So, there was this moment, right? I was working at Lane Bryant at the time, so I spent a lot of time at the mall. (Because, really, honestly, I’d never just Go To The Mall because I enjoy shopping or wandering or anything like that, right?) And I still remember what I was wearing. Really, really, light wash boot cut jeans (I was wearing a size 24 at that point, and these would be roughly a 1999 Lane Bryant size 24), a turquoise cotton jersey deep v-neck top, and sunglasses (they were prescription so it wasn’t just gratuitously wearing my sunglasses inside) (and these wicked brown sandals that I wish I could find duplicates of now but alas). And these two dudes totally checked me out.
It was kind of revelatory. Like, holy crap, I don’t think I’m repulsive and other people might not think I’m repulsive either! *swoon*
The ridiculous part of this is that, really, there were other people who could have – would have gladly – told me that. But, you know, sometimes I’m slow to pick up on things.
I didn’t speak to these guys, they didn’t speak to me – it was a throw-away moment, people passing each other by in the mall. But it gave me a kick of confidence – some outside confirmation of what had been working internally in me for quite some time: there wasn’t anything wrong with me. It’s not like I was magically cured of self-loathing at that point or anything. I mean, please. But it was one of those moments I can pinpoint when something clicked in my brain.
One of the reasons Kate and I were going to call the book Screw Inner Beauty is because we’re always being told that what is on the outside doesn’t matter, it’s what’s on the inside. And, honestly, I believe that to a really kind of ridiculous extent. But we also live in the world we live in and that means people DO look at our outsides. I don’t have a problem with people looking at my outside – I have a problem with a cultural beauty standard that decrees my outside is so unacceptable that I’m convinced no one could possibly like it. I have a problem with the existence of a beauty ideal so narrow that even women who fit into it don’t actually fit into it.
I have a problem with a culture that raises women to believe that external validation on ones physical attractiveness is a) the single most important marker of value and b) something you can’t obtain if you don’t fit a certain mold.
Here’s the thing: It’s nice to be appreciated. Here’s the other thing: If you’re not already keyed in to how people express that appreciation, you’re never going to figure it out and you’re going to sit around feeling like no one will ever appreciate you ad infinitum. VICIOUS CYCLE!
A lot of fat women I know talk about how much they just flat out didn’t see when they were trapped in the spiral of self-hate that so often comes with being a young fat woman in America (and other places, but you know I hate to speak for other places where I don’t live). That’s actually the single most frustrating aspect of More To Love for me – that so many of these women view this as their ONE SINGLE CHANCE, as if there weren’t lots of guys (and women and other nonspecified gender identities) who are into fat chicks.
But we as fatties are trained to buy into this idea just as much, if not more than, the rest of our culture. It’s one of the most efficient means of policing ourselves.
So, a bit of external validation can help with that. I know that – I really do get it, because it helped me. The flip side of this, however, still exists.
Living in pursuit of that external validation is a sucker’s game. The harder you seek it, the more it will be defined to exclude you, whoever you happen to be. The faster you run after it, the faster it will change and keep ahead of you. It’s like that damned stuffed rabbit thing they use at the greyhound track.
This is why I don’t have a lot invested in external physical validation (I’m still working on it in other categories, like, oh, writing!). There are a couple of people who get to have an opinion that matters (like my husband) and everyone else, well, it’s nice if they think I’m attractive but if they don’t, eh, wev.
I don’t find every single person on the planet attractive; why should I worry about whether or not every single person on the planet finds me attractive in return?
I wouldn’t want to give up the positive opinions of those people that matter. But I wouldn’t want just anyone’s opinion to matter either. That’s kind of the trick of the thing. It’s easy to say that the only thing that counts is what’s going on INSIDE of a person. It’s not as popular to say that, well, the outside counts, too. It just doesn’t count the way the world wants it to count. And all of that inside stuff has an impact on how the outside stuff gets perceived as well.
