Courtney Martin’s first book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters ended up being a lot more personal, and thus moving, than I would have assumed considering the general gist of it from the marketing as a piece of journalism investigating what she deems the new normalcy of hating your body. Martin puts forward a controversial, but I think convincing, argument that the girls and women born after the second wave of feminism are in this weird situation where we suddenly have all these new opportunities but don’t have the social esteem to go with it. The “perfect girls” that she describes in the book, a type of girl or woman that is prone to eating disorders and is increasingly of any class or racial identity, is someone who has internalized the belief that she can make it, but she has to be twice as good to be considered half as good. Which means at least 4 times as good, probably 5 times as good.
The greatest strength of the book is how she explicates this phenomenon that we all know so well, but most of us have trouble describing. It’s why women are outnumbering men in universities (but falling behind still in the job market). It’s that we see the ring in our grasp and want it so badly, and know that because we’re women, we can’t have a single flaw or else that will be used to deprive us of what we want so badly, what we know men of our talents and efforts would get without a sweat. And we can’t show our sweat, either, because that too is a flaw. Thus the phrase that crops up repeatedly in the book from Courtney and her interview subjects: “effortless perfection”.
Perfect grades, perfect job, perfect house, perfect life plan—women are still largely judged on our appearances, so for perfect girls, none of this counts unless you have the perfectly starved body to prove to the world how in control you are, how perfect. And increasingly, that’s defined by how thin you are, because weight and body shape are increasingly contextualized in our society as a matter of effort, not genetics or situation. As Courtney makes clear, this isn’t even about the discourse around being obese versus the medically defined healthy weight. Anyway, as most perfect girls know, the healthy weight is way too fat. Normal and healthy isn’t good enough, because it’s moderate, and you’re looking to be perfect.
The starving daughters aspect is the girl inside that has become the temper tantrum-throwing unchecked desires that grow more and more unruly the more the perfect girl on the outside tries to kill her, because the girl inside is an obstacle to perfection. She’s the part that wants to sit on the couch eating ice cream and watching TV. I recognized the icon of misogyny in our culture immediately—if any writer wants to characterize someone, man or woman, as possessing an undisciplined femininity, the couch and the ice cream are coming out. (I’ve even seen Al Gore described mockingly as a fan of the ice cream.) So much of disordered eating is about starving yourself on one side, and binging on another, i.e. trying to be perfect and caving to the brat inside. In this push and pull, authentic desires disappear.
The book was a yelp of pain, and I found myself emotionally wrought and engaged throughout most it. Martin really captures the internal struggles of the perfect girls, coaxing women into telling stories that would probably make most cringe in shame. The young woman, who shamed by her large sexual appetites (perfect girls do it to be pleasing, but doing it sloppily for your own reasons is absolutely verboten—i.e., be an object, not a subject), who eventually turns to using Ritalin, because her speeded up life and squelched appetites turn her into an objection of perfection—super-skinny and always on the go. But her life crashes around her, because she’s become dependent on drugs and on a man. The anorexics, the queens of perfection, able to achieve impossible heights of appetite suppression. The more common bulemics, who fill the starving daughter, and then purge out of shame. The even more common dirty secret that many young women, while not bulemics, binge and purge on occasion. The group of teenage girls in the working class Southwest neighborhood, both in competition to be the most perfectly skinny while angry at anyone who openly starves herself to get there. The group of rich New York girls who praise each other’s ability to go without food. And women who are far from having an eating disorder by a medical definition, but who spend all day every day regulating food intake and admonishing desire.
I recommend the book to everyone, because I just felt so not-alone in my lifetime of sorrows over the size of my thighs. I appreciated that Courtney gave voice to a widespread problem that even feminists ignore (or we focus our analysis on the worst aspects, the women who fall into full-blown eating disorders), because there’s no solution that I can see. I mena, I’d love to discover my authentic appetites, but the realistic fear that I’d gain weight if I quit measuring my food intake against an outside measure means I can’t. There’s simply too many outside demands on women to be thin. While it’s painful to struggle with your calorie intake, it’s even more miserable to be passed over for jobs, boyfriends, even party invitations because you’re a little less svelte than you could be. The book made me cry, it described the neurosis so well. The need for women to demonstrate effortless perfection in order to be treated even close to “equals” in our society will have to disappear for this misery to end—that is, we’ll need real equality.
Courtney doesn’t want to leave everything on such a sour note, so she has advice. She advises that men, at least good men, would prefer a great personality over a perfect waistline. I appreciated that, but also have to point out that a lot of women are excellent at providing both to men, so I found that cold comfort. Sure, a great personality will get you in the door with great guys, but after that, it’s hard to deny that looks will be an important factor. She does preface the comments from guys she gets who say that they want the personality more than the waistline by saying that of course, these guys might be bending to expectations to a degree. Unfortunately, all I got off reading a bunch of emails from men saying they would rather have a woman who doesn’t obsess over it was not that it was okay to quit worrying about your waistline, but that you should probably refrain from mentioning it in front of men. You know, give the appearance of effortless perfection.
At the end of the book, she has a chapter on using spirituality to overcome your neurotic tendencies towards food. By and large, I couldn’t find this useful. I preferred the rest of the book, where women talked about their pain, and while it was messy and miserable, it was refreshingly real. Spirituality strikes me as another requirement that perfect girls adopt, and for me personally, abandoning the need to seem like a woman who is in touch with her spiritual side was the first step to being a more authentic self. Christianity especially, with its emphasis on purity and appetite deprivation, seems like it’s just going to make the problem worse, not better, and my experience with many devout Christians has said as much to me. More convincing was the story of the young woman who converted to Buddhism and was able to move past her eating disorders by really learning how to embrace the middle path. And that’s because it struck me as the closest spiritual path towards the only thing that’s helped me at least reduce my neurotic attitudes towards food until I am a happier, more functional woman.
And that’s moderation mixed with a dose of feminism. Which is where I think that the starving daughters-perfect girls tug is such a brilliant model for a woman to start understanding her relationship to life. The girls who found a spiritual path to well-being basically walked towards some self-esteem. They believed that their desires were real enough to be worth attending to, and instead of hating themselves for having desire, they accepted it. It’s a lot easier not to overindulge, of course, if you indulge some in the first place. The reason that dieting doesn’t work in any long term way, I think, is because it feeds into this binge-and-purge mentality. Your diet is a purge, a long punishment of deprivation for overindulging. But integrating yourself, feeling that you’re a single person with flaws and appetites and accepting this is the best way to keep those flaws and appetites from being blown way out of proportion.
The one thing I was missing in the book was a chapter about how food neuroses are impossible to avoid in a society where you’re both expected to present a thin body and to be healthy, but absolutely surrounded by food that is the starving daughter embodied—high on sugar, fat, and calories while low on real nourishment. Add to that a society that makes exercise hard. I simply can’t believe that anyone over 21 without an extremely high metabolism is going to be able to preserve health without learning to deal with these facts, and that means spending a lot of time learning and thinking about nutrition and calories. But I agree with Courtney’s general view on moderation on food and exercise, which is that if you achieve it, you’ll maintain the body that fits the genetic plan laid out for you. Unfortunately, the kind of moderation that would be simple if we all grew up with a sufficient amount of joyful exercise and surrounded by healthy food and taught healthy eating habits is frustratingly difficult to maintain.
The more I think about it, the more I see how the demands on women to be physical and moral exemplars, and the creation of the perfect girl/starving daughter dichotomy, is perpetuated because it satisfies profit demands. Our capitalist society projects increasing amounts of perfect girl images to us, and the stress sends the starving daughters out of control, and they then load up on Twinkies, booze, or just a lot of expensive clothing to try and quell the anger. I mentioned in comments yesterday how the incredible shrinking mannequins in store displays are probably a response to sales. The more impossibly thin mannequins are (and now they are, on average, smaller than human women can be without being very ill), the more clothes are sold, because the more women walk by and suffer guilt pangs for not measuring up to impossible standards. And then their starving daughters start screaming, and they buy up the clothes in an effort to satisfy….something. You have to opt out, and getting there often requires a massive effort.
So, book clubbers. What did you think? What did you like about the book? Was there anything that you didn’t agree with or anything she left out that you think she should have covered? Any advice on how to opt out of the starvation-overindulgence patterns our society sets out for us?
122 Responses to “Pandagon Book Club: Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters”
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I haven’t read this book, but I hope my comment isn’t too far off base. Your piece on the book, Amanda, speaks to things I see both in my daughter, who’s unfortunately inherited/absorbed some of my perfectionism and self-blaming, and things I see in myself (her father). So this book is going on my list to get and read.
