Let’s consider the discussion of bodily “imperfections.”
Framing a body discussion in this way means that, somewhere, there exists an ideal body, free of “imperfections” and “flaws” and whatever the hell else.
Except, as Lis at Shakesville has proven over and over and over again with her series of Impossible Beauty posts, even the people we look to as examples of “perfection” don’t have those sorts of bodies. Those bodies are false, achieved through digital manipulation on every level. We chase the dream of a perfect body but that dream is unattainable. And I have other dreams to chase.
How does an impossible ideal mean my own body is flawed?
It doesn’t, actually. It means my body is my body and it has characteristics. So does your body. Those characteristics are individual and help define our identity. Those characteristics ought to be value neutral, but since we live in body- and youth-obsessed culture, those characteristics are cast as flaws and we all drive ourselves crazy with body hate and the conviction that we just aren’t good enough.
*infinite head desk*
There are many ways to change the world. One of them is through language. That’s why groups reclaim former slurs – to reclaim the word changes the power of that word, repurposes it and changes the world.
I don’t talk about my body in terms of flaws. Even if I weren’t into fat/body/size/whatever flavor you call it acceptance, I wouldn’t because to define things in terms of negative qualities is to define something as negative. I just don’t have time for that kind of crap. I have too many other things to do to spend my mental and emotional energy in considering my body to be a negative Thing, a flawed object, a no-good construction that is somehow separate from my self.
My body can do a lot of stuff. It doesn’t fit the ideal but, then, no one does. Even my allergies are an example of my body doing something right – if hella over-efficiently.
I reject the context of “flaws” and “imperfections” as a framework for body discussion.
7 Comments
I think it’s all part of the “women need to be perfect in every way” crap that got loaded on to us shortly after Women’s Lib. Women were supposed to be perfect *housewives* (and I use the term advisedly) and perfect career women and perfect mothers and perfect looking…ie super-woman. In order for us to have careers we were supposed to do everything else we’d ever done and then add on a full-time career or the patriarchy wouldn’t let us be “equal.” That was the premise though, as we all know, we still aren’t considered equal in any real way. I guess this was part of the patriarchy backlash against women having a life of their own that didn’t include pleasing their *man*. Even when I was young and thin I wasn’t *perfect* – and that was many years ago (I’m 54) and the standards for “beauty” weren’t near as stringent as they are today. There are those who feel fat acceptance shouldn’t have to have anything to do with feminism but I think this is the perfect example of why feminism and fat acceptance go together. And, honestly, every other “ism” as well. Women of color have the added weight of not being able to conform to the blonde and blue-eyed bullshit that we see in so many magazines. Which is fucking ridiculous because women of color *are* beautiful. It seems to me that it’s all part of the same need for someone to be “less than” so that white male patriarchy has someone to be “greater than” and to do it’s dirty work.
Sorry for the rambling, but I’ve been thinking about this for some time and trying to put it all together.
I think fat and feminism are absolutely intrinsic to one another. If feminism is concerned with the autonomy of the female as, you know, an actual person independent of value placed on her by male observers/handlers/controllers/whatev, then the autonomy of her body from patriarichal ideals is vital. But patriarchy FUNCTIONS by making people “less than” – that’s its whole strategy, I think, no matter what the -ism.
Women of color don’t have to be BEAUTIFUL and more than any other woman HAS to be beautiful but I do think it is valuable to open up the narrow definition of beauty that currently exists.
There was a time when I spoke in terms of body ‘flaws’ even about things that didn’t bother me about my body. It was so intrinsic to the language that I didn’t notice what I was doing. Now I look back and can’t believe all the time I spent telling people cheerfully about my ‘flaws’ like being short, being less than busty, or having sturdy calves.
I’ve made a concerted effort in recent years to avoid body shaming language, and it’s surprising how difficult it can be. I love my body. I always have. It’s been thin, it’s been fat, it’s always been me. I refuse to pay even lip service to the concept that my body needs to fit a painfully narrow (and constantly narrowing) impossible standard in order to be entirely awesome.
It’s not easy to avoid all the body shaming. It’s as ubiquitous as air. Still, I remind myself that no group as a whole has been able to gain traction in society until the language surrounding them started to change. If someone or something is universally shamed by language, it’s that much harder to think that they/it might not be nearly so bad as they’re/it’s painted.
I am fat. I have proudly taken up this word as a banner in recent months. It’s taken a long time to own the word, to understand to my very marrow that there is nothing about my body that needs to be different. I am. That is enough. But as long as other people are afraid of the reality behind the word fat, I will wave that banner in hopes that others will learn not to fear it.
I think it’s all part of the “women need to be perfect in every way” crap that got loaded on to us shortly after Women’s Lib.
I’m sorry, but BULLSHIT! Before Women’s Liberation, women were expected to be “perfect in every way” EVEN MORE than after.
Connecting unrealistic beauty standards with Women’s Liberation is toxic nonsense. Unrealistic beauty standards have been a significant problem in the Western world since the 19th century.
In the US, for instance, crazy beauty standards obsessed white women of middle-class and above economic status before the Civil War: many of these women took daily preparations of arsenic to achieve white, perfect skin, and some women broke ribs by overzealous corset-lacing.