Here’s the plainest I can say it (and maybe I should just delete all of that wordiness above and come right down to this): External validation is nice. But it cannot be the only thing you have or you have nothing. Because there is no way to make everyone appreciate your outside no matter what it looks like. External validation can be nice; it can also be creepy and scary and full of pressure and expectation. It isn’t the end-all, be-all of worth, not for anyone but especially not for women. Let’s reprioritize the external validation, move it way down on the list. And if someone appreciates your outer package, let’s make sure it’s YOUR outer package, not one you’ve ripped out of a magazine because you think that’s what people want from you, because you think that’s the only way you can be acceptable.
Someone who validates you or refuses to validate you based on your external package is not doing you a favor either way. It’s just a thing. Let’s figure out how to treat it as such.
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as if there weren’t lots of guys (and women and other nonspecified gender identities) who are into fat chicks.
And not just guys who are into fat chicks, but guys who are into YOU! I was the first fattie my husband ever dated, and I’m the one he married.
This was a good post. You wrote:
“That’s actually the single most frustrating aspect of More To Love for me – that so many of these women view this as their ONE SINGLE CHANCE, as if there weren’t lots of guys (and women and other nonspecified gender identities) who are into fat chicks.”
I was wondering about this. I’ve been reading Lesley’s recaps (which I love) of MTL. Now, I’ve never watched The Bachelor or any other reality show. But isn’t it normal for all the contestants trying to win the “prize” (of the guy / girl) to act like this particular person is the ONE CHANCE or the ONE PERSON they’ll click with? I think the “I’ve always been fat and no one’s ever liked me” is a twist unique to MTL, but the shallowness, desparation, and competitiveness is really what ALL those shows have in common and what the producers and directors work their hardest to manufacture – right?
On some level I’ve recently only realized / believed deep down in my heart that yes, there are people drawn to big girls. Funny thing: I’ve always known, believed, and accepted that big guys can be attractive! It’s like you say, something recently “clicked”. I put this all down to reading up here and other FA sites and I’m super happy to have broadened my world view.
Fabulous post. External validation is nice, but it’s not actually an accomplishment.
I love this…
“a beauty ideal so narrow that even women who fit into it don’t actually fit into it”
Seriously…
This is the thing about MTL that’s been driving me crazy – not only do these women seem to feel as though Luke is their only chance at love, they also seem to think that he is just seeing their “inner beauty” as though they’re not beautiful women on the outside.
I left a pertinent comment, but the interwebs sucked it away. It was about how I think that external validation, or the “need” for it, is culturally ingrained, etc. And how we learn/teach contradictory things: e.g. when you’re a little, cute, fat girl and your beloved daddy hammers into your brain that looks don’t mean shit, “it’s what’s on the inside that counts,” then hammers you with kind of useless compliments (like telling you you’re the prettiest girl in the world) and that’s the validation that you get.
Anyhoo.
Also wanted to ask if anyone knows anything about anything going on in FL around this horse-shit:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/17/petas-new-save-the-whales_n_261134.html
PETA is a disgrace to vegetarianism. I tried sending them email but their site is all wonkedy. I live in Orlando, and would like to know if any FL folks are doing anything about this.
*head explodes*
I found, after much soul searching, that the only validation I needed about my looks was my own.
I realized that people spend so little time thinking about how I look, or worrying about my look, that I was crazy to spend any time trying to live up to whatever imagined standards that other people have.
Validation from myself that I’m actually a beautiful woman was all that I needed.
I forgive – not that you need it – the fact you are giving that putrid network ratings for that putrid show if the result is posts like this.
I don’t find every single person on the planet attractive; why should I worry about whether or not every single person on the planet finds me attractive in return?
Totally!
There are a couple of people who get to have an opinion that matters (like my husband) and everyone else, well, it’s nice if they think I’m attractive but if they don’t, eh, wev.