On the place of 2nd-wave feminists: I’m sure many more thoughtful and educated people than I on feminism have already written about this, but it seems to me that the biggest challenge is that the position of Man in our society is dependent on the position of Woman — that is, the opportunities that are open(ing) to women — to get a degree or a good job or be successful — are still defined by patriarchy. It’s just incredibly hard to move into and resist patriarchy at the same time, and harder probably to move into it and not resist as a woman. It’s hard as a movement, and it’s hard as individuals. I see the struggle and pain you describe from the book as part of that difficulty. Patriarchy (and, not incidentally, capitalism) is a f**ked up system, and it f**ks people up.
Now, on the last point you made, on solutions: this is a guerrilla struggle. I think resisters need to be resourceful and opportunistic, which means lots and lots of strategies of resistance depending on people’s circumstances and strengths.
I recognized the icon of misogyny in our culture immediately—if any writer wants to characterize someone, man or woman, as possessing an undisciplined femininity, the couch and the ice cream are coming out.
True. It’s too bad our untethered sides don’t get to be robbing banks or running underground dogfighting rings or something.
Interesting point, js. I never thought about how the struggle with food is such a good girl thing. By framing binge eating as a feminine vice, the culture argues that refraining from eating is a specifically feminine virtue. What’s distressing is that it’s therefore hard to get away from this push-pull. I feel like I can go crazy with the rock and roll sluttitude if I want to, but god forbid I eat two cookies.
I had the strangest reaction when I was reading this book. My starving daughter has always been the one in control (as opposed to the perfect girl), and while I squeaked by in high school, that caused a lot of problems when I was in college and had to deal with higher academic demands along with a lot of family shit that basically exploded at the end of my first year.
So when I was reading the anecdotes Courtney put in — the overachieving, obsessively thin girls who, when I was in high school, were often the people who made my life directly or indirectly miserable — and panicking. Like, I don’t push the perfect girl enough to DESERVE to acknowledge the starving daughter. As if the former has to exist before the latter is created.
This is a projection of my own internal dilemmas, of course (I tend to stay silent in communities like this one because part of me feels like I have nothing to add and am not really deserving of the benefits of feminism), but as I let go of that and listened a bit more to the women quoted in the book and to Courtney herself, there was the sense of (somewhat twisted) comaraderie that you describe — oh, I’m not the only one who obsesses about everything I eat, I’m not the only one who counts calories, etc., etc.
Like you, though, I’m aching for a solution. It’s difficult to push “moderation” in some ways, because it seems like moderation winds up being a maintanence of the status quo — a life that is “balanced” between home and work often means that a woman stays home and raises her kids, for example. I wish we could scrap the whole paradigm and start over; as things are, it seems incremental changes are the only way to go, and this causes a lot of false starts and backtracking.
I kind of agree with Andrea. I’m sorry, I haven’t read the book, but it seems interesting to me that the “solution” to this problem is for women to police their internal selves with an eye towards moderation, rather than perfection. Same tactic, different goal. What’s the externally-directed strategy? For some people to pick up internal coping mechanisms won’t make the problem go away (as any disabled person will tell you); it’s a “what do we do right now” solution instead of a permanent solution.
Not that I’m saying this isn’t a good start, and I know I do get frustrated with people who proffer only long-term solutions, but what exactly is the long-term strategy to work towards here?
I’ve found that intuitive eating has been the most helpful aid in getting over food neurosis for me. It’s scary at first, and not always the easiest thing, but it seems to really work. therotund.com has a good couple of intro posts on the subject.
What’s the externally-directed strategy?
Feminism. (The society-wide effort to push us toward true gender equality, where women’s bodies aren’t treated as public property and women are viewed as full human citizens).
Of course, that’s the short-and-simple (if profoundly true) answer. Feminism doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and all of us who call ourselves feminists are bringing our own body issues along for the ride and that makes things more complicated (see the book we’re currently discussing for further details).
Part of the problem is that it’s a social problem that can only be addressed properly with collective solutions. But surviving and healing in the here and now is possible. I think being a feminist is a good start—by analyzing the way society puts unreasonable gendered demands on people, it’s easier to see pressures for what they are when put on you. Food is turned into an occasion of sin for women, and so neither the binge eater nor the starver really enjoys eating for what it is. Recognizing that is the first step. And future steps Courtney suggests—slowing down, enjoying the moment for what it is—will help. Women aren’t allowed to enjoy much, since we’re contextualized as living *for* others.
I think believing in doing good instead of being perfect is the goal that women need to embrace to heal. That means you have to let go of being perfect, and allow that people are going to judge you and find you wanting. Recognize that it’s sexism and try to move on.
I suppose my main frustration with the place of men in this is that the vast majority of pressure I feel to be a perfect, silent doll instead of a good, earthy woman comes from men. When you’re a teenager, it mostly comes from other girls, because the patriarchy takes advantage of adolescent anxiety and is very good at getting girls to be proxies who get rewarded for punishing other women. Then women get older and lose their appetite for hating so much on each other, and men have to step in. It’s the Queen Bees in high school, sure, but by the time you get to college, it’s the frat boys wearing T-shirts celebrating date rape.
It’s the Queen Bees in high school, sure, but by the time you get to college, it’s the frat boys wearing T-shirts celebrating date rape.
This is definitely true. I like that Courtney pulled in the things that men can do — and in her case, referencing the things her father did — to help women feel, if not comfortable, at least not alien, in their fleshy, menstruating bodies.
Part of my journey through the book (and through life) was realizing that patriarchal expectation hurts women of *all* body types, not just Women Like Me. I know this, and I have known this, but there’s a difference between knowing and knowing.
While it’s painful to struggle with your calorie intake, it’s even more miserable to be passed over for jobs, boyfriends, even party invitations because you’re a little less svelte than you could be.
I think you should speak for yourself, Amanda. I’ve made the choice to eat by my real appetites and enjoy my food, and as a result my eating is not disordered but I am fat. Maybe I’d be less fat if I starved myself, but I am not going to do that and find out. I am offended by the assertion that I must be more miserable than you are. This is the choice I made, and even if it has perhaps cost me jobs, boyfriends, and party invitations, I’d make it again. Speak for yourself.
I have to preface this by disclosing that yes, I work part-time for the Evil Evil Diet Industry (the one that starts with a W). So I see and talk to people every week who are struggling with this exact dilemma but with the added dollop of knowing that they’ve failed.
I have to say, the number one problem that people walk in with — including myself — is perfectionism. We know that not only are we required to be perfect, we have failed at being perfect, and our failure is written right on our bodies for everyone to see and comment on. We spend a lot of time reassuring people that, yes, they are human and there’s no way in hell that they’re going to be able or willing to control what they eat every second of every day without ending up in a rubber room.
I recently had a woman walk in to re-join. She had lost 70 pounds, exercised every day, monitored every bite that went into her mouth for three years. Then, one day, she had one treat and she didn’t stop until she’d gained all of the weight back. That one “slip” was enough to convince her that she was Bad and didn’t deserve to live a healthy life so she may as well go back to her old ways of binging and not exercising.
The perfectionists who succeed may be the most visible, but there are a huge number of us under the radar who are convinced that if we can’t be the absolute best, there’s no point in competing at all.
I’m sorry, I haven’t read the book, but it seems interesting to me that the “solution” to this problem is for women to police their internal selves with an eye towards moderation, rather than perfection. Same tactic, different goal.
Nail, hit, head.
/imperfect girl, fat daughter who doesn’t give a flying fuck
Oh, and nail-hit-head to you too, Human.
It’s too bad that some people in the feminist community continue to buy into the “fat bad, thin good” bullshit.
I’d like to second human’s post: after over 40 years of living, and therefore eating, for others’ approval, I’ve given starvation the two fingers and am slowly learning that it’s okay to eat what I want, when I want.
So I’m not thin? So fucking what? I’m able to actually ENJOY FOOD for the first time in my life. Which has led to me being able to finally, FINALLY be able to read my body and know when I’m hungry and when I’m full.
You all do what you have to, but I cannot believe that it’s taken me this long to reach a point that is so fucking basic that I can eat two cookies, or five, or however many I want and sincerely not give a shit if it’s “bad” or not.
With the flipside being that I finally know when I DON’T want the damn cookies. Which may be basic to those of you who haven’t had food neuroses your whole lives, but for me this is such a liberating thing that it’s making me cry just writing about it.
How about a little collective action? Why don’t we collectively stop playing the fucking game? I think you’d all be amazed how the sky actually DOESN’T come crashing down on you just because you go up a size or two.
