Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Chasing Dinosaurs: On the Body Image Myth

Girls and body image: another problem caused by the magnifying glass of media. We know this; we talk about this; we post touching videos about it. But it seems to me to be another thing we can fix if we think more about the person and less about "the community."

For our daughters, we need to shut down the idea that TV and magazines are reality. I'm not just talking about telling them about Photoshop magic and the like. I'm talking about really showing them the the old cliche stands up: beauty is, in fact, in the eye of the beholder and it is not dictated by the eye of the photographer or of the fashion designer or of the producer.
John Singer Sargent

Men have a more varied view of feminine beauty than the mainstream media give them credit for. Sure, we all react to the Sports Illustrated models (are we not flesh and blood?) but, unless we are deluded fools (and some of us are, granted) we find beauty in many other forms and even in what others would have us believe is "imperfection."



I guess you will just have to trust me on this, girls. It's hard, I suppose, if you believe the message that gets drilled into your skull all day, every day. But guys are more complex than they are given credit for (except for those who are still wearing furs and chasing dinosaurs -- and they do exist). You are beautiful to somebody and probably to many. Do you really want to be beautiful to everyone? -- especially when that standard of beauty is manufactured?

My wife is beautiful to me and to many others. If I could keep her the same, inside, and change her into Kate Upton on the outside...I wouldn't.

16 comments:

  1. Beauty sure is in the eye of the beholder. For example, I think Kate Upton is gross! Ha! It's a highly complex issue for girls. Media is part of it, but not the only main problem. This is going to sound weird...but if nudity wasn't so frowned upon, it would have been easier growing up. Had I really gotten a good look at other girls' naked bodies in gym class, I'd have learned what real bodies are supposed to look like. But no, we were all self conscious and tried as hard as possible to change our clothes without taking our clothes off. (Yes, it's possible to do that.) So we all have this ideal floating around in our heads that we think everyone else possesses, but they just don't.

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    1. Let it suffice to say that I thin Kate Upton is the polar opposite of "gross" if you take my meaning. That said, an excellent point about nudity. We are just ridiculous about how Puritanical we are about nudity in light of all of the over promiscuity going on out there. And you are right: perspective would lead to much different thinking.

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  2. No, Chris. The problem is not caused by the media. It is caused by a culture that values men and boys for what they do, but women and girls for what they are (and the only acceptable ways for women and girls to be are beautiful and virtuous).

    The media of course recycles and amplifies the problem. But it does not cause it.

    Furthermore, it's not on women and girls to change this. Not alone. Men have to kick in some effort too, and make it known (yea, even unto the media) when they value the women and girls in their lives for their intelligence and accomplishments, not because they think they're beautiful.

    (heh. rereading before I hit post, I realised I went straight to the language of epidemiology to describe the media's role. "Recycles and amplifies." heh.)

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    1. 'nora -- maybe in my egocentrism I expected some earlier points I made about media (earlier post) to be carried through this but I do blame the media because it focuses all that is shallow in the world like sunlight through a magnifying glass. I agree that, for centuries, society has valued "men and boys for what they do, but women and girls for what they are (and the only acceptable ways for women and girls to be are beautiful and virtuous)." But media's impact on young women cannot be underestimated. Media needs to be more responsible and less shallow. It's killing our young ladies. But, granted, if those wrong-directioned problems of male dominated society didn't exist, the media would have nothing to exploit. One can't do damage without the other just as an evil dictator might be the core of villany but his army carries our heinous acts as a result of his twisted ideology. So, we could argue semantics, but I think, for young women today, although the media is not the root cause, it is the direct cause for their body-image issues.

      Also, I don't think I implied in any way that it is for women or girls to change this. This piece, itself, was written by a man trying to "kick in" and to tell girls that they are being lied to -- that we men see kinds of beauty that isn't generally represented by the media.