OMG, I have had some of the worst experiences with men at clubs who act like they are doing me the greatest favor in the world by offering to sleep with me…and then get angry that I dare to say “no”. Because obviously I MUST be desperate for external validation. At the BBW Bash a guy kept hitting on me and would. not. listen. when I said I had PLANS with a FRIEND and MY HUSBAND. *headdesk*
P.S. I emailed you an addendum.
Smoochles.
Another thing that I find weird is that nobody mentions that Luke weighs at least 100 pounds more than all the women. The TV ratio must be maintained at all costs, apparently, whether it’s Kevin James and a 120-pound chick, or Luke and a 200-pound chick.
Because every woman watching this has to go away with the message that no man will love you unless you weigh considerably less than he does.
I think fat men, including men who weigh a hundred or more pounds more than I do, can be ineffably hot. (Luke, not so much, because he’s a bit of a douche.) But I also think men my own weight can be hot and men who weigh considerably less than I do can be hot.
And men in all of those groups have found me hot in the past, and probably in the present, but I’m too into my roughly-same-weight-as-me husband of 9+ years to notice that so much.
JupiterPluvius – WORD
It is all internal work…that esteem thing…but it does help if you have (and can accept) external praise.
This is hard for me and not just about how I look. I’ve had to learn to say “thank you” without any qualifiers. And I’ve also had to work at giving other people praise, and experience how their acceptance (or rejection) of it affects me.
I find that once I began to understand that people really do think well of me, respect me, think I’m beautiful, then if I had any true feelings for them, I needed to come to that understanding too. I had to go inside to do it, but without my friends and family as a mirror it would have been 10 times as difficult.
What a pertinent topic for me. As a single woman who *just* celebrated her birthday, I’m struggling with the whole concept of whether or not men will ever accept me as I am. Rationally I know there are men who find me attractive – however I’m still mired so deep in my self-hatred that I automatically assume that if a man isn’t interested it has nothing to do with our personality differences and has everything to do with my weight.
I am working very, VERY hard to break this cycle and I’m proud to say I’ve made marked improvement. However, I still have a long way to go. I’m lucky to know the worth of my “inside” even as I struggle with the worth of my “outside” and that keeps me from making really bad choices i.e. thinking I’m “lucky” to have a d-bag want to sleep with me.
I cannot tell you how much having blogs like this help me to further my positive self-image and make me realize that I am NOT alone.
I’m eternally grateful.
Great post.
All right, that’s it. You’re on my reading list, even though I hate the way I cry every time someone points me to one of your posts because they’re just so good.
Exactly. Thanks for this. I watched MTL for the first time this week (Lesley’s recaps were too good to not see it!). I actually started screaming at the screen when one of the laydeez said Luke really loved her inside and who she was and didn’t care about her outside. AAAAHHH! This idea of erasing the outside is so dangerous. I find this show really triggering because I feel like in this world (and in my own head) I can fall back into these old ideas that I really have no use for anymore.
I’m 32 and just in the past few years have I found some distance from really needing others to check me out and validate my attractiveness. It hasn’t gone away, but I can see it for what it is more.
Amen, amen, amen.
Was recently at a reunion meeting up with people I hadn’t seen since 5th grade. Obviously, I weigh a lot more since then. One of the boys (and even in our mid 30s, he was still clearly a BOY) sauntered up to me and announced that since I was so fat, he would never be bothered to f*ck a girl like me. (I wear a size 18/20…on the smaller side of plus, but honestly, what the eff does it matter?) I didn’t have a problem announcing just as loudly that I didn’t sleep with smokers who had herpes.
I wonder if this guy thought I would drop to my knees and beg him to take pity on me and lay some pipe. For reals. My vibrator has more personality.
A funny thing has happened for me since I stopped wearing women’s pants; I don’t see myself as being “fat” the way I used to. Something about going by the inches around my waist and length of pants-leg, a measure of the actual fit of my clothing, has taken that anxiety out of the picture.