If in fact you do: I was terrified that my weight would spin totally out of control when I decided to listen to myself, but I’m wearing the exact same size as I did before. Okay, that’s a pretty large size, but, WTF, how am I any worse off than I was when I agonised over every bite I put in my mouth? And I’m guessing that most people, once they get over the fact they can have all the cookies they want, without limit, will get bored with the junk food and settle down to rational eating (meaning eating that is more or less decent for your body) before too long.
BTW, why all the fear that once you let The Beast out, you’ll never be able to put down the cakes and six months from now will be double your current weight? That’s EXACTLY the fear that patriarchy wants you have, and it’s stupid: if you eat what you really, truly want, you’ll learn how to distinguish hungry from not-hungry and when you’re not hungry you won’t eat. And you’ll learn that eating good stuff makes you feel good and eating junk excessively* makes you feel like shit. The only reason people gorge on junk is because it’s “forbidden” and “bad” anyway. Once you take that away, why would anyone be obsessed with that stuff?
*I’d really like to point out that occasional junk food can be really nice, if you like that sort of thing
Bah, I tried to get this out of the library and missed the notice that they’d put it on hold for me. I’ll check to see if they have it now, actually.
What I don’t know is this. As someone who had an eating disorder, but no longer practices any kind of restriction — I’m starting to gain weight now that I’m hitting my late twenties and my metabolism is slowing down. It is also not great for me to not exercise at all. How do I exercise and eat healthily, and not gain a ton of weight, without re-triggering my eating disorder? I can’t monitor food, journal food, or count calories without being flung full-tilt into severely restricting. Believe me, I’ve tried to do it “in moderation” and within a week I have always broken down in tears in the gym, started panicking at mealtimes, and started obsessively making sub-1000 calorie daily meal plans. It’s like an alcoholic who can’t have just one drink — I can’t count just one calorie, whereas I’m totally happy and fine if I don’t count that calorie.
Right now I’m just kind of qualitatively saying “Well, I’ll cut down on refined carbohydrates and anything processed, eat more green vegetables.” (The general “Eat less, mostly plants” idea.) And I’m trying to add in some extra physical activity that’s focused on other exercise goals than weight loss — endurance, strength. I’m not sure that will be good enough as my metabolism continues to slow. The only way I’ve heard of people truly having success at weight loss is to focus on the weight loss, and I can’t do that if I want to stay sane.
How much of my desire to not gain weight is disordered anyway?
but god forbid I eat two cookies
Heh. Interesting you should put it that way, since I have been publicly chastised by a complete stranger (a man, I am a woman) for taking two cookies. So on the subject of “What can men do?” one of the answers is “Mind their own goddamn business”.
Every time I read discussions like this (or hear certain friends of mine talk about food and/or their bodies), I am so grateful to my parents for raising me with a healthy/non-self-hating attitude toward food. But I live in our culture, and I’m not immune from the messages that are out there. In weird way, having a baby exposed the whole thing for the ridiculous fraud that it is. Here I had gone and fulfilled my ultimate purpose as a woman (according to the patriarchy) by reproducing, and a son at that, and instead of feeling good about myself, I felt bad because I had a wrinkly, stretch-marked, poochy stomach. After mulling that over for a few weeks, the idea that my self-worth had any relationship at all to what my stomach looked like became more and more ridiculous. It also was a very clear example of how women can’t really win under the system as it exists right now. It was such a paradigm shift in my head - it really changed how I thought about my body - but whenever I have tried to express this to my friends, they get hung up on the baby part. That is, I have a “good excuse,” while they don’t, and that’s really not what I learned. It just took having a baby for me to learn what I should have known all along.
I’d like to hear any thoughts people have about what individuals can do to counteract these messages. I have a co-worker who is fat, and she speaks about herself using very disparaging terms. Several times, she has referred to her body as “disgusting” and “revolting.” If that is what she expresses publicly, I can only guess at how much worse her internal dialogue must be. I never know what to say when she says these things, so I usually don’t say anything, but I suspect she takes my silence as agreement.
I feel that as women we have two choices: 1-as amanda says, excersise strict control our bodies/eating to conform to bogus patriarchal standards, acknowledging that said standards are bullshit and oppressive but that we don’t want to deal with the consequences of nonconformity, or 2–as some of the other commenters said learn to accept and cherish our unskinny bodies as they are and accept the social consequences of not being part of the “thinner or die” rat race. Neither choice is ideal, both require a lot of discomfort. But both are better than that limbo we’ve all experienced.
I just wish those of us who made one choice or the other, particularly those who choose 1, would acknowledge that the other choice is more than valid. There’s no moral value associated with size, at all.
Haven’t read the book either, so forgive me if I miss something.
Amanda’s point about how, even in dealing with these disorders, women need to be effortlessly perfect was uncomfortably familiar to me. Some time ago, a woman in my family was hospitalized to treat severe anorexia w/ bulimic behaviors. We all did our best to support her, but I remember being baffled and angry about why she was doing this to herself, and angrily asked her why she couldn’t just stop. We all knew the perfect facade she’d maintained was a symptom, but on some level I still wanted it back, I wanted her recovery to be as graceful as everything else she did.
Things are better now. She’s healthy, and out relationship is good, but it took some time for me to realize how potent these behaviors are. I think it’s hard for a lot of men.
It’s a lot easier not to overindulge, of course, if you indulge some in the first place.
I’ve found that true for myself. Since I’ve started allowing myself treats my craving for sugary sweets has actually decreased. I used to frequently buy candy when I was at the grocery store and gobble it down in secret (because I was doing something “wrong”), but I’ve gradually lost the impulse to do that. It’s liberating to give yourself permission to eat what you want. It’s made me less tolerant, though, of women who feel it necessary to go through a round of vocal self-flagellation before eating a piece of cake - if you want it, eat it, if you don’t want it, don’t eat it, but I don’t need to hear about how “sinful” you are.
While it’s painful to struggle with your calorie intake, it’s even more miserable to be passed over for jobs, boyfriends, even party invitations because you’re a little less svelte than you could be.
I realize there is real discrimination against fat women, but to me “a little less svelte” suggests being at the high end of the “normal” range rather than being truly “overweight”. Sure the fear is there for many women, reinforced by popular culture (like that Subway ad that it sounds like you quoted from), but, in my experience being “a little less svelte” has little bearing on party invitations, or boyfriends, or job opportunities.
I am offended by the assertion that I must be more miserable than you are.
I’m glad you’ve found a way out, but I resent the idea that women who are concerned about their waistlines are irrational creatures, driven purely by neurosis and not by the outside world. Please, don’t let me get in between you and being proud of yourself for overcoming—you should be. But studies have amply demonstrated that there is lots and lots of prejudice against people, especially women, who aren’t thin. Fat people do have harder times getting jobs, for instance. It’s not irrational to say so. Nor is it irrational to live your life in awareness of this unfair limitation put on women. It’s more helpful to point out how unfair fatphobia is than to say that it has no effect on the lives of fat people.
I wasn’t saying that you’re a bad person if you don’t care. But perhaps you can not care without having to turn the tables and say that women who do care must be bad people? I don’t think we are. The cure for fatphobia is not to create a hatred for skinny bitches.
I can’t monitor food, journal food, or count calories without being flung full-tilt into severely restricting. Believe me, I’ve tried to do it “in moderation” and within a week I have always broken down in tears in the gym, started panicking at mealtimes, and started obsessively making sub-1000 calorie daily meal plans.
See, that’s why I think that analyzing this situation can’t happen in an individuality vacuum. It’s hard to eat healthy and in moderation in an all-or-nothing culture. To exert even a healthy amount of control over your own life takes a lot of work, and for people with eating disorders, it’s just an invitation for trouble. If healthy eating were normalized, we could all relax, I think. But good luck getting to the produce section without climbing through the candy section, you know?
Just wanted to add that men have these issues too.
I haven’t read the book, but probably should given that I have A History(tm) with eating disorders. Hell, the damn things are still with me. It’s like being an alcoholic, you stop drinking but you never stop kinda of *wanting* to.
Anyway, I agree that women (and gay men, and everyone- though it’s mostly women getting kicked in the teeth by society for this) should just EAT THE FUCKING COOKIE. Want a cookie? Have a cookie! I like this especially because it’s a big fat FUCK YOU to the quasi-moral scolds lined up to say ‘oh no! sin! SIN!’ Screw them. Have TWO cookies.
