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Self-image and the societal ideas thereof (SBR)

  
  

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Kali, Queen of Kitteh
03:41 / 20.07.07
It always starts as a joke, doesn't it?

Saying things like "If I eat this (insert food here) then I'll so get fat and no will love me/I will hate myself" et al.

I loathe it. I loathe the kind of culture I see around me every day. I loathe that being sickly and being thin is the aesthetic women and gay men aspire to. Well, honestly, it's a slightly different shade for our homosexual brethren. It's more about being "cut" and having the "six pack-abs". Being the muscle boy. Just another ugly shade of self-esteem dictated to us by the media.

So why do we feel like we have to do it?

I hate that I fall into it, too. I love certain parts about myself; mostly my head and other intangible parts of me, but God, what I wouldn't give to be able to wear a size 6. And I hate that I want it. I hate that I want to be this somewhat close to skinny-not-even-there figure because I think I would be happier. I think people would love me more and I could be this somewhat perfect being.

I rail against it, though. I rail against the idea that all sizes in stores these days are apparently designed for fetuses and normal women who don't even have a shot. The clothing size of the average woman? Size 10. My size. So why aren't better clothes designed for that? Why are the majority of women made to feel that they should starve, exercise, and practically kill themselves for an ideal that is only achievable by a tenth of the population?

I've never been one for diets. I've always been one for constant exercise, not for weight loss, but for the health benefits, but I feel as though I have no choice these days but to make it about the very thing that upsets me most.

I'd like honest opinion and discussion, please. Especially from the female contingent of Barbelith, as amazing as they are.
 
 
Papess
04:17 / 20.07.07
Kali, I am glad you started this topic. I will contribute properly to it later. I ask myself the same questions. Sometimes, I am painfully self-conscious about eating. Like I shouldn't?

Anyway, I will be back.
 
 
crimson
05:22 / 20.07.07
Having put on a bit of weight Im of the opinion that guys are conditioned by the media too, only that they are conditioned to like really skinny girls. Im not overweight but Ive noticed that guys were more immiediately interested in me when I was slimmer and my friends were sharing their concern regarding my eating habits with me, than they are now, when I eat more healthily. I know I shouldnt, because it was for all the wrong reasons, but I liked it when I got more attention.

I think the issue of body image is not going to go away so easily. Even if the media changes and we get more brilliant policies like Spains decision to ban models with a BMI lower than 18 in place. Even then, body image is a central factor in how many identify themselves. My family members have eating disorders and so do I. I hope that I wouldnt pass it onto my kids but I think i would just get more secretive rather than tackle the elephant in the room were I in that position.

So to get back to my point, Im sorry I take convoluted paths, Im not happy to say that I suspect that these issues will never go away in our society, but I do suspect that thin=good, fat=bad stuff will never go away, even though rationally we all agree that is absolute stuff and nonsense and we are a grossly illogical society.

On a more inspiring note the new movie Hairspray features ladies who are inspiring, strong and beautiful and happen to be overweight. This is brilliant and I want to see more of this, but Hairspray is still at the atage where they make a feature out of weight. I want to see the day when noone mentions or even registers weight, when its on a par with eye or hair colour in terms of its significance, when we barely notice it. Maybe then we will all be able to relax?
 
 
All Acting Regiment
05:41 / 20.07.07
To understand this properly, I think we'd have to ask if, and if so why, heterosexual men really do feel attracted to thinner (even unhealthy) women. Stumped if I know the answer to that one - it's probably not very pleasant.
 
 
illmatic
06:07 / 20.07.07
You might find this link of interest Kali. It's a discussion of body fat adn it's cultural weighting. The other parts of the article are are worth reading from a health and fitness point of view, but this is the philosophical side. I love her site.
 
