In a shocking turn of events, today’s post was brought about by another of the frequent, serious conversations with Boyfriend. Nobody could have seen that one coming.
We spend a lot of time talking about weight, sexual appeal and society’s perception of what defines attractiveness, and it’s something we disagree rather vociferously on; in fact, it’s one of the few things that we’ve come rather close to actually fighting about.
Before I start what will undoubtedly become a quasi-rant on the stupidity of society, I need to quote again:
“Under the current ‘tyranny of slenderness’ women are forbidden to become large or massive; they must take up as little space as possible. The very contours a woman’s body takes on as she matures – the fuller breasts and rounder hips – have become distasteful. The body by which a woman feels herself judged and which by rigorous discipline she must try to assume is the body of early adolescence, slight and unformed, a body lacking flesh or substance, a body in whose very contours the image of immaturity has been inscribed. The requirement that a woman maintain a smooth and hairless skin carries further the theme of inexperience, for an infantilized face must accompany her infantilized body, a face that never ages or furrows its brow in thought. The face of the ideally feminine woman must never display the marks of character, wisdom and experience that we so admire in men.”
— Sandra Lee Bartky
The first time I read that quote, it just made me sit back and make that gaping like a fish, trying to argue but can’t face. This is exactly how society has raised most of my generation to think. I work for a company that advertises a lot of beauty treatments, and what you get most of the time is ultrasonic and laser liposuction, slimming treatment, anti-wrinkle facials, ultrasound facials to reduce the signs of ageing and weight loss treatments like wraps and strange machines.
What our customers are constantly being bombarded with, on some subconscious level, is that they should be more focussed on losing weight, getting slimmer and making sure their complexion is smooth and line free.
I understand not wanting wrinkles, wanting a smooth complexion and wanting to fit into the smallest jeans size available – but why?
Surely it hasn’t always been like this. The plethora of treatments and creams and rubs and lotions and wraps available on the market today are new additions. People haven’t always been so preoccupied with their appearance.
Of course, it’s easy to blame the media.
Vogue Italy ran an issue on plus-sized models, and what they consider plus-sized – a phrase that has rather negative connotations when you consider the tyranny of slenderness – is actually just a joke.
Granted, these girls are bigger than what you see on the covers of regular fashion magazines – of course they are. There’s a reason that being a supermodel is considered a difficult thing.
Before I derail myself completely and start frothing at the mouth over my utter and all-consuming hatred for the group-think retardation society has adopted regarding appearance, let me clarify how this topic actually came up with Boyfriend:
I am nearly incapable of intrinsically believing that Boyfriend could actually find me attractive. I know that I’m not a hideous monster, but, I don’t fit into the accepted definition of attractive – he’s told me this himself. Even knowing that I have certain attractive qualities, and knowing that I’m not obese; none of that helps – I’ve got some excess weight and that’s just not acceptable in today’s society. It’s not even like it’s a lot of excess weight – I’ve got all the right curves and the hourglass figure; it’s just bigger than most people are happy with. Lord knows that my weight has bugged me for my entire life.
Given that I don’t find myself attractive, and actually have to repress shudders of disgust when I think about being without my protective layer of clothing, I can’t understand how Boyfriend would ever want me. This is retardation and societal influence on a grand scale. Why am I assuming that he’s only allowed to find skinny, perfectly toned women attractive?
Of course, he told me once that when we met, he thought that he should be turned off by my weight – boy, did that hurt like a bitch.
Anyway. We assume that the only figure that’s attractive on a woman is the skinny, perfectly toned one that takes up as little space as possible. Those beautiful, sexy as a fuck women on the cover of Vogue are considered plus-sized, a label that automatically clicks the button in your mind that says “I shouldn’t be attracted to these girls”.
Besides the media, it’s my mother that’s played a big role in my vision of what an acceptable figure is for a woman. She really did a number on both my sister and I. We’re supposed to be raised to be confident in the way we look, and to pride ourselves on our brains and abilities, rather than our bodies. My mother can’t make it through a day without mentioning weight, how chubby I’m looking, how fantastic it is that I’m loosing weight or how fat that woman – who is smaller than me, mind you – is. With that sort of constant bombardment, it’s difficult not to internalise the fact that a woman’s appearance is as important – if not more so – than her brains.