If you’re a confrontational type, it’s fun to do this in public. Go to a restaurant. Have chocolate cake! Watch who starts to freak out. Have it anyway. Enjoy it! I don’t know about you guys, but the FUCK YOU part to this whole stupid idea of food as moral imperative actually makes the cake better, imo.
My only caveat is that a lot of the North American diet is PURE SHIT.
So while eating what the hell you want is great, I think it’s a good idea to cut the junk out. Do you really want a twinkie, which has like 40 ingredients? Better to have a nice fruity nutty cake with chocolate icing that has maybe 5 ingredients. Have sweet stuff, but have GOOD sweet stuff, you know?
I don’t think eating shit should really be construed as feminist since that stuff will make you sick and dead. I don’t mean the sugar, butter or baking chocolate. I mean the high fructose corn syrup, the maltodextrin- that stuff.
I think it would help a whole lot to have waaaaay more media images of beautiful women at a variety of sizes. I’m tired of this factory-diecut size 0 age 18 40-20-34 Sexy Woman(tm). God forbid that we remember that women are human beings rather than a consumer product built to spec.
Back when I obsessed over food, turning down sweets was extremely painful for me, and I ultimately wound up eating sweets in private anyway, in which case I would continue to cram my face long after I felt full. Now that I’m trying my hand at intuitive eating, when sweets are offered to me, and I’m not hungry, I feel no pain at all turning them down.
I realize there is real discrimination against fat women, but to me “a little less svelte” suggests being at the high end of the “normal” range rather than being truly “overweight”. Sure the fear is there for many women, reinforced by popular culture (like that Subway ad that it sounds like you quoted from), but, in my experience being “a little less svelte” has little bearing on party invitations, or boyfriends, or job opportunities.
I’d like to think that, but experience tells me that men at least have been a lot nicer to me when I’ve been 125 than when I’ve been 140. Both weights are not overweight for my height, but 140 on me is considered chubby in our society. Now perhaps I don’t beat myself up for being a bit neurotic about being thin because when I’ve gained weight in my life was during bouts of depression. Like Andrea said, I’m probably a bit more of a person who lets the starving daughter win when I’m down than the perfect girl. The key, it seems to me, is to get rid of this dichotomy of self and be a whole person.
I just wish those of us who made one choice or the other, particularly those who choose 1, would acknowledge that the other choice is more than valid. There’s no moral value associated with size, at all.
I agree, there is no more moral value associated with being fat than with being thin. You can’t look at anyone’s body size and decide that the fat person is automatically a fat slob or that that thin person is automatically a self-hating anorexic.
That’s part of what drives me nuts about the whole topic: some people have rebelled against the “thin is good” to the extent that they decide that being fat is morally better. I understand the urge, but it’s really just flipping the coin over rather than coming up with a new way to approach it.
enjoy[ing] eating for what it is.
That is the absolute best advice I can give. Food is one of the very few areas in my life where I don’t feel horribly screwed up. A major part of that is the protection I’ve gotten from absolutely loving to eat. And really, put that way, doesn’t it sound stupid? Who hates to eat? But the meme of effortless perfection demands exactly that. Cooking and eating, a sensory experience that humans have devoted more hours to improving than probably anything else in history, and yet women are convinced that they have to hate and deny this most natural of all things, right in the midst of the most food- and culinary-rich time in history.
I think about food all the time. I get up in the morning and think about eating breakfast. I sip my tea in my morning class and anticipate lunch. I spend the afternoon waiting for dinner, and truly enjoy the weekly meal-planning, grocery shopping, and cooking that my gf and I do together. I’m an animal, I gotta eat, and I don’t know that I’ve ever apologized for that fact. And if I gotta do it, why shouldn’t it be as enjoyable as possible? Even if you’re restricting calories, you owe yourself nothing less than making sure those calories are as delicious and enjoyed as much as possible. Savor it. You are worth it. It is one of the best parts of being alive.
The key, it seems to me, is to get rid of this dichotomy of self and be a whole person.
Yes!
My perfect girl has asserted herself as my life has stabilized, but when I go through depressive episodes I tend to retreat back into starving daughter mode, which typically means I gain twenty pounds in two months.
It’s a strange dance of control… the perfect girl comes out when I feel in control, and the starving daughter comes out when I feel overwhelmed and feel the need to assert my autonomy through petulant defiance.
And another big “yes” to the people talking about how permission to eat whatever often leads to better eating overall (not wanting something just because it’s forbidden). Something I’ve had to do, and it’s been difficult, is to remind myself how many food choices are out there — it’s not just chocolate and lettuce, but a whole spectrum of stuff in between.
Amanda says:
While it’s painful to struggle with your calorie intake, it’s even more miserable to be passed over for jobs, boyfriends, even party invitations because you’re a little less svelte than you could be.
and
I’d like to think that, but experience tells me that men at least have been a lot nicer to me when I’ve been 125 than when I’ve been 140.
And I just want to say, even though I know we all know this, but maybe it’s important to reiterate right now, but if people won’t date you or invite you to parties because you are fat (or even not as skinny as they might like), thank the gods! So a man is nicer to you when you’re 125 than when you’re 140? What would you want with a man who is nicer to you at 125 than at 140?
There are worse, much worse, things than being alone and being trapped in a cycle of miserably restricting your own pleasure in order to be with someone (either romantically or just as friends) whose shown him or herself to respond positively to you miserably restricting your own pleasure is one of them.
What man wouldn’t want a woman with a great personality, a great body, and who wasn’t driving herself crazy to get it?
Of course, this is not realistic for the overwhelming majority of women. Most men know this. And most men, at least good men, find the personality far more important. And as a man, I personally find obsession with weight and appearance to be a huge turnoff in a woman - far, far, far worse than a few extra pounds around the waist.
On a somewhat related note, I think part of the problem that it is far more socially acceptable for men to be at least somewhat concerned about looks, while women are supposed to look beyond physical appearances.
And as a man, I personally find obsession with weight and appearance to be a huge turnoff in a woman - far, far, far worse than a few extra pounds around the waist.
As a typical woman, this actually makes me feel way worse. Not only am I extremely pressured by society to be thin, but god knows I know my significant other hates it if I show that pain and turmoil for even a second!
Just stop telling us what makes you happy and saying I should arrange my thoughts and desires for that purpose. Just stop it.
What has worked for me whenever that hate-your-body monster has reared its ugly head is to focus on what my body can do rather than how it looks.
Knowing that this body, with its imperfections as measured by society’s standards, can execute a perfect slide tackle, deliver a proper punch, play the bass, the guitar and the piano, can handle a chainsaw, rarely gets ill, has helped build a house and can carry my old, heavy bike all the way home if I lock it and then lose the key, makes it a lot easier to stop giving a rat’s ass about the constrictions of society.
It doesn’t stop bigotry or discrimination, but it does make me like my body.
I’d like to think that, but experience tells me that men at least have been a lot nicer to me when I’ve been 125 than when I’ve been 140. Both weights are not overweight for my height, but 140 on me is considered chubby in our society. Now perhaps I don’t beat myself up for being a bit neurotic about being thin because when I’ve gained weight in my life was during bouts of depression.
It’s complicated, though, by the fact that your personality was likely different when you were the heavier weight if it was associated with a bout of depression. I know it’s a cliché, but I do think that women who appear socially outgoing and self-confident also tend to get more attention. I say that because I’m usually quiet and wallflowery, but the times I’ve chosen to force myself to be more sociable and fake a self-confident attitude, I’ve noticed I get more attention from the opposite sex.
I’m so glad that a Man has dropped in here to tell us what we should and shouldn’t focus on in order to please him. Heaven knows we don’t get that anywhere else.The most important thing in all this, we must surely never forget, is making men happy.
It is to puke.
Congratulations. You missed my point completely.
(Hint: You don’t have to be perfect.)
Amanda made an assertion about what men want. I posted that her assertion was not completely accurate as far as I was concerned. I am not telling anyone what they should or should not do.
As for myself, I am quite happy and have no particular interest in anyone on this blog pleasing me in any way.
Lot of guys I know sing that song too. ‘I want a girl who eats like me! (but she better be really skinny! And never ever show any effort or angst over it!)’
Also a lot of the ‘I hate it when women complain about their weight, just STFU ladies. Stop making me notice sexism! stop it! It makes me feel bad!’
Thanks a billion, gentlemen.
I’m glad you’ve found a way out, but I resent the idea that women who are concerned about their waistlines are irrational creatures, driven purely by neurosis and not by the outside world.
Amanda: I almost snapped at you again, because I never said anything like this in my previous comment, but I am going to just talk instead, because it’s not like we are enemies.