 
totep
06:47 / 20.07.07
I, as a man, find it confusing how to feel about all of this as well, a point that I will get back to in a moment. Interesting that you brought up gay men. I have obviously seen this kind of thing in the broader gay culture, but fortunately it is rare in the "bear" culture, which is where I find myself as a, if you excuse the term, "bear bi-guy." It really seems that people in the bear culture find you, only based on my experiences mind you, attractive for how you really are. But, back to the confusion point. It's difficult for me to not question my own motives about why I find someone attractive. I like specific things, period. As someone who is very sex-positive, it's confusing to think that you have been conditioned to find certain things attractive, I'd much rather think that I just find that attractive because I do, not because I've been programed to. Although, I must say, I don't find rail-thin women attractive, curves are amazing! But even that, where does that come from? Can it be changed? And, more importantly, should it? I don't know. I like what I like. What can any of us do but love ourselves regardless?
 
 
Ex
07:30 / 20.07.07
Thanks for starting this, Kali. It's very pervasive, isn't it.

I'm particularly agog at the recent (last five year?) shift in explicit media attention on the thinness of women (and sometimes chaps). I remember reading feminist writing in the mid nineties about how women's self-image was influenced by idealised media images. But - as far as I remember - the media then didn't specialise in the relentless diagnostic scrutiny you get these days. 'X has put on five pounds and her arse is sagging!' 'Y has lost half a stone and now she looks GAUNT!' I don't think even the magazines know what they're advocating, they're just scatter-gunning women for having physical existence.

Last week a mag had a section devoted to beach-body 'errors', including Serena Williams: should change her gym routine because her bottom's getting too big. She trains in the gym to win major Tennis competitions, not to look hott by the standards of a shoddy and grimy publication with a telephoto camera.

It took me a long time to get out of an eating disorder I had as a teenager.
I think the idea of a sharp dividing line between people with an eating disorder (or dismorphia), and everyone else, is something of a myth. It feels far more like a spectrum to me, and although you can look at one end and treat it as a medical/psychological condition, so many people have disordered eating, and are distressed by their relationship to food and to their body.

Allmacto and totep, pickign up on your thoughts - the idea of asking why people fancy certain body types is scary and tricky for me. I certainly believe desire's influenced by outside sources. But I also know that it doesn't feel that way, so I'm nervous of saying 'You know this part of you which is so central and natural? It might be externally influenced, and thus have some relationship to (gender) politics.' I think if I don't make it a personal individual thing, that might help - not saying 'What you desire is WRONG AND BAD', but asking 'There's a big trend here, is it helpful?'.

(And totep and crimson, your last lines were both lovely.)
 
 
All Acting Regiment
08:22 / 20.07.07
One would assume that evolutionary sense would have the hetero male feel more attracted to things like wide hips and well-fed stomachs, because these imply fertility, a source of nutrient for the male's child, and so on. So how thinness fits into this I don't know - unless of course the hetero male is sexually attracted to the female for reasons other than child-rearing potential (I mean aside from the obvious social contact factors like conversation, companionship and so on), either external ones or internal ones.

Could it be that the male somehow sees the thin woman as having been starved "for" him, the slightness of the woman being the other (Lacan) to the expansiveness/largeness/high existence of the man?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
08:36 / 20.07.07
There's also this thread in the Head Shop.
 
 
COG
08:38 / 20.07.07
I would guess that Thin = Young in evolutionary terms, and Young = Fertile. Remember that our brains have evolved in an environment when people were breeding asap and you probably dropped dead at 28 or something.

There could easily be a mixture of more than one evolutionary trigger at work here, with people responding to different things depending on the circumstances.
e.g.
Thin = Young / Large = Older
Large = Well Fed / Thin = Malnourished

I'm talking males viewing females here. The other way round, maybe Thin males = Fertile but physically Weak
Large males = Old but Strong.

Add in all the cultural pressures and a dose of personal history and I reckon it would be a hard job to identify why we each like specific traits.
 
 
Saturn's nod
08:50 / 20.07.07
@Ex they're just scatter-gunning women for having physical existence.

That really hits the nail as I perceive it.