With the rise in overall economic productivity after the 1880s, the obsession with beauty started to affect women of all ethnic backgrounds and economic standing. You see the rise of hair-straightening products and skin-bleaching cream for Black women, the advertisements for rudimentary cosmetic surgery, etc.
By the 1920s, women in the US were dying in hundreds, if not thousands, each year from toxic “beauty” products and procedures. This was one of the central reasons for the creation of the US Food and Drug Administration: lawsuits brought by the families of women blinded by a toxic eyelash dye were dismissed because there were no government standards saying that, you know, eyelash dyes made of eye-destroying acid couldn’t be sold in corner drugstores.
There’s lots more, and that’s just the US: in Europe, you have women dying from 19th-century facelifts and early 20th-century goat-gland transplants, and all over the Western world you have a growing emphasis on beauty at all costs.
Women’s Liberation didn’t cause these problems at all. Women’s Liberation may have substituted the potential stresses of taking part in the workforce on theoretically equal footing for the potential stresses of being considered ineligible for the workforce (and even that is arguable, and connected strongly to class-based and race-based preconceptions). But Women’s Liberation did not create–nor, I argue, did it exacerbate–the commercial culture’s obsession with a hard-to-fit beauty stereotype.
JupiterPluvius – I’m truly not arguing that Women’s Lib was a *bad* thing or that feminism is. I’ve been a feminist most of my life. What I’m saying is that the patriarchy punished women because they wanted equality by insisting that they be perfect both at work *and* at home. I grew up during the time of Women’s Lib and I can tell you I’ve benefited – things were much, much worse when I was younger but, as we saw during the recent campaigns, there has definitely been a backlash and we’ve lost some ground.
I agree beauty standards have always existed and women have been expected (at least those who could do so economically) to look *perfect* for whatever standard of perfection the patriarchy held out. Yes, women in the 50’s (and before) were expected to be perfect housewives with spotless homes and perfect dinners on the table for “hubby” when he got home and perfect (and quiet so as not to bother the “breadwinner”) children and were to put on makeup and a nice dress to greet “hubby.” They weren’t necessarily supposed to also have a perfect career and get 16 hours work done at home at the same time. My mother worked to support our family and also was expected to do everything around the house (which she shuffled off on me when I got old enough) because my father was too lazy to work (and, *of course* didn’t do “women’s work” even though he was home all day), but most of the kids I grew up with had their moms home. Granted we were working class and most of the kids I grew up with were middle class. Poor women have always been expected to hold down a job as well as do everything at home.
Beauty standards are worse today than when I was young. Part of that is, no doubt, the photo-shopping that’s done. However, when I was young it was “okay” to have a poochy belly (if it was small enough) and not to work out (most women didn’t). It seems to me that younger women today have a harder row to hoe in order to try to conform to the current “standard” for beauty.
Women’s Lib may not have made the beauty standard worse (nor, feminism, to use the current term) that is probably in part due to the movies and magazines, etc. However, I do think the emphasis on looks and diets and doing it “all” are patriarchy’s way of sidelining women. If we’re trying to do all that, how the hell do we have time to do anything else? Who has time to be a radical when everything you’re “supposed” to get done takes more than the 24 hours in a day (not like women *need* any sleep…though they must *look* well rested and “healthy”).
I’m *lucky* enough to be old (therefore not “fuckable” regardless of whether I’m thin or pretty or not – I’m not going to meet the beauty standard so that takes some of the pressure off), I never had children so I never had the time commitment for them either (though I regret not having a child), I got divorced more than 20 years ago and have been alone most of my life so I didn’t (usually) have a man I had to clean up after but the “standards” still pull at me. FA has been so good for me because even though I’m old it still bothered (sometimes present tense) me that I wasn’t thin – as if that would make things all better. And, being poor all my life and unable to afford to go to college (my mom managed to finance one year for me, which I truly appreciate) and my mom “making too much” (hah!) for me to get student loans at the time (not to mention being stupid and marrying an abuser and needing to work…oh, and do all the stuff at home…habit patterns, anyone?) means that I don’t make enough money to live very well and that I don’t have a “career” to be proud of – which also bothers me some because women are supposed to excel in all things.
Sorry for the book – I do, in short, agree with you. I didn’t mean to sound like I thought feminism itself had done us any harm – only the partriarchy’s reaction to it.
TR – I hear you. You’re right in that the way I phrased it was wrong, we don’t *have* to be beautiful! I am trying to see beauty in everyone instead of letting the “ideal” make me see the “flaws” in others so I’m trying to see everyone as beautiful. You’re absolutely correct that we need to stop dwelling on “flaws.” It’s much easier for me, however, to see the beauty in others than it is to see it in myself, but, hopefully I’ll get there too.
Sorry for the book – I do, in short, agree with you. I didn’t mean to sound like I thought feminism itself had done us any harm – only the partriarchy’s reaction to it.
Ah! I guess I parsed your comment slightly backwards, then.
I agree with you that the amped-up cultural emphasis on impossible beauty standards is certainly, in part at least, a backlash against feminism.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. This is one of my pet peeves — who the hell is ANYONE to tell me that my body is “flawed” or “imperfect”? My body is the effing PLATONIC IDEAL of “brooke’s body,” thank you very much!