Ironic that we continue to size clothing according to the bodies of our much smaller great-grandmothers, with the “single-digit” clothing sizes being the only ones acceptable in today’s fashion. Those grand old dames were generally 4 to 6 inches shorter than we are today, and their proportions were not too different than today’s size-14 woman. Women of my proportions–who in those days were size 14 or greater, while I’m around an 18 (?) in women’s pants–were hired for burlesque shows for their extremely lovely, well-fed figures.
These days, when I look in the mirror, I see myself in that light. I’ve been told that I’m wonderfully soft and touchable. Sounds good to me!
This post is great and sums up the frustration I had for years before I met my husband. I used to have a saying that I wanted someone to “not want me for my mind.” Shallow, yes, but to have attention and acceptance for the whole package and not in spite of the outer part was very important to me. Most opinions on my appearance I don’t care about (As I told one of my male friends once: “Sorry, It’s not one of my goals in life to ever give you a boner.”) But having my husband validate the outer as being sexy and desirable on a completely seperate level than the inner side is, well, pretty damn nice. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
This is how Erin at A Dress A Day put a similar idea in her excellent post “You Don’t Have to Be Pretty.” I re-read it often.
http://www.dressaday.com/2006/10/you-dont-have-to-be-pretty.html
@JupiterPluvius I totally noticed this about More to Love, too. I was actually very saddened when that one girl (forget her name) who weighed 279 was kicked off the first round (isn’t it terrible that they actually include their weights? as if they aren’t being objectified enough…). I felt like this person represented what I looked like the most, and she, weighing the most, was kicked off first. Just sad.
While I agree with most of what you say here, I think there’s a few real problems with the whole “it’s what’s inside that counts” model.
One is that I think it re-inscribes the mind/body split, at the expense of the body; the other is that I think it’s a denial of the basic social nature of identity.
I also think what’s outside does matter, it does count for something, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is when it’s the ONLY thing that counts, when it matters more than anything else.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with beauty – with having it, wanting it, appreciating or admiring it. But when it is a cultural imperative to be beautiful inside and out (and the one apparently leading to the other), it’s very problematic.
Personally, I think it’s fine for appearance to matter – important, even, given that we are embodied subjects. But appearance is one aspect among many of who a person is; and it’s an aspect with a great deal of interplay with other aspects, so that I think you can tell something about who a person is from how they look.
Totally agree that the current beauty standard is so narrow that even those who fit don’t fit. I’m definitely not arguing for the status quo. But I’m arguing for bodies and appearances to matter, to be acknowledged and valued rather than dismissed or minimised.
OMG YAY, I get to test threaded comments.
Ahem.
I’m not saying appearance DOESN’T matter. It obviously does. But our society is so, if you’ll excuse the term, weighted toward it that it is all out of whack. It matter to me what certain people think of my appearance. But my appearance is not any goddamn business of the douchebag in the streetracer that roars past me yelling out the window. It doesn’t matter if it is positive or negative attention in that case – bodies are not, especially not the bodies of women, public property.
I am all for people taking ownership of their body and inner person – I think Inner Beauty is a bullshit platitude that gets handed down. I don’t buy it either. But I think external validation of appearance is also entirely overvalued in our society.
yay for threaded comments!
I agree with everything you’ve just said, particularly about bodies not being public property.
I also think there’s a subtler thing of some kind here, about inter-corporeality, being a body in the world. Like, the douchebag yelling out the window is a douchebag, yeah, and my body is none of his business, but he still has an impact on my being in the world in some way. That’s not to say I stop going down the street in a halter top on hot days (for some reason halter-tops really seem to bring out the douchbags around here), but it’s a part of my experience of the world and therefore informs who I am to some extent. For me, the idea that what they yell out the window don’t matter runs the risk of denying that they have an impact (or more specifically, thinking it shouldn’t matter, which – for me – is a set-up for feeling like fail…or was for all the years I spent disconnected from my outside because I’ve always been far too fat to fit the conventional standards of beauty).