This is something I've been struggling with recently. I have become aware of a deeply rooted sense of apology for existing in myself. It flowers in a too-easy adoption of a lived sense that everyone hates me and wants me gone. I can see it now as a psychological position and I am determinedly hopeful that having some consciousness will help me to find better ways, and deprecate what is a decidedly uncomfortable set of assumptions. I'm offering this observation because I see this internal position as strongly encouraged/reinforced by cultural misogyny - perhaps almost to the level of being compulsory for female-identified people? I think it's more difficult for me to be rid of this error of my mind because I can easily get culturally rewarded for holding it.

When I'm witnessing particular fat-phobic outbursts in media sources I've been wondering whether it's a reaction to the threat of an 'improperly-controlled' person. I find in my own mind a strong link between fat and control - I know it's more complicated but there's a level at which I see some assumed equation like 'perfect control over one's appetites = scary thin'.

I see the paparazzi as a kind of roving id of the patriarchy: they are almost totally unreflective/invisible themselves, and ravening. They're carrying out monitoring and punishment by exposure, making examples of women who are insufficiently assimilated: which might fairly easily be understood as any woman making an appearance at all, in misogyny-culture.

From that perspective it's easy for me to see why unreflective desires are attaching to women who are 'sufficiently controlled' - even more so if they are also young and thus even further away down the power hierarchies.
 
 
Katherine
08:54 / 20.07.07
I think in part this has gotten worse due to the rise of Heat and similar magazines which take celebs and publish pictures where they don't look brilliant then rip them apart with arrows pointing to saggy bits, orange peel thighs and the suchlike. Faced with that it's not surprising that we take a look at ourselves and wonder if people see us that way.
 
 
Ex
09:09 / 20.07.07
Good grief, I'd totally forgotten starting that HeadShop thread.

When I'm witnessing particular fat-phobic outbursts in media sources I've been wondering whether it's a reaction to the threat of an 'improperly-controlled' person.

There's a lot of deliberate linking of control and celebrity body shape - there's often links to people having relationship breakdowns or public flare-ups and their bodies somehow being made to demonstrate how 'out of control' they are ('X breaks up with boyfriend, is suicidal, gains a stone, see pics page 5-9').

I think we (society) want bodies to tell us concrete things, to be legible - so our weaknesses or our sins or our mental state is written in big fleshy letters. Which is arse, because there are so many other factors that contribute to the way we look, but it's pervasive arse.

I suppose that goes double for celebrity bodies, because many people want to see the insides of celebrity lives/heads. If you think can do that by scrutinising their outsides (toned arms = new sense of control over life), that's great, that sells mags.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
09:12 / 20.07.07
they're just scatter-gunning women for having physical existence.

Good line - and true, I think. If a person is big it suggests they have power - in this case, probably matriarchal power which is a direct threat to the patriarchy.
 
 
Ex
09:20 / 20.07.07
I don't mean, incidentally, to turn this thread very HeadShoppish and thus stop people talking directly about their experiences (I think I just have a lot of thoughts left over from the HeadShop thread I failed to contribute to). I always learn an insane amount from hearing about other peoples lives.

For example, although I thought I'd weeded out most of the thought patterns associated with my own disordered eating, I caught myself thinking the other day: 'It's this many weeks to this event, I could lose this much weight!' It's ridiculous - the event is a bloody feminist-friendly queer conference, for starters. But one of my gears is stuck that way and will sporadically jam my brain.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:29 / 20.07.07
I see the paparazzi as a kind of roving id of the patriarchy: they are almost totally unreflective/invisible themselves, and ravening.

I don't know - it may seem unreflective, and may be at the point of shutter-click, but somebody is paying them for the pictures... and I realise that it's that time of the day when I blame consumer capitalism, but I blame consumer capitalism.

To work, that needs you to be miserable, or at the very least to want to be something you're not. You don't even need to think it's a good thing to be, aesthetically - Kali describes seeing the apparent ideal as "sickly", above - you just need to be aware that what you are at present is unsatisfactory.