      And of course all humans should be valued for their intelligence and accomplishments, but, it is nice for anyone to feel attractive. I think that to philosophically try to eliminate the need for that feeling is a mistake, so long as balance is struck. Most women I have ever known want to be thought beautiful -- even the really smart and dynamic ones, and I have met some impressive thinkers of the opposite sex. And I think that is okay, this need for feeling attractive, and I was trying to get across the idea that beauty is a more complex thing that the media woud l have one think.

      I am a man, and I want my wife to think me handsome. Nothing wrong with that - unless too much worth is placed upon my being handsome and none on my inner self, which is, of course, what tends to happen to women when they are objectified by the media. (And, as you say, by a male -skewed society.)

      I suppose I would like my view on this to be represented by the last lines about my wife. I think she is beautiful, physically. But I have seen images of women who are "perfect" in terms of beauty (just as she has seen those pictures of guys with sharply etched chins and perfect abs), but, BECAUSE of what is inside my wife's heart and mind, she is, to me, the most beautiful person I have ever known. The media says Kate Upton is more beautiful than my wife. I say they are wrong. We need to fight one-dimensional views of beauty. The media peddles that. (Though, fortunately, I have notived a slow change in the types of women chosen to do things like host shows and news programs; many of them are hardly of the prescribed "model" look. A start, perhaps.

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    2. Oh, also, I think parents can fix all of this if they try really hard.

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  3. Wow. I'm sorry, Chris, I know your intentions are good here but I just can't even. Being a man who would like his wife to find him handsome is not even in the same galaxy as growing up a girl and knowing that it doesn't matter, really, because even if you do win the Nobel, all anyone will talk about is your hair and dress.

    As for parents fixing it, allow me to refer you to my friend Emily's piece on talking with her daughter about body image: http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/training-the-world-on-little-girls-and-body-image/

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  4. Of course, Emily hopes, as I hope, and as you hope, that we can change this, but it is not easily done, and just telling girls they're being lied to by society (again, the media is just society's megaphone) is too facile. We know that. But the poison is already in us.

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    1. At first I wanted to say you oversimplified what I said, but I realized what you did was under-simplify it. There was no indication of comparison between my wanting my wife to find me attractive and the plight of the modern woman in light of societal shallowness of perception. I was simply pointing to basic human needs: I think it is okay for everyone to want to be attractive, male and female alike. That's all I was saying. I'd be a pretty major ass if I had even indicated that there was a comparison to my need for my wife to find me attractive and the very societal problem I am trying to write against here. I think you are finding what you want to find; I think you are determined to prove that I am just another well-meaning but addled male with no chance of understanding because of my chromosome arrangement. I've watched loved ones suffer under the strain of impossible cultural demands on physical appearance, believe me.

      And I would never imply it is easy to fix. But I do believe, regardless of your friend's excellent post, that parents can be the antidote to the poison -- to all sorts of poisons -- so long as they don't throw up their hands and quit because they are outnumbered. Of course it is not only about telling girls they are beautiful; it's about fostering love, confidence and individuality in them. I believe that parents surrender too easily. They throw their hands up and sorrowfully shake their heads: well, they fell in with the wrong crowd; well, that's the way it is. Bullshit. We are the antidote, if we are willing to work 24 hours a day on the real stuff (and by this I don't mean coaching their teams and annoying the crap out of their teachers. I'm talking about full emotional and intellectual engagement in being their guides through growing up. (And just in case: I mean that in general, not for you friend.)

      The dynamics of human attraction are one-to-one. My only intention, here, is to point out that if a girl of a woman had a basic need to feel beautiful, it is okay; she should understand that many men are not slaves to the phony standard. It's not facile. It's truth.

      There is no illusion in my head that this little blog post is going to solve the problem. It is a notion; an attempt to get one message out there to girls: there is no real standard; your are beautiful; someone thinks so. If I could solve the while thing in one fell swoop, believe me, I would. To be clear: I'm not enough of a dolt to think I am offering a panacea in an 800 word blog post.