David Wong said something interesting on the topic in his article on Cracked.com –
5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women
#4. We’re Trained from Birth to See You as Decoration
Her role in society or level of accomplishment doesn’t matter. Even if she’s a damned candidate for the Supreme Court, the female always has a dual role: to function as a person, and to act as décor.
How sad is that? It doesn’t matter how smart or successful you are – you’re going to be judged on how you look. The fact then, that you’ve got all the self-help sites and manuals and whatever talking about being confident no matter how you look, and how men say that the most attractive thing about a girl is confidence; you’ve just got to call shenanigans eventually.
Is it even possible to be totally confident in yourself when you know what society’s perception is? For me, it’s really not.
Of course, then you’ve got the really confident girls who just don’t give a shit what society says – those girls rock their extra weight; and they rock it hard. Then you’ve got people turning around and bashing them for being comfortable with themselves. Again, David Wong says it well:
Check out any article about a female celebrity who has gained weight. Here’s literally the first one I found on Google, a blog post about how fat Christina Aguilera has gotten. Check the comments:
“fuck her! I have a full-time job, go to grad school full-time, cook at home every night and still find time to get my ass to the gym. lazy ass fat bitch …”
Don’t get me wrong — if it’s a male celebrity in the article, you’ll get lots of people making fun of his fatness. If it’s a female, you get anger.
Think about Adele – she’s one of the sexiest women alive in my opinion, and she doesn’t conform to society’s definition of attractive. She also couldn’t give a shit about what you think – or, that’s what she portrays, at any rate; how can anyone ever really know what’s going on in her mind?
Whenever you see an article about a celebrity, especially down here in Cape Town; it’s always about how this one has picked up a bit of weight, this one is wearing a bikini and centimetre of extra flesh on her skeleton clearly means that she shouldn’t, this one looks like she’s got too much jiggle on her ass – it’s a constant bombardment of people telling you that any excess weight on your body is essentially an assault on their delicate senses.
… but in the same breath, and in the same magazine, they’ll start talking about how you need to be confident in yourself and not care what other people think.
The other thing is, it’s not just men who are turning around and bashing other women for not slimming down to the point of non-existence: it’s other girls too.
Granted, when men do it, it’s not cool. One of the guys who works in my office often looks at me like I’m not worth the dirt on his shoes, simply because he’s the type of guy who sees girls as ornaments. It’s awful coming from him. Even Boyfriend, who’s pretty much the sweetest, most awesome thing in the world – even he told me he should have been turned off by weight. That was beyond awful. My office mate doesn’t know anything about personality, so he’s judging me totally on my looks – for Boyfriend to do it, when I know he’s the type of person who should look past that sort of thing?
When women do it, though – I don’t understand it. Women should know the type of pressure that girls are under to always look good, so why add to the burden. It makes it easier to understand the feminists who refuse to shave their legs and generally just give society and their stupid ideals the finger.
You see it everywhere, the message that you need to be as skinny and small as possible; even the clothes in the stores are constantly getting smaller and smaller, catering mostly for body sizes that require more effort and maintenance than are rational. When did size 12 pants become a black mark? I’m not saying that I don’t believe in maintaining your body though – I just think that you should ‘diet’ to be healthy, and to ensure that you’re getting everything you need, including exercise, to function at your best.
Everything you’re greeted with; magazines, television shows, advertising, novels, comics – they all show women with the perfect bodies.
People can talk until they’re blue in the face about how they’re more fond of women with curves, or real women – I’ll believe it when I see it in the media, or when society stops bashing everyone who doesn’t fit their ridiculous ideal.
Life shouldn’t be about how you look.
To conclude this post that has indeed turned into a rant: being overweight is bad; purely for health reasons. It’s not good for your body to be carrying around a lot of extra weight. You should always try your best to be healthy; but if healthy means being a size 12, or heck, a size 16 – if healthy for you would be FAT on another girl – you shouldn’t give a fuck what other people say. Being healthy is more important than being seen as attractive by every goon who passes you on the street.
Of course, it’s not that easy, is it? That’s the point of this whole post. It doesn’t matter that being healthy or happy is more important than being skinny – intrinsically, I think we all know that. What’s difficult is keeping that thought in your mind when you’re constantly bombarded by the fact that society doesn’t accept anything but the slimmest, slenderest and most beautiful.
OMNES RELINQUITE SPES, O VOS INTRATES 