So, if you feel fat, you can be induced to buy diet pills, exercise videos, gym memberships. If you feel skinny, you can be induceed to buy protein shakes, weights machines, gym memberships. In either case, your unhappiness can be harnessed to make you buy comfort foods. And the magazines show you how achievable it is - a beach body in 7 days! Tips for the new you! - and how terrible the punishment is for slipping from the path - haggard Britney left at the altar! Chubby Courtney drowns sorrows in ice cream.

Plus, of course, these models of perfection are unreal to start with. If you take a hundred photogrpahs of any person, they will look great in some and terrible in others. If you take them in studio lighting, and then treat them with photoshop to remove creases, wrinkles, moles - they will look _ideal_, in a way that they will not if you photograph them in fluorescent lighting in an underground car park. For the celebrities itself, it's something of a devil's bargain - if your laughter lines are airbrushed out on every photoshoot, simply not removing them from a picture will make you look as if you have aged terribly in only a few weeks (after a breakup or a breakdown). For the people who consume celebrities, there isn't really a perceptable return.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
11:11 / 20.07.07
Wow. I'm wonderfully impressed by the excellent responses and discussions this thread has triggered.

To briefly return to the gay side of aging/weight, I have come to understand that there is just as much emphasis on youth and being fit that I find it staggering that gay men have adopted eating disorders and unhealthy dietary habits along the lines of straight women. Frankly, it can be difficult enough to feel like an outsider in terms of rights/prejudice, but to have that extra added pressure of perfection or ideal look coming from your own community? Unfortunate. I've met more than my share of gay men who are my age and terrified of getting older, thinking that no one will want them anymore, and consequently, they will end up alone. When I was twenty, I used to horrified of aging myself, but at thirty, I like it. I like being wiser, if not thinner (something I will never be, no matter how hard I try.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
11:18 / 20.07.07
I think the clothes issue (as mentioned by Kali in the OP) is almost but not quite a different thing to the body self-image question... certainly there are times when the clothes in the shops seem designed specifically to make any woman other than a very particular type look, and therefore feel, bad (e.g. shapeless-tunic-and-leggings); but there have been seasons recently when the shops have had plenty of clothes that look good on many women of all sizes, notably the 50s-influenced frocks. So it's a question of riding out the bad seasons and taking advantage of the good ones, and that's probably true whatever one's shape, size and personal style is (even if you actually suit shapeless-tunic-and-leggings).

On the body image: I'm short and at the top end of the overweight band according to the (crude) BMI index - but with my rather broad build, if I lost more than (say) a stone, maybe a stone and a half, I think I would look ill. Do I want to lose weight? Yes! I never do anything about it, beyond maybe a week's screwed-up eating, but I whinge about getting fat to my partner all the time. I was pleased with myself some years ago when I did drop quite a bit of weight, and think back to that period (when I was emotionally stressed and not eating properly at all) with nostalgia. I certainly felt more attractive than I do now.

I don't know how far I am influenced by the media - I like to think, not much - but it's perhaps inevitable, even for a low media consumer like me. Agree with much of the discussion above about paparazzi and media depictions of celebrity women (and the odd man thrown in as a token).
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
11:53 / 20.07.07
For me a lot of the Fat Thing is mixed up with the Gender Thing. I've never been entirely happy living in my indisputably female body, and that's got worse as I've got older; not sure if that's down to the Gender Monster getting grouchier in its old age or just the fact that I'm getting lardier with the passing years. Socially acceptable images of androgyny compatible with the sale of haute couture and Campari tend to be hott skinny dudes in gowns or mini-skirts, or hott skinny chicks in sharp suits or tight trousers and singlets (which I am forbidden by an EU directive from wearing in a public area).

These tend on the whole to fill me with a gallon or two of bleh, because I do not look like that and realisitically I never will. But those images say to me "look, there's a socially acceptable thirdy-looking person, you could occupy that niche too if you had that kind of body-shape, that kind of body-shape is aquirable with sufficient excercise and dieting, and therefore any dysphoria you are currently dealing with is All Your Fault."