It sounds as if maybe you didn’t understand what I objected to about your post. It certainly wasn’t the idea that women who aren’t naturally thin face a choice between having an unhealthy relationship with food/exercise/their bodies and suffering a lot of social disapproval and unpleasant stuff for being fat. Because that’s absolutely true. It’s a crappy choice to have to make, but we all have to make it.
What really chapped my ass was the idea that anyone who chooses to eat what they want even if it makes them fat, must be less happy than someone who chooses to control their food and their body. I don’t think that is true. I made the choice I made because I was happier with it than the alternative. It doesn’t change the fact that I resent what it has cost me, and I resent the pressure to change my mind and count calories and never enjoy my food. I hate the fact that women have to make the choice. But, I’m not unhappy about being someone who enjoys eating.
I also don’t hate “skinny bitches” but it really makes me angry when women who are thinner than me talk or act as though that makes them better than me. I hate that. I have a really good friend who goes through periods of disordered eating from time to time. During the worst bout of it she couldn’t stop congratulating herself out loud for losing 50 pounds over three months due to basically not eating anything at all and exercising for hours a day. When she dragged me with her to a store where I couldn’t even begin to fit in a scrap of clothing in the entire place, and went on and on about how awesome it was that she could wear a size 10… that hurt beyond words.
So — good for you, that you can choose to be 125 instead of 140, but please just remember that being thin is not a moral virtue, and if you have something up on those of us who have given a big middle finger to the entire thing, well, that’s an artifact of the bullshit choice that we all have to make in the first place. I don’t think you are a bad person, but what I am telling you is that it really bothers me that you think I must automatically be unhappy because I’m not 125. Either choice, to calorie count or not to calorie count, is painful. But to me, it would be even more painful to try to force my body to conform to an unreasonable and ridiculous standard. For you, it would be more painful to be treated like crap for being fat. We’re both caught in the same trap. Mine isn’t any worse than yours.
No, Wayward, you’re missing the point, and compounding your obtuseness with condescension. (”Hint: You don’t have to be perfect.” Yeah, thanks sooooo much for the “permission.”)
What the fuck is it with men who think their opinions on what women “should” do or not do in order to be attractive to them are relevant or even wanted on feminist blogs, especially in threads on touchy subjects like body image?
She didn’t say it was all men; she said it was the ones who emailed her. You accuse yourself with your defensive comments much more than Amanda’s post accused you.I have to admit, every time I watch “How to Look Good Naked” on Lifetime, I get sucked in. Yes, the format is blindingly obvious — Carson Kressley will show women who are convinced they’re ugly aren’t really so bad after all — but it works on me every single time. And, yes, it’s all about presenting yourself better by dressing better, wearing makeup and getting a flattering hairstyle but at least it’s not for the purpose of getting a man. But it really seems to help women see that, no, not only are they are not the hideous monsters they’re picturing in their heads, strangers who look at them don’t see them like that at all.
It’s complicated, though, by the fact that your personality was likely different when you were the heavier weight if it was associated with a bout of depression.
Fair enough, but I was also hounded about my ballooning weight by my then-boyfriend. Maybe some men are cautious about criticizing women’s appearance, but many, probably most, absorb the idea that they’re perfectly entitled to dictate a woman’s looks and behaviors to her with the aim of pleasing him in mind.
It’s complex. I think it’s fair to say that it’s disrespectful to your lover to let yourself go as a lust-invoking vision, within reasonable limits and with the duty being shared between men and women equally. I don’t have a problem with growing my hair out a little or shaving my legs a bit more frequently because I’ve got a boyfriend, and I expect in return that said boyfriend respect my wishes about his shaving regimen. Weight gain is in a troubling zone, because it’s so much harder to control, and reference Ugly In Pink’s comment, there’s also the concern that you have to both control it without seeming like you’re controlling it because being obsessed with your weight is also unappealing. But a lot of men have been conditioned to expect effortless perfection in a girlfriend, especially if they’re going to present her as such to friends and relatives, and therefore will get whiny if they don’t get it. And this is a reality that we have to face up to if we’re really going to tackle the issue.
Wayward, I think the problem here is that everyone knows that even a woman with a few extra pounds around the waist probably has to count her calories to keep her not-perfect self closer to the ideal. And she has to shut up about it, because showing your work to men is so unsexy.
What really chapped my ass was the idea that anyone who chooses to eat what they want even if it makes them fat, must be less happy than someone who chooses to control their food and their body. I don’t think that is true. I made the choice I made because I was happier with it than the alternative.
I’m sorry if you got that out of the post. My point was that I want analysis of why women obsess over this to be based in the theory that women are rational. As long as we paper over the fact that being very thin is amply rewarded by our society, we’re never really going to get why women bust their asses worrying about it. Women worry that they’re going to lose male attention, job opportunities, and general social approval not because they’re neurotic, but because there’s real discrimination going on. And it’s not just thin vs. fat women—most thin women are well aware they’re not thin enough, because there’s always someone thinner who is getting even more social goodies for it. I know I am aware of it every single day.
Having socially defined and socially rewarded “perfection” within your reach but never quite getting there is a very particular, maddening aspect of this dynamic, and it’s got a lot in common with suffering that happens because of discrimination against actual fat people, but it’s also different in other ways, ways that make it tempting to write it off as a neurosis that has no basis in reality.
Fascinating sidebar to this discussion, under the heading of “it’s not just Americans”: NY Magazine interview with French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld. Hyper-thin, hates to even look at fat people, draped in fur, unselfconsciously pill-popping, always wants to be (or at least look like) the youngest woman in the room — the article calls her the “anti-Anna Wintour” but I do not see where the “anti” might be.
And the comments to the article are boggling, too.
So — good for you, that you can choose to be 125 instead of 140, but please just remember that being thin is not a moral virtue, and if you have something up on those of us who have given a big middle finger to the entire thing, well, that’s an artifact of the bullshit choice that we all have to make in the first place. I don’t think you are a bad person, but what I am telling you is that it really bothers me that you think I must automatically be unhappy because I’m not 125.
I don’t. I promise I don’t. I swear up and down, I don’t. I just was making the point that if someone knows that being 125 instead of 140 is going to result in X amount more positive social attention, they aren’t lying to themselves, they aren’t neurotic, they are just reading the world correctly. You can be happy while being discriminated against—hell, all women of all sizes prove that all the time—but that discrimination is very much there.
I don’t think it’s a matter of moral superiority. On the contrary, I often feel bad about the fact that I’m a weight watching sort and don’t see any way to give that up in my lifetime. But the cost/benefit analysis for you and me is clearly different. Doesn’t make either of us bad, just our situations different.
I have the same height and weight as Amanda (and am currently at the 140 end of the scale thanks to antidepressants) so I can concur. People really do treat you better the thinner you are, whether it’s healthy or not.
(Hint: You don’t have to be perfect.)
YES. WE DO. And you’re reinforcing that, even unintentionally.
Let’s see what Amanda said
Guilty as charged. I agree with those men completely.
Now this is where I think Amanda got it wrong.
Would I like a woman with a perfect body and a great personality who didn’t have to worry about it? I wouldn’t complain. Hell, I’d like a perfect body without working for it. While I’m at it, I’d also like to get paid six figures for sitting on my ass and browsing the internet. None of these things are realistic.
My point is that the standard of “effortless perfection” is unrealistic and most men know it’s unrealistic.
The problem is that too many women do not realize that it is unrealistic as well. Women hold themselves up to unrealistic standards. A lot of it is social pressure and sexism. And a large part of why women hold themselves to theses standards is social conditioning. I believe that it is the social conditioning that makes women think that they are to live for pleasure of others that is far more damaging to women than any particular standards of beauty.
Wayward, I think a lot of men are wise to the fact that effortless perfection is impossible, but I’m too cynical to think that it’s the standard. Think about how many women achieve the image of it—that understand that they need to restrict themselves until they’re very thin, need to never admit it to men, and pull it off. A lot. A ton. Enough that men can expect it and get fussy if they don’t get it because it’s just shocking to be exposed to women’s inner worlds.
If women accept with grace that they have to work hard at being thin without showing that they’re working hard, why would men even be aware how hard women work? I’ve definitely seen how shocked men are to find out how much I exercise or how I don’t actually eat like a pig all the time like maybe I do when it’s a special occasion, i.e. going on a date. Until she gains weight or you spend enough time with her to see how much she works at it, it looks like effortless perfection. I’m utterly unsurprised that many, most even, fuss when they see the unsexy elements that go into Teh Sexy. Effortless perfection is a standard a lot of women are good at faking.
