Image credit: thisislondon.co.uk
Note to self: when enjoying celebrity gossip remember this –
… women’s bodies are considered public property; in the wider culture, we’ve seen scrutiny of women reach unprecedented levels. In gossip magazines, women’s bodies are pored over – a pound gained provoking headlines that they’re fat, a pound lost leading to headlines that they’re too thin. Circles are drawn around a spot on their ankle where they’ve failed to apply fake tan, around a bitten nail or a tiny, incipient wrinkle beside their eye – which could just be a stray lash. What is implicit but unsaid is that there is no objective standard of beauty, no level of perfection that a woman could reach at which her body would be perceived as acceptable and in control. In the eyes of these magazines, a healthy body mass index could be considered seriously plump. A woman deemed too fat in one magazine could, on the basis of exactly the same picture, be deemed too thin by another magazine. The constant message is that women’s bodies are not our own. They belong to everyone but us, and are there to be picked apart. Women can try to curry favour, come up to snuff, spend hours like, say, Madonna, working out, perfecting themselves. But there’s then every chance that they will be derided for the veins on their hands. There’s something essentially depressing about women being derided for their veins.
A little while ago while sitting on the beach I realised how good I am at picking faults in women’s bodies, my own included of course but that’s not really so surprising because I know my own body very well and I’ve been living in a misogynist world, oh all my life. What I found while sitting on the beach was that I could size up a woman in 10 seconds flat. So well trained was my eye that I could spot her imperfections in an instant. Worst of all I could do it completely without thinking. Hi, could you tell me which way to the cafe? Hey, thick ankles by the way.
I was repulsed by myself. So I tried something new. When I was next at the beach I made it my mission to find something I liked about every female body that my eyes came to rest upon. Once I got going it wasn’t even that difficult. And the most surprising thing for me? Not how differently I started to view other women (for that had been the whole point of the exercise) but how differently I started to view myself. My participation in the hatred of women’s bodies had been every bit a form of self-hatred.
The real test will be when I can view women’s bodies without any kind of objectification what so ever, to just let us be. I’m still a way off.
blue milk 
Yes! It is so easy to fall into the media-promoted habit of noticing what is “wrong” about the other women we meet instead of what is “right”.
This I think is the major difference in the media treatment of men’s bodies compared to women’s bodies – middle-aged blokes with thickening middles are just normal blokes, while middle-aged women with thickening middles are failures because they have not stayed sexy. Some of those failures redeem themselves somewhat by being really, really funny (usually the funny is about how they can’t get any sex) – but note that most chubby older women are figures of mockery, while chubby older men are usually the boss.
This is great – so eye opening.
This post pained me, because it was so true, and knowing that I do this is so ugly….
But I LOVE this strategy and will also plan to do this OUT LOUD as my daughter grows older and moves into the self-abuse cycle. I honestly think this is a worldview changing idea that could make a huge difference for us, but an even larger difference for our sons and daughts if they are raised with this lens (at least as an alternative to the dominant narrative, which is certainly unavoidable).
Kudos! And hi-larious on the cell phone post the other day, btw!
Excellent! I like the way you changed your attitude. I’ll give it a try. I agree that when I am critical of someone it’s because I’m angry at myself.
Have you noticed that your daughter says things about other people? My daughter makes really loud observations about people she sees on the street and I’m trying to change what she focuses on. I want her comments to be positive, especially if she’s going to say them out loud, you know?
This is a truly honest and important post. I really like your tactic, and plan to employ it myself, but either way we are objectifying women’s bodies and labeling them ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in a way we don’t with men. I first noticed this discrepancy in a major way when I went to Greece with an international group of friends (okay, okay, it was a Contiki tour). I found that men from the US, Australia, and New Zealand vocally criticized every woman’s figure who walked past in a bathing suit, while the men from Mediterranean countries vocally praised every female figure. What I did notice at the time was that 1. The men did not apply their beauty standards to their own bodies 2. both groups made me uncomfortable. I bet if I could go back, though, I’d find that women from those regions were critiquing other women’s figures in the same way the men do.
This is so true…so true. It’s almost overwhelming to me to live in this culture while trying to find ways to love my own body. It means believing that I choose to trust my own view more than that of the media and that is a tall order…tall but not impossible. I think that if we can, ourselves begin to change this one woman at a time and then raise the next generation of women in this way, with this new (ancient) thinking we’d see a very different worldview arise in the coming decades.
I love the idea of sitting there and finding something beautiful about each body because I have found myself doing the same critical commentary in my head.
I made a rule a while ago that I would just deliberately loooove my body including all the things that are not what the stereotypical nice woman’s body should have. So, I loooove my small rack, and I looooove my round belly. (I don’t loooove my spider veins, I am just neutral towards them.) I am thin and small but I have never had a flat belly, even as a skinny skinny teenager. So I started telling everyone that ’round bellies are in fashion because it’s my turn to be in fashion’.
stumbled across your blog yesterday. fabbuloso! What a woman- what a bunch of women. ” Hi, could you tell me which way to the cafe? Hey, thick ankles by the way.” made me laugh out loud. And dont we all do that, co-conspirators in the derision of women. I love your approach and like the reader above, I will endeavour to akeep cculturating my girls with spoken affirmations of what i like about wimmin!
It’s so true … I like your experiment and might try it myself – for women on the street and myself. All I can see (or at least MOSTLY what I see) about myself in the mirror is generally my stomach, which I hate.
It’s interesting, though, that with friends I find the opposite happens. The more I get to know them, the more attractive they are to me and their physical flaws kind of disappear or become irrelevant as part of the larger picture. Which is not conscious, but a good thing anyway.
I started playing a similar game a while ago, but I use a slightly different strategy, because my habits were a little different to yours. Rather than “Hi, could you tell me which way to the cafe? Hey, thick ankles by the way.”, I’m more “Thanks for the coffee, those pants were a big mistake.” Particularly pathetic given that I would be on anyone’s 10 worst dressed list. So now if my mind flags “Not good” I try to work out what is wrong with the clothes, and what clothes would make her look great. And I also try to work out what great features are being flaunted by women who look good on casual glance. It’s an exercise in remembering it’s the clothes’ fault, not the body’s.
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It’s true – I have to agree. With me it all started at once – puppy fat, criticising other women’s bodies and hating and weeping over my own. My family lived overseas and I put on weight at boarding school in England. When I went home for a holdiday my family, friends and former teachers all said how fat I was. Eventually I got anorexia. Now my BMI is under 18, I wear size 8, and if I reach 8 stone I’ll be miserable. Yes, I wish women’s bodies were not regarded as public property.
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