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    2. Chris, we're talking past each other here. I'm back on body image, and you're off on the dynamics of attraction. As I said, I know your intentions are good. But if you can't see how unhelpful (and even condescending) a line like "I guess you will just have to trust me on this, girls. It's hard, I suppose, if you believe the message that gets drilled into your skull all day, every day" is, then I can't help you.

      Instead of "you are beautiful; someone thinks so" let's try saying "you are worthy of love because you are yourself, and there are people out there (some of them not even your parents) who will see that and love you accordingly. The ones who will not are not worth your worry."

      One more link -- and then I'll stop being the Scary Angry Feminist in your comments -- from the French philosopher Henri Frederic Amiel: Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves. (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/henrifrede136701.html)

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    3. Part of the problem here is that I am not equating beauty with love. Some do that. I don't. I still thing it is okay for someone to want to be attractive. I think you wrung an ocean out of a dishrag here.

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  5. ...not with the issue, but in terms of my message.

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  6. Also, I meant that line, which admittedly sounds condescending, to be addressed more toward either real or metaphoric children -- girls -- and not women. I never meant it to sound like an encapsulated address to women. My mistake, stylistically, but my intent. But to be fair, there is a good deal of condescension in your responses, too.

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  8. OK.

    You're not equating beauty with love directly. I'm even arguing that those two things should be decoupled as much as we can. But we're having this conversation in a world which teaches its girls that the only way someone will love them is if they are beautiful. And to be honest, your discussion of your attraction to your wife and you desire to be found attractive by her in return muddies the conversation.

    I mean, it's great that you think your wife is beautiful, and more desirable than Kate Upton, and I think your point that what men find beautiful is more diverse than the standards of beauty commonly presented in the media is well taken, but all those things are tangled up together in a lot of places. The problem with wanting to be attractive is ... attractive to whom? Even if you're focused on the one particular person you think you want to spend your life with, it can still be an ugly downward spiral if you're wrong about the person. (Probably you and I agree about this).

    As for the real or metaphorical children? Many girls have figured out they live in a society that values them only when they meet a very specific standard of beauty by the time they're 9 or 10 (e.g., Emily's daughter). I think, if parents are going to "fix this," that it's important for them to teach their children all the reasons people are lovable that are NOT related to their appearance.

    I'm sorry if you've found my response to your post condescending -- and I'm sorry that sounds like a fauxpology, too -- but if you don't understand why I've responded this way, then I'm at a loss to show you where I'm coming from. That's on me, not you, but then, ask a fish to describe having gills? I live in this world, in this woman's body, and I've been battered with the importance of being beautiful and the threat of being valueless or unloved when I don't meet the standards of beauty held up in front of me, for over 40 years now. As armour, "someone thinks I'm beautiful" has never worked very well. "I am lovable for who I am, with all my faults and virtues" has been much better protection.

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    1. So, we are living "in a world which teaches its girls that the only way someone will love them is if they are beautiful." But we are also living in a world with people like me in it. Lots of them. The problem here might be that I have never, not once and not for a second, equated a woman's beauty with her personal worth or lovability; therefore, I am able to write about the aesthetics of feminine beauty with detachment from the struggle that so many women go through. I guess, for many -- perhaps most -- women, the tie to individual worth is, as you say, too tangled to unknot. For me, it's a little too easy, because there in no knot in my logic on this. Beauty is only beauty; beauty is diverse and not as narrow as the media perspective; all people are beautiful to someone. Aesthetically. Again -- for me, worth and beauty are about as connected as virtue and beard-length. What I am able to separate into a pure aesthetic, many women cannot, because they have been bullied into submission by the world.

      And I think we agree, as I said, that, as I said, "it's about fostering love, confidence and individuality" in our young girls. (The parental fix.) It's okay to want to be beautiful; it's not okay to make girls feel thay need to be beautiful to be okay. I never meant to do the latter.

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