Short version: effortless perfection may be unrealistic, but don’t worry, men will settle for you faking it.
I want to second Ugly in Pink’s comment. In about a year I went from 135 to 155, or a size 6 to a size 10/12. When I was smaller I was hit on constantly, asked to dance more (I swing dance), and even got a few jobs because I was “cute.” As a larger woman now, I “blend in” more. People don’t notice me, or if they do, they ignore me. A perfect example; when I was a starving freshman new to dance, I was asked all the time. As a pleasantly plump married woman and dance instructor, only my friends dance with me.
In short, I have very much noticed a social penalty for being heavier, but I don’t care enough to starve myself again. It’s a price I’ve chosen to pay.
Ugly in Pink:
I’ve been trying to come up with this EXACT PHRASE for about two years. It’s just… so perfect, for so many interactions. Do you mind if I steal it?
For my own personal weight struggles, I’ve really found the FA/HAES community to be extremely helpful. There are some glorious (fat!) women there, who are glowing and proud of the amazing things their (fat!) bodies accomplish, and i just find it thoroughly inspiring.
(possible repost, my apologies if so–the internets confuse me sometimes)
Ugly in Pink:
I’ve been trying to come up with this EXACT PHRASE for about two years. It’s just… so perfect, for so many interactions. Do you mind if I steal it?
For my own personal weight struggles, I’ve really found the FA/HAES community to be extremely helpful. There are some glorious (fat!) women there, who are glowing and proud of the amazing things their (fat!) bodies accomplish, and i just find it thoroughly inspiring.
I guess it’s different being married. I’ve forgotten how little single men know about women.
However, once a man does live with a woman, he’s going to notice how much effort Teh Sexy takes unless he is seriously clueless.
Where we differ is whether, given the choice, men would rather have the obsessive effort and Teh Sexy, or a healthy lifestyle and a normal, imperfect body.
Where we differ is whether, given the choice, men would rather have the obsessive effort and Teh Sexy, or a healthy lifestyle and a normal, imperfect body.
My husband? Number 2, definitely. But it’s because he actually cares about me and wants me to be happy.
Most men I have known, even the married and/or otherwise partnered, don’t fit either of these choices, however. Instead, they pressure their swain to stop doing the annoying, obsessive maintenance behaviors, then get pissed when they get fat. All without a hint of self-knowledge.
So many of them have acted like this, that I even doubt my husband’s motivations when he, say, hears me say i’m hungry and insists on making me nachos. Will he leave me if I gain weight from this? Am I being too annoying by mentioning my fears to him?
Whatever the outcome, one thing’s always clear. it’s ALL MY FAULT.
I think I’m with a guy who would not throw a temper tantrum if I gained 15 pounds. He doesn’t like my mild obsession with my weight, but I’m lucky in that I’ve found a way to control it. But I’ve rarely seen a man object to a wife or girlfriend skipping meals. I just find it hard to believe that so many men gladly accept that women have to work harder than men to be considered minimally fuckable—we have to shave more, do our hair more, wear make-up, spend more on clothes, etc.—and then would start to fuss if a woman put diet more and exercise more on that list. But you can’t complain about it, no of course not. Or really draw attention to it.
Again, I’m on the lucky side of the fence. My boyfriend and I, at best, struggle over my attachment to feminine control mechanisms like make-up and diet. He doesn’t see the point to a lot of it, which I appreciate as it’s flattering to think I’m attractive as-is, and I don’t see how I could let them go entirely. But I’m fairly certain most men don’t really care if their wives or girlfriends wear a lot of make-up, but they do care if it makes them run late. Do it, but don’t let it become a burden to me seems to be most men’s attitudes about it. You might just be a better man than a lot.
As far as the single to coupled thing goes, well, that’s the problem. Once you’re in a relationship, the need to be attractive doesn’t really go down, it seems to me. Maybe I’m weird, but I am less worried about what a guy I’ve just started dating thinks than a long term boyfriend that I’ve invested in thinks. If you’ve put a lot of effort up front at giving off the impression of effortless perfection, you don’t want to just let it go when you get into the relationship. Some people go so far as to call it fraudulent to let someone believe they get X, Y, and Z when they coupled with this person, only to find out it’s A, B, and C. Certainly, I would not be happy if I got with someone who was only shaving to lure me into a commitment and then quit as soon as I moved it. I can easily see how you’d easily extrapolate that into feeling obligated to continue the effortless perfection ruse inside a relationship if he thought that was what he was signing up for in the first place.
Do it, but don’t let it become a burden to me seems to be most men’s attitudes about it
This has led in some cases to women exercising obsessively while their men sleep. No, not me. But it happens.
Heh, in the book Pink Think, Lynn Peril describes a marriage manual she read that advised women to get up before their husbands and do their make-up so that their men never have to suffer the trauma of either seeing a woman without her make-up or seeing her put it on. I certainly know a lot of women who have become experts at pushing their food around on the plate to make it look more eaten than it is.
I’ve developed a zero tolerance policy towards this ‘I want you to eat everything and never exercise and never make an effort but DAMN YOU’D BETTER BE SKINNY!’ attitude. I tell these guys straight out: it’s effort or chubbiness. If they bitch about the effort, I tell them that. Some whine that they don’t wanna hear about the effort. I take this as an indication that they are a douche anyway. They usually are.
I understand that many women are pressured into tolerating douchey illogic like this, though.
Actually, another thing that’s helped me: weight training. Building muscle helps make you strong as well as raises your metabolism. 30min of weight training seems to do a lot more good than 90min of obsessive stairmastering. I see a lot of women at the gym doing cardio-cardio-cardio but never any weights. Isn’t the entire reason men can eat more in the first place because (a)they’re bigger and (b)they have a higher muscle percentage? Building muscle is helping me even those odds at least in terms of food.
Another cool thing about that: your body will demand veggies and nutrients. You’ll burn off the cookie too, should you feel like one.
Oddly enough, I’ve found the opposite more often than not.
When I was thin and cute, I’d often get attention (largely because I also had big boobs), but I still had to fight to be heard, and to be taken seriously.
100 pounds and three antidepressants later, I’ve noticed that I don’t try to hide, and to be the Nonthreatening Black Lady. I’m here; you can’t ignore me, so fucking deal with it.
I told my (incredibly awesome) therapist once that after seeing myself in a full-length mirror in my mother’s house, I felt like I was finally taking up the amount of space I’d been entitled to all along.
Cool then, Amanda, thanks.
I think there is a difference between what you think men think is “minimally fuckable” and what men actually think is “minimally fuckable.” “Minimally fuckable” is a pretty low standard.
My wife rarely wears makeup, relies primarily on a brush, gravity, and the occasional hairclip or scrunci to style her hair, never misses a meal (she gets shaky if she does), is an excellent cook because she “loves to eat”, doesn’t “diet”, won’t wear heels over an inch because they aren’t comfortable, gets as much sleep as she can, and is far too busy to exercise.
She’s had two children. Her body is neither thin nor perfect. But that doesn’t matter. She is comfortable with her body. I find her very attractive.
,
As for other men, I don’t think these attitudes all that rare. It sounds like your boyfriend has a similar attitude, as does UglyInPink’s husband. I think Cymbal has the right idea. If a man thinks effortless perfection is possible, educate him directly. If he wants you to fake it, he’s probably a douche.
when it comes to the idea of weight being a matter of effort, i think your analysis puts too little emphasis on the role of genetics in body type, particularly in this statement. the quick reference to a “genetic plan” in the following paragraph provides inadequate balance. dieting doesn’t work for many reasons, and the alternating of binges with the great purge of abstinence and purity is only one of them. the “genetic setpoint” theory of weight provides a more powerful explanation.
it’s been fairly well established by actual studies (if not the “science” journalism “reporting” on their supposed outcomes) that the percentage of people who can maintain significant weight loss for five years or more is only a few per cent. even studies which attempt to measure compliance with x regime show dismal weight maintenance numbers over the long haul, even in the long-term-compliant members of the intervention group. the major reason for this is that human bodies don’t like to lose weight and will do nearly anything to remain within a particular individual “set point” range, whether or not the human occupying them agrees.
it is true that a naturally not-skinny person could make themselves thin through starvation (this would be why there were no obese prisoners when the allies reached auschwitz), giving the illusion that weight is controllable through choice and will, but with healthy behaviors it’s not. not beyond whatever range one’s body is willing to comply with. a formerly obese person who has achieved a “normal” bmi through dieting has the metabolism of a starvation victim, not of a normal, healthy person. this makes weight (re)gain inevitable unless extreme measures, like starvation beyond any medically-approved idea of a “diet,” are religiously maintained. it also seems to shift the end points of one’s “set weight range” higher.