My response to this is usually "oh fuck I need cake and a pint." I recognise this to be largely unhelpful.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
12:20 / 20.07.07
These tend on the whole to fill me with a gallon or two of bleh, because I do not look like that and realisitically I never will. But those images say to me "look, there's a socially acceptable thirdy-looking person, you could occupy that niche too if you had that kind of body-shape, that kind of body-shape is aquirable with sufficient excercise and dieting, and therefore any disphoria you are currently dealing with is All Your Fault."

Exactly how I feel. Now I don't diet, but I do watch what I eat. I feel I eat better 80% of the time than most people I know, but that comes from a love of cooking for myself at home and controlling what ingredients get put into what I consume. I have an intense dislike for fast foods and will not eat them. As far as any sort of exercise regimen goes, well, I walk a mile or two everyday. Walking for me is therapeutic. I don't know if it actually helps with any sort of weight loss. I know that I am loved for who I am, but it still doesn't stop me from feeling self-conscious when I see women wearing clothes I want to. It still doesn't stop me from being paranoid about how I look to others.

Oh, cake and a pint might seem terribly unhelpful, but what the hell?
 
 
Quantum
12:31 / 20.07.07
I have a question- why buy those girls magazines? I blame the media, which as Haus said is in turn driven by consumer capitalism, but ultimately we buy the stupid mags. Why? Schadenfreude at Britney's cellulite? Ideas for new outfits?
The same obviously applies to some mens mags too, but I notice glancing at the rack in the shop that all the women's magazines are full of gaunt celebrity women trying to look sexy, and all the lads mags are full of topless gaunt celebrity women trying to look sexy.
Are Cosmo and OK more blameworthy than Loaded and Nuts? They just seem to be devices to leave you feeling fat and ugly and wanting to buy a £300 Gucci handbag or £200 anti-aging facial milk product to make you feel better.

Actually the age thing really hacks me off as well, and the lying vampiric edifice that is the beauty industry, and the stupid tiny clothes that shops sell, and the disastrous fascination with food as something that is bad for you, and the 'duty' of women to look good etc etc.
I'm often glad I'm not a woman. It's bad enough getting angry vicariously, most of my partners have to some extent or other been concerned about their weight almost constantly, despite being fantastic, beautiful women. "Does my bum look big in this?" Why would you not want a big bum? I want to say 'Big and lovely!' but I'd be single pretty quick...

Anyway, why do people buy those magazines that are propaganda for the cosmetics, diet and fashion industries?
 
 
Katherine
12:31 / 20.07.07
I would rather that society put more of an emphasis on being fit and healthy than being thin, just because someone is thin it doesn't mean they are healthy.

Not everyone can be the thinner clothes horse that society seems to want us all to desire to be, but we all could be fit and health which surely is the better thing?
 
 
Quantum
12:32 / 20.07.07
For the record, there is very little as sexy as a woman with cake and a pint. Mmmm.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
12:38 / 20.07.07
Good point, archabyss. I'm really trying to settle for being healthy and fit than the option.

Quantum, I do not buy women's magazines anymore. Paying someone four dollars to make me feel seems a crime somehow. I used to subscribe to Jane back in the day because I was under the impression it was more about being a woman of substance than image and style. Somewhere along the way, Jane's so-called boast of being a women's magazine for real-looking women--so many false bylines on the covers about real sized clothes for real sized women--became another outlet for such in-depth articles as "Have only $100 to spend? Here's what you could purchase!" etc. Real-sized women in those fashion spreads???? Oh yes, because I forget everyone is a size 0.
 
 
Papess
12:50 / 20.07.07
Great discussion. Oh aces!