I also think there’s a tendency when talking about appearance to think of ‘beauty’ as ’shallow’ and the result of good luck rather than the product of certain practises and deliberate effort (which always confuses me when it’s bound up with excellent critiques of those practices and the imperative – for women especially – to make that effort).
There’s a Nomy Lamm where she writes (specifically about her high-femme punk aesthetic):
*fails at coding*
The Nomy Lamm quote is actually:
“I say to hell with not judging by appearance. When I spend an hour getting ready to go out, painting on fake eyelashes and a Valentino moustache, doing my hair in the most glamorous of 1940s styles, using my creative energies to design the perfect outfit, do you suppose I want people to look at me and think absolutely nothing?
The “hell yeah…” is all me.
Not to be the person who posts a comment on the latest post that doesn’t apply to it but only because it’s the easiest place to post . . . ah, screw it, that’s exactly the person I’m being.
I love the new site look! My first reaction on opening the tab was “holy crap!” (That’s a good reaction.)
I would like to thank SOTO for bringing up the harm in encouraging the “mind/body-split”. I think it’s so important in understanding how oppression works.
I feel like this serves a myriad of purposes to uphold the “status quo,” if you will, but the way that stands out most to me is how it convinces us that we should ignore the needs of our own bodies- sort of “freeing up” that energy so that it can be directed towards the worship of very narrowly defined types of bodies.
I think it also upholds the existentialist/libertarian aspect of our culture/social system that absolutely insists that anyone with the “will”, the “intellect,” or whatever, can make it just fine and do whatever they want, be whoever they want to be. Which is a load of shit.
I don’t mean to sound like I am out of love with homo sapiens sapiens; quite the contrary. But the thing is minds become distracted very easily without much effort, while these wars get fought all over the physical bodies they inhabit. It isn’t fair that people don’t have the right to acknowledge that their bodies do exactly what bodies are supposed to do, from a physiological standpoint- and that doesn’t change in regard to the particular body’s “ableness,” aesthetic, or the computing power located in that particular body’s cranial vault.
It’s so nice to come to a space where I can acknowledge that my body matters, my outsides matter, and I don’t have to divert attention from it, if that makes any sense.
My body matters, my outsides matter, because they are me. Nothin’ less.
Sorry, don’t mean to ramble!
“My body matters, my outsides matter, because they are me. Nothin’ less. ”
yes yes yes and YES
I don’t have anything to add to this fascinating discussion, but I did want to compliment your new layout. It’s very pretty and I like your pic up at the top!
I love the new look of your site!
OMG I love the way your blog looks now! I would say it makes me feel all sparkly inside, but I’m losing my interest (and indeed the enjoyment of) sparkliness quickly these days
But yay new layout!
I’m fine with insides counting for non romantic relationships. Business relationships. Even friendships, although I’d like to think my friends don’t think I’m ugly cause I’m fat.
With romantic relationships, everyone should have someone who finds them physically attractive. Does anyone really want a man who can “get past” her looks, be it weight issues or otherwise?
My husband is crazy about me, body and soul. People are taken aback when I explain what an ego boost it is to take him clothes shopping with me. I’m extremely hard to shop for, 4′10 and size 22/24. I’m often frustrated right out of the stores. Watching his eyes light up when I try things on is such a rush. Even when the item is a no-go, it feels good to know my beloved thinks I’m beautiful and sexy in anything.
WOW! Awesome new look! I love it!
I’m going to share a story, because it was my aha! moment, and it floored me.
I was sitting in Central Park on a sunny spring morning, writing my novel, my two dogs racing around me, trying to eat the squirrels and unable to do so, when a man approached me and complimented me. This is not completely unheard of, yet it stunned me a little. Because I was wearing a tank top and my arms were showing. (I know, I know. But don’t we all think like this?) Somehow, this flowed into a discussion of the excellence of Virgil’s poetry when read in the original Latin. This is not generally a topic that gets me dates. I wasn’t really thinking about that, though, because I wasn’t thinking about dating at all. I was completely oblivious to the fact I was being picked up until, 45 minutes and a sunburn later, the guy asked if he could take me out on Friday.
