her widening hips. There is a girl, right now, spinning like a hamster on speed in a gym on the fifth floor of a building in Boston, promising herself dinner if she goes two more miles. There is a girl, right now, trying to wedge herself into a dress two sizes too small in a Savannah shopping mall, chastising herself for being so lazy and fat. There is a girl, right now, in a London bathroom, trying not to get any vomit on her aunt's toilet seat. There is a girl, right now, in Berlin, cutting a cube of cheese and an apple into barely visible pieces to eat for her dinner.

Our bodies are places where our drive for perfection gets played out. Food is all around us, as are meals and the pressure that goes with them. Well-intentioned after-school specials teach us, from a very young age, how to purge our snacks. We are inundated with information about "good" and "bad" foods, the most effective workout regiments, the latest technological advancements in plastic surgery. We demand flawlessness in our appearance -- the outer manifestation of our inner dictators.

To some degree, this makes sense. People in general like to look at a pretty face -- which means they also like to be friends with a pretty face, do business with a pretty face, and marry a pretty face. Attractive people are desired and coddled in our society; they have an easier time getting jobs, finding boyfriends and girlfriends, getting parts in music videos, simply getting the average waiter's attention.

Even smart girls must be beautiful, even athletes must be feminine. Corporate CEOs, public intellectuals, and even accountants must be thin. Lorie, an 18-year-old from Portland, Maine, wrote, "Everyone wants to be skinny, because in life the skinny one gets the guy, the job, the love." A 10-year-old I interviewed in Santa Fe, N.M., broke it down for me even further: "It is better to be pretty, which means thin and mean, than to be ugly, which means fat and nice. That's just how it is."

The body is the perfect battleground for perfect-girl tendencies because it is tangible, measurable, obvious. It takes four long years to see "summa cum laude" etched across our college diplomas, but stepping on a scale can instantly tell us whether we have succeeded or failed.

The cruel irony is that although we become totally obsessed with the daily measures of how "good" or "bad" we are (refused dessert = good; didn't have time to go to the gym = bad), there is no finish line. This weight preoccupation will never lead us anywhere. It is a maniacal maze that always spits you out at the same point it sucked you up: wanting. We keep chasing after perfection as if it is an achievable goal, when really it is the most grand and painful of all mirages.

more...

[no_hypocrisy]

1. It's bad enough that girls in puberty are obsessed with an ideal, but to

to have 10 year olds (if not younger) worried about their bodies is a real flag. This could indicate decades of anorexia.

[Morgana LaFey]

8. I've seen 10 year old anorexics

I've seen them in dance troupes, and they are horrifying and repulsive. You have to wonder if their parents are aware and if the children are getting help. You wonder if there's something you should do -- or say -- to the dance teacher, to the parents. It really is horrifying.

[Lost-in-FL]

14. My coworker's daughter is 5 yrs...

and she refuses to eat. She only eats salads and chicken breast cause "she is afraid of getting fat". My coworker took her to a child psychologist and the psy. said that she is "just a picky eater". I am not buying that.

The thing is that her older sister has weight problems due to a bad thyroid and gets picked on at school. Her older daughter takes good care of herself but she is still a big girl. They both go to the same school. I think that is why the lil girl has that attitude about food.

[tavalon]

2. I hate this

I really do.

[blondie58]

3. so terribly sad

and a lot of those models aren't real anyway- they are airbrushed. What is wrong with a few curves?

[raccoon]

4. K&R. nt

[RandomKoolzip]

5. This also extends to men, ya know.

I struggled with my weight for years when I was a kid and eventually became bulimic in my college years. Eating disorders and body image problems are not exclusively female pathologies. There is a HUGE amount of pressure out there for guys to look good.

I now eat a lot less and exercise more, and I'm down from 310 lbs, at my heaviest, to 185 lbs. I feel really good and I love exercising, running, lifting weights. IF you CAN find a good diet plan, then by all means DON'T abandon it for political reasons - that's my advice, at least. BEing overweight IS unhealthy, and ought not be considered normative.

[Donnachaidh]

6. oh but guys are supposed to shut up and take it -- be a MAN!

It makes me want to puke.

My son is a teen, dealing with this horseshit daily. It AIN'T just girls.

[Straight Shooter]

7. As soon as you correct one "defect," then your focus turns to fixing another "defect."

So you make yourself thin. Then you decide your breasts aren't large enough (or too large). Surgery to correct that. Then your thighs are "too fat." Okay, liposuction, or fanatical exercise. Finally thighs look okay. Oh my god! Look at my feet! Too big!! Now the unhappiness cannot be fixed.

Self-criticism never ends if you focus on the physical. The most attractive people have a vibrant energy about them. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to try to make yourself look as nice as possible, but as the poster above noted, there are airbrushing and PhotoShop expertise, and there are many other techniques (including photography and certainly cosmetic tricks) that make models look the way they do. These people simply aren't "real."

I know a model personally, have known her since she was very young. She is a gorgeous young woman because of her attitude and personality. She is blessed with a lovely face and body, and is photogenic beyond belief. I saw a commercial on TV with her in it, and didn't even recognize her. That's how easy it is to deceive the eyes when we perceive two-dimensional images.

Our society seems to be devolving in what matters most. Sad.

[DavidDvorkin]

9. What bullshit

Look around you for the refutation of this tired rubbish. We're a nation of fat, unexercised people.

[babylonsister]

10. Tired rubbish?

Take a gander at the link and get back to me. Agreed, there are more fat people around, but that doesn't negate what this article is about.

http://www.calorie-count.com/forums/post/9165.html

[zalinda]

13. What we are is a nation of fat, unexercised POOR people

I'm willing to bet that the percentage of fat people grow with how poor you are. Face it, the cheapest food is the most fattening. You come home after working 2 jobs and fix a "healthy" meal. After a month or so, the attitude changes to "fuck it, macaroni and cheese and hot dogs will do just fine, I'm too tired." And as far as exercise goes, when you stand on your feet for over 12 hours a day, going to the gym just seems to be a little over the top, even if you COULD afford a gym.

BTW, there was an excellent program on PBS about being obese, within the last 2 weeks. Here is the experts take on the subject, NO ONE KNOWS WHY, ONE PERSON IS THIN AND ONE PERSON IS FAT EATING THE SAME AMOUNT OF FOOD AND EXERCISING THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME. IT IS NOT A BLACK OR WHITE ISSUE.

zalinda

[Paranoid Pessimist]

11. The shrink community calls it "body dismorphic disorder" and

it is the only mental illness inclucated by the economic system to sell stuff. You sometimes feel like screaming in the faces of the people so afflicted, "Don't you realize that you're being brainwashed. They're convincing you your looks are a disease so they can sell you cures, most all of them bogus!"

[DarkTirade]

12. I dated a girl who was anorexic

I didn't know right away, all I knew was that she'd lost a lot of weight in the last year or two... I didn't realize she'd lost all the weight in just a few MONTHS a year before.
In her case, it was mostly pressure from her parents that drove her to it. They were the type who liked to act like they were rich, even though they were only middle-class. They wanted a perfect daughter they could show off to all of their rich friends.