I would rather that society put more of an emphasis on being fit and healthy than being thin,

That would be nice. I even think some marketing is angled this way. However, I do agree with Haus' insight about the need for consumerism to keep people unhappy or possibly confused. Even if an industry is focused on more positive healthy images of our bodies, the "necessary products" or procedures required to attain that healthy state seem to change constantly. There is always something "new and improved" that one has to buy. Seeing as how people are already in conditions of dissatisfaction, it is so easy to fall prey to this, no matter how healthy one is.
 
 
Papess
12:53 / 20.07.07
I'd lke to add - what I see as the only counter to falling prey to this, is to try to regain a healthy mind, which, unfoirtunately, consumerism tries to package sell back to us too.
 
 
Saturn's nod
13:04 / 20.07.07
@Q:Anyway, why do people buy those magazines that are propaganda for the cosmetics, diet and fashion industries?

This is an interesting question for me. Sometimes I buy Vogue because I want to look at and think about clothing construction, but I think that's a specialist interest and I think that emphasis and the attitude I'm approaching with of having my own knowledge and preferences about cut and materials protects me somewhat from the self-hatred cycle in that case. That's not the purchase-consideration event that most interests me. I want to know what's going on when I consider buying one of the generic 'women's' magazines.

If I try to describe what happens then: I've momentarily lost the awareness that the magazine's actually harmful to my good self-image, I'm seeing it as harmless and diverting, when feel I'm in need of distraction. The occasions on which I find myself considering purchasing such a thing are particular: I'm far from home, somewhere noisy, public and unfamiliar, usually stressed and tired.

Usually I am looking at magazines in a small outlet with v limited choice, such as a shop at a provincial railway station or on a train: I might have only primary research papers or heavy monographs or scripture in my bag and I'm looking for something easy, something with nice small words in it and pretty pictures because my brain's too scattered for me to study. I think in such situations I might be reaching for the feeling of self-hatred just from a need for familiarity! The emotional immune system's having a glitch.

It's interesting to me that I am able to describe that situation so precisely with a little consideration. Perhaps it will help me seek out something more appropriate in future!

@MO ...what I see as the only counter to falling prey to this, is to try to regain a healthy mind...

If you'll excuse me having a misty-eyed Barbelith-wuv moment, isn't having healthy minds with each other what we're doing here? Developing our critical thinking skills in a collective, listening to and encouraging each other, offering our analyses and applying other people's, concocting revolutionary artistic acts: sounds like healthy activity to me.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
13:10 / 20.07.07
I have a question- why buy those girls magazines?

I don't. My household didn't permit such things when I was growing up so I never got the habit or the taste for them. I hate them. They suck. The only time I read them is if I'm in a workplace, waiting-room etc that has them lying around, and they fill me with the same rage every time. Horrible horrible things.

When I was working for the British Library, I found sever shelves with what I think was basically the entire run of Cosmo, every Cosmo ever. One day I went along the rows dipping in and pulling out a copy or two for each decade. Every single one was the same, a clone of the others, just with slightly different sorts of shoes and handbags. And they were all shit.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
13:13 / 20.07.07
Yes, I usually find myself only reading them when I'm at the gym (which is one 'nother level of being made to feel about yourself while you're actively not trying to feel about yourself) or a doctor's office or something. When I moved from one flat to another years ago, I was appalled to see how many issues of Jane I had kept around for some bizarre reason.

I promptly discarded them and canceled my subscription.
 
 
Ron Stoppable
13:14 / 20.07.07
Absolutely agree, Medulla. And this is part of the weirdness. Straight men are being sold the package as well; you take enough malnourished women and label them as among the 'sexiest' and, I dunno, straight men will believe it?

It's a difficult one to quantify because it relies so much on anecdotal evidence and personal taste, both examined and unexamined but typically, many of the men I know will react with; "too skinny" when presented with such images.

Sidestepping the other image issues this raises ("oh so big boobs are what makes a woman attractive?") if enough straight men react negatively to the notion that starved=sexy, who is the package being sold to? and who makes these decisions anyway?