So, great, I thought. See, this nice, well-educated, attractive guy was seeing my Inner Beauty! He was overcome by the attraction of my mind!
Fast forward a few weeks, to a more personal moment. Park Guy and I are, ahem, getting along really well. If you know what I mean. And he’s murmuring sweet nothings about my legs and my butt and my arms and my stomach . . . and I think, My stomach? Seriously? And, looking in his eyes, I realized I was entirely wrong: he hadn’t been drawn to my Inner Beauty. He’d been drawn to my Smokin’ Hot Body.
Big forehead-smacking moment!
Since this time, Park Guy and I have ended things, and there have been a number of other guys who have been drawn to my Smokin’ Hot Body, at its Smokin’ Hot Size Varying Between 16 and 24. And I have finally come to realize that they are as sincere in their appreciation for me as I am in my appreciation for the occasional scruff, and a little bit of chest hair, and non-Abercrombie-standard shoulders. This is not “settling for good enough” or “overlooking some flaws” or “she’s very pretty, even if she could stand to lose 25 lbs.” It is honest-to-heaven normal old-fashioned Outer Beauty lust in all its glory. I have stopped dating anyone who doesn’t consider my shape a serious turn-on.
Honest, there are a lot of guys out there, even in skinny-Mecca Manhattan, who are as indifferent to Michelle Pfeiffer as I am to Brad Pitt. (Really. Eh. Not interested. All yours, Angie.) Somehow I managed to miss them flirting with me, probably because I didn’t see how it could possibly be me they wanted and not the skinny chick next to me.
I’ve lost some weight, due to a combination of summer + no AC = too hot to eat, so I had to get some slightly smaller jeans. The boyfriend heard this announcement with some distress. He said, “You really don’t need to lose any weight.” And he was really worried! Like I had threatened to cut my hair short or something. Best part? He really had no idea why he got kissed so thoroughly for it.
“I don’t find every single person on the planet attractive; why should I worry about whether or not every single person on the planet finds me attractive in return?”
What a huge, huge statement! You’re absolutely right! For me I think another piece of this is that not only do I NOT find every person attractive – I also don’t think negatively of the people I don’t find attractive. So when I walk around thinking “Everyone finds me hideous, and everyone thinks of me with disgust,” this is not true…the people that don’t check me out probably don’t think much about me at all. And that’s just fine with me
I really appreciated this post. Sometimes it is so hard to balance the desire for external validation with your own quest for self-improvement (that is, in every field which is not appearance and desire for others to find you attractive).
“I don’t find every single person on the planet attractive; why should I worry about whether or not every single person on the planet finds me attractive in return?”
This is a sentence I should really keep in mind (but it’s hard, yaknow?).
My love! You have so nailed this on the proverbial head if I must say so myself! I am left with just … beautiful!
This is a great post thanks for sharing I am so feeling where you are coming from.
Has it really been almost two months since I checked your blog out? How terrible of me!
This post struck a chord within me because I have always wanted external validation. In fact, I want it so badly, that when I was at Folsom Street Fair last week, when a member of security came up to me with his genitals out (and enjoying them), and asked to see my panties and butt, my first reaction was ZOMG SOMEONE THINKS I’M ATTRACTIVE.
I was too slow to realise that he was being lewd and disgusting and inappropriate, and it wasn’t until the exchange had crossed over into “i should kick you in the nuts” territory that I realised he wasn’t being kind, he was being a predator.
I have a wonderful husband, and I know he thinks I’m the hottest person in the world, and just knowing that makes me realise that it doesn’t even matter what other people think. I AM hot, even if it’s not to everyone in the world, and that’s okay. But this jackass somehow got under my skin enough to make me feel like I was back in time, a time in my life where I had to lose my self-respect in order to get my ego stroked.
Next time, I’ll tell that guy to piss off.
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