if all women, in particular, are wasting their time and energy trying to maintain an idealized, unnaturally-low weight (through exhausting excessive exercise/forced physical labor or ritualized self-starvation) or devaluing themselves in shame for their inability to do so, a stunning amount of energy has been successfully deflected from attacking and remaking the patriarchy. general health is a choice. weight just happens. but because of this obsession with the “perfect” body and “perfect” weight, and the idea that we can and must choose to conform no matter what the cost (and if we don’t, despite our best efforts, we must not want it enough or deserve good things), people would rather be thin than healthy.
i might be a woman who has lost and kept off more than forty pounds (i’m a fricking anomaly), and with very little effort, but i believe this proves the other side of the “set point theory:” profound overweight beyond a body’s set point is unhealthy and unsustainable, just like artificially-accomplished weight loss. adding a small daily dose of synthroid hasn’t made me acceptably thin by societal standards (i have, horror of horrors, a bmi of 26.5), but it has returned me to my natural set point range. had i not royally screwed over my metabolism with binge/purge cycles in younger days, my natural weight might be even lower.
i’m beginning to feel that this post might be ill-placed, but the idea that weight is more a matter of choice, purely the function of controllable purging behaviors and women’s flawed failure to do so consistently, seemed to be endorsed in your statement. i wanted to point out what i see as a logical error.
when it comes to the idea of weight being a matter of effort, i think your analysis puts too little emphasis on the role of genetics in body type, particularly in this statement. the quick reference to a “genetic plan” in the following paragraph provides inadequate balance. dieting doesn’t work for many reasons, and the alternating of binges with the great purge of abstinence and purity is only one of them. the “genetic setpoint” theory of weight provides a more powerful explanation.
it’s been fairly well established by actual studies (if not the “science” journalism “reporting” on their supposed outcomes) that the percentage of people who can maintain significant weight loss for five years or more is only a few per cent. even studies which attempt to measure compliance with x regime show dismal weight maintenance numbers over the long haul, even in the long-term-compliant members of the intervention group. the major reason for this is that human bodies don’t like to lose weight and will do nearly anything to remain within a particular individual “set point” range, whether or not the human occupying them agrees.
it is true that a naturally not-skinny person could make themselves thin through starvation (this would be why there were no obese prisoners when the allies reached auschwitz), giving the illusion that weight is controllable through choice and will, but with healthy behaviors it’s not. not beyond whatever range one’s body is willing to comply with. a formerly obese person who has achieved a “normal” bmi through dieting has the metabolism of a starvation victim, not of a normal, healthy person. this makes weight (re)gain inevitable unless extreme measures, like starvation beyond any medically-approved idea of a “diet,” are religiously maintained. it also seems to shift the end points of one’s “set weight range” higher.
if all women, in particular, are wasting their time and energy trying to maintain an idealized, unnaturally-low weight (through exhausting excessive exercise/forced physical labor or ritualized self-starvation) or devaluing themselves in shame for their inability to do so, a stunning amount of energy has been successfully deflected from attacking and remaking the patriarchy. general health is a choice. weight just happens. but because of this obsession with the “perfect” body and “perfect” weight, and the idea that we can and must choose to conform no matter what the cost (and if we don’t, despite our best efforts, we must not want it enough or deserve good things), people would rather be thin than healthy.
i might be a woman who has lost and kept off more than forty pounds (i’m a fricking anomaly), and with very little effort, but i believe this proves the other side of the “set point theory:” profound overweight beyond a body’s set point is unhealthy and unsustainable, just like artificially-accomplished weight loss. adding a small daily dose of synthroid hasn’t made me acceptably thin by societal standards (i have, horror of horrors, a bmi of 26.5), but it has returned me to my natural set point range. had i not royally screwed over my metabolism with binge/purge cycles in younger days, my natural weight might be even lower.
i’m beginning to feel that this post might be ill-placed, but the idea that weight is more a matter of choice, purely the function of controllable purging behaviors and women’s flawed failure to do so consistently, seemed to be endorsed in your statement. i wanted to point out what i see as a logical error.
Em, Word, word, word, word.
I *love* to eat! And I love to try out wierd foods!
I do try not to worry about my weight. I have to worry about it some because I come from a family prone to diabetes, and I don’t make enough money that having to buy new clothes wouldn’t be a baaaaaad thing for me.
So I work out. It’s *really* annoying…Effort, effort, effort…spending 1.5 hours to 2 hours almost every day running, rowing, and weightlifting. I don’t actually lose weight, or not very much, but my clothes of the last decade or so still fits!
I wonder how this weight thing works out for guys. I’ve never been less than about 15 pounds overweight, and usually am about 30 pounds, but I have always been “on the radar” so to speak. I think it’s the whole, 30 lbs overweight on 215 lb natural frame is much less bad than 30lb overweight on 150 lb frame.
One last comment about weight. Women should weight-lift! Really Really Really. There’s just far too much of a misconception out there for many women that weightlifting is just for men, or it would really make muscles bulge unattractively. If you want big muscles, you can get them, but weightlifting as part of a balanced exercise plan can really improve your overall health and confidence.
OT, I’m looking forward to Amanda’s comments re the second to last episode of the Wire. I think there is a real comparison between Snoop and Colette Tatou about the availability for creative space.
Caroline, I’m skipping ahead to give you my advice, so I don’t know if anyone has already said this:
To be healthy, you do need to be active– weight matters less than activity, by far.
But since deliberate exercise will trigger your issues, you need to get your exercise through tricking yourself. Choose a HOBBY, rather than an exercise plan. Like photography? Go on nature walks and take photos as you go. Short walks on a couple of week days, getting snaps of flowers on patios or whatever, longer walks one day on a day off.
Not into photography? How about a dance group?
Play ping pong with a friend?
Gardening is great for your body– shoveling, raking, etc can really give you a burn.
The trick for you will be remembering to focus on the fun, and not the fact that it *is* helping your health.
I really love how these paragraphs completely fail to mention men’s role in perpetuating those standards, and all but exonerate them from it. It’s like a more subtle take on, “It’s not us men who want you to be super-skinny, it’s all those catty fashionistas and bitchy gay men!”I think there is a difference between what you think men think is “minimally fuckable” and what men actually think is “minimally fuckable.” “Minimally fuckable” is a pretty low standard.
That’s another thing: I think it’s interesting that we simultaneously are told “Men aren’t picky, they’ll fuck anything with a pulse” and at the same time, a number of men in certain company will excoriate women they don’t find hot. For example, there’s a recurring feature at Jezebel focusing on male Internet gossip columnists who complain most vividly about female celebrities failing to shed baby weight, or even daring to gain baby weight in the first place, or in despite being gorgeous actresses, not having perfect breasts.
I should add before the obvious question arises that not all men usually cited in the Jezebel feature are gay; indeed, while Perez Hilton is, the others are evidently not and do discuss the women from a fuckability standpoint.
Perhaps I would have found my authentic self otherwise, but I gotta say: bearing two children makes it easier, as does being married, as does being in my forties. Society cares nothing for me, which really lets me off the hook. I can eat what I like, play when I like, wear what I like to work, not screw around with hair or makeup, and I get to pat myself on the back that in eschewing all that feminine perfection, I’m making it easier for all the other women.
That’s right: I’m doing my part to end discrimination against women by bringing down the standards. I’m modeling healthy behavior for my daughters by not obsessing about food or exercise or appearance. No, those are not really adequate compensations for all the kudos bestowed on the effortlessly perfect women, but the idealism comes with cake, so that helps.
Women hold themselves up to unrealistic standards.
Ah yes, it’s all OUR fault. Thanks for clarifying that, oh bestower of male knowledge.
Really, would it kill you to shut up and listen for two seconds instead of trying to guide us poor confused women onto the correct path?
libbyblue, I agree that a lot of people are under the incorrect impression you can diet your body type away. But I am wary of sweeping claims about weight loss being an impossibility, because while dieting won’t change a body type or make a fat person thin, far too many people have seen that long term changes in exercise and diet can and do create changes. I went up in weight for a couple of years, but I’ve been about this size for more than 5 years. Did I “diet”? Not really. I accepted that I’d been overeating and quit doing that. But it worked for the 15 pounds extra I was carrying around.
At which point I expect the proponents of the “it’s all genetics” theory to say, “Well, your were over your ‘natural’ weight.” See how it quickly slips into all evidence bends to fit the theory territory? I would have stayed heavier at bare minimum if I hadn’t made changes, so which one is my “natural” weight?