All leaves me a little confused.
 
 
Quantum
13:14 / 20.07.07
I'm looking for something easy, something with nice small words in it and pretty pictures because my brain's too scattered for me to study.

You need to read more comics! Thanks for that description though, I think most people I know read them with a sort of guilty pleasure, like eating ice cream or cake and saying 'ooh I am naughty!'. Except ice cream and cake don't make you hate yourself.
They're a bit like smack addiction really, those women's magazines- cost a lot, fill you with self loathing, make evil people rich, encourage emaciation, you know you shouldn't do it but can't stop etc.
 
 
Quantum
13:17 / 20.07.07
who is the package being sold to?

Women. They're the ones who spend most on cosmetics, dieting, fashion and so the lucrative market.
 
 
Ticker
13:20 / 20.07.07
for me there is an entire pandora's box around body image, gender issues, self empowerment, spirituality...the list seems to indicate it is a core touchstone of unease.

For me it goes like this, I'm a large person who doesn't really fit into the gender box assigned so in my youth I took refuge in being even less the norm by being heavier. As I for health reasons moved more toward the norm the more conflict I endured around gender issues.

Add to that the self medicating via food choices. I've discovered through the use of dietary changes and some excellent books that my eating habits supply me with increased serotonin during times of stress, which is often a nasty cycle. If I'm not feeling comfortable in body my mood drops and I desire to lift it. I've learned can be done (in my case) with a food choice that makes me feel 1) indulgent/special/treat action and 2)chemically shifts my emotional state by introducing sugar and serotonin precursers. The preferred response to cake and pint for me personally is to flip through a deck of lolcat playing cards I carry or use a brief mediatation. this is not to say others shouldn't have the cake/pint but for me I have dietary restrictions that make wheat/sugar/fermentation major no-nos as a treat response. so it is even worse when I answer a bad day with cake/pint.

to escape the hell of being a big lumbering thing in today's dainty fashions I camp out in freak clothing and misfit presentations. One of my friends mentioned if you know you can't fit into the box you might as well make a statement about how you feel about the box - with a hammer. the next problem for me being I know from experience what happens when I ditch my desk job for a physically active one and automatically lose twenty pounds and suddenly find myself on the shores of the mainstream body sizing.

It's a painful cycle of mental/physical health aggrevated by societal pressures to conform and be attractive/appropriate. so much sense of self is built into the failure and struggle of presenting the ideal self which so few of us realize is a battle in our brain chemistry and daily choices. I don't value myself enough for all the hard work I do but rather tear myself down for what is ultimately my body being efficient with food for future use. I'm a highly fuel efficient design and famine resistent now I just need to stop trying to improve the performance by running crazy environmentally toxic fuel through the system. It makes everything wear out faster and uses too much resources.

I tell you though for me it is very scary when I cease to be physically large and find myself squarely in the attractive female box. it brings up all kinds of gender issues and sexuality concerns and basically makes me run screaming for cake/pint in order to remian calm. though these days I'm considering the benefits of more mainstream presentations for community work. Can't seem to get away from it.

Imagine what life must be like when all this worry, concern, and self critique is gone and that time and energy can be used for other things?
 
 
Ron Stoppable
13:28 / 20.07.07
@ Quantum:

who is the package being sold to?

Women. They're the ones who spend most on cosmetics, dieting, fashion and so the lucrative market.

And this is what confuses me (and where I flash my ignorance - apologies in advance) - isn't the myth that women are marketed these unhealthy ideas on the grounds that looking attractive really means attracting a partner (as if that's the be-all and end-all) therefore that must be the image that men (in the exclusively heteronormative society the media recognises) are attracted by. If this isn't actually the case, then why hasn't the notion just collapsed by now?

Sorry if educationally I'm a step behind the thread on this one...
 
 
Papess
13:28 / 20.07.07
if you know you can't fit into the box you might as well make a statement about how you feel about the box - with a hammer.

That should be on a T-shirt.
 
  

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