Now, I think the genetics argument is extremely important. Far too many people think you can diet Rosanne Arnold into Kate Moss, and that’s not going to happen. You can’t change your body type. And dieting doesn’t work, because, as I said, it feeds the feast-or-famine mentality. But I warn you, far too many people have seen permanent lifestyle changes that resulted in some measurable physical change to be willing to believe sweeping claims about the complete non-effect of what you put in your mouth to what appears on your waistline. I’m unsure if someone could make permanent enough changes to drop 100 pounds or something, but if they did, it would probably take a couple years at minimum for it to come off. Which is why it always goes back to dieting—people want to see effects just way too quickly.
I think there is a difference between what you think men think is “minimally fuckable” and what men actually think is “minimally fuckable.” “Minimally fuckable” is a pretty low standard.
Fair enough. Not “minimally fuckable”. Minimally acceptable to be seen with in public/treated like a good woman instead of a fuck hole that is used, then thrown away. Or, as is the case for a lot of women considered thin but not thin enough (say, wears a size 8 instead of a 4, or 12 instead of a 6, or whatever), good enough to date but fat enough that you feel entitled to complain about it and act put upon. Women maybe want more than just being something a guy can get his dick wet with. We often also want to feel appreciated, sexy, like we are a bonus in our man’s life instead of a burden. And a lot of women have very good reason to believe that being very thin is an entrance requirement for that. Not all men put that expectation out. But more than not, I’d say.
Women aren’t unaware of how men talk about us when it’s “just the guys”. I remember my ex used to be amazed at how, no matter how fat one of his male coworkers was at his male-only job, the guy felt entitled to sneer at the Kate Winslets and Jennifer Lopezs of the world for indulging the occasional food-like substance and displaying that fact in the thigh and ass area.
My room-mate is one of those guys. It’s funny in a sad, sad way.
Ugly in Pink, what do you think would be an acceptable position for a man to hold on this topic (I don’t mean this as a hostile question)?
I cannot change what I find physically attractive in women. (I happen to be attracted to athletic, muscular types.) While I also want to find a woman who can kick my ass at wargames, loves to discuss Wittgenstein and Kant and has Bill Moyers at the top of her season passes on her TiVo, the fact remains that I will have a hard time having a physical relationship with a woman who is not a match for what one of my college roommates called my “attraction template.” Biology ultimately wins, and I think most men (certainly younger men) are biologically hard-wired to be attracted to thinner women. As with everything there is variation and evolution over time, but I have a hard time swallowing that what I feel is a natural, instinctive drive is in fact something dreamed up on Madison Avenue. If it was a conscious choice I would long ago have found someone who fit my “intellectual attraction template” and would be a much happier person today.
So, is it sexism, or natural selection?
liberalrob:
most men (certainly younger men) are biologically hard-wired to be attracted to thinner women
No. Not by current standards of “thinner”, anyway. If there *is* a hard-wired template of female attractiveness, I suspect Rubens came pretty close. Certainly Rubens’ women are much closer to optimal reproductive health than any current leading lady, much less a fashion model.
Is it just me or is liberalrob’s topic a derailment?
Not just you, annejumps.
Sorry, not my intent. I thought we were talking about why men seem to demand women be thin and I gave my opinion. I saw this:
and added my perspective. I didn’t mean to derail something; apparently I don’t know what you’re talking about. Carry on.
Interrobang: but it seems interesting to me that the “solution” to this problem is for women to police their internal selves with an eye towards moderation, rather than perfection. Same tactic, different goal.
Unfortunatly, you can just “let go” of a habit, be it biting your fingernails or perfectionism. For a long time, you have to be aware of any instance of the problematic behaviour or its early indicators and counteract them.
A long term solution would have to destroy the “sin=fat” and “virtue=women’s problem” connections, and I am not too optimistic about that. If fat loses its “sin” status, some other thing, just as common, will take its place. Making everyone and not only women responsible for moral virtue might help, or only make everyone neurotic. Re-evaluating virtue seems necessary to get out of this one-stupid-thing-after-another cycle.
Extra douche-points for guys who claim a desire for teenage boy-bodies with basketballs in their chest is TOTALLY NATURAL Y’ALL.
My observation: these are status-focused boys. They primarily want a trophy that will impress other men. Since the hipless fatless uberboobed skeleton (generally also white, but that’s a whole other set of pathetic bigotries) is currently held up as the GREATEST TROPHY by the douche patrol, these guys want that. Not a person. ‘That’.
Since they only care about other men and are desperately focused on the approval and adulation of other men, it’s a bit *interesting* that they revere a body type that looks a whole lot like a gangly pubescent teenage boy, huh? The balloon-boobs strike me as a desperate compensation to prove that THEY ARE NOT GAY.
Not that the poor gay community should have to put up with these wankers either, mind you.
and added my perspective. I didn’t mean to derail something; apparently I don’t know what you’re talking about.
…Evidently not. I don’t see the connection between your personal preferences, regardless of origin, and the dual messages you quoted from my post.
In Rubens’ time, that may have been true; but today, take a poll of men (a serious study, not just a bunch of man-in-the-street interviews) and ask them if they would be attracted to those Rubens masterpieces and I suspect you’d get a different answer. Maybe that’s based on what I think most men would say, rather than what they actually say. I’m not a sociologist. But given all the anecdotal evidence and my personal experience (and preferences), I think I have at least a chance of being right.
I’m not making a value judgment on whether it’s right for men to pressure women to be thinner and “perfect.” (I think it’s wrong to do so.) I’m saying I think there is an instinctual imperative at work that drives men that way. I don’t think it’s just Bally’s Total Fitness trying to sell more memberships or Chuck Norris trying to sell more Total Gyms; men’s attraction to thin women goes back farther than that. Why did Twiggy become so popular in the 60’s and set the gold standard for impossible, anorexic waifs? Was she completely a creation of Madison Avenue and the fashion industry, or was there some deeper change in what men consider attractive that happened at that time?
Now, is this fair to women who aren’t “perfect” through their natural gifts? Absolutely not. I completely empathize with those of you faced with these unrealistic expectations of physical perfection. At the same time, I can’t just wish it away. The attraction issue is a real one, and we have example after example of evolution at work selecting out those who cannot meet the standard, which exists for men as much as it does for women (and no, that doesn’t excuse men for slanting the playing field against women!). I had to endure merciless “lardass” and “fatass” comments all through school and college, and you can’t deny that obese men are discriminated against in their careers and social lives to at least some degree, even if you feel that women are subject to even harsher scrutiny (which I don’t deny). Based on Amanda’s review of the book I have no doubt that the stories it relates are true, and I have no doubt that women struggle with these feelings; I struggle with them too. But taking that evidence of discrimination and then demanding that men somehow change their preferences and go against what I consider an instinctual drive, well, I think that’s asking a lot. I don’t have a solution, and I don’t like women feeling all torn up inside because they aren’t perfect and don’t fit what men consider physically attractive. Evolution sucks, and right now evolution has apparently decreed that thin is in. Fat people like myself are just going to lose out as long as that is the case.
My apologies. The connection seems clear to me.
Yes, yes yes yes god damn and AMEN!
Seriously. What can men do? Realize we don’t exist to make you happy. Or horny. or ANYTHING. We exist because we exist, in and of and for ourselves.
It’s really funny to hear that men are hard-wired to like this or that, then to travel to other parts of the world and find very different beauty standards. Not just fat versus skinny, but there are cultures where breasts just aren’t a big deal at all. So the idea that we aren’t “sold” on ideals of attractiveness is just bullshit. Yes, it is somewhat self-referential - what you see in the media and advertising reflected a pre-existing cultural ideal, but then it gets magnified and reinforced and those images become the driving force for future cultural ideals. Individual tastes may vary, but no one is immune from the cultural forces around us.
LiberalRob,
How do you reconcile this statement:
Biology ultimately wins, and I think most men (certainly younger men) are biologically hard-wired to be attracted to thinner women.
with this one:
In Rubens’ time, [the fact that men were attracted to less thin women] may have been true; but today, take a poll of men (a serious study, not just a bunch of man-in-the-street interviews) and ask them if they would be attracted to those Rubens masterpieces and I suspect you’d get a different answer.
Hmm?
Seriously, do you think biology can change that much over just a few centuries? Hint: it can’t.
So, if it’s not biology, what is it? Oh right, it’s societal clues, conditioning us from a very young age to find thinner women more attractive. The societal change happens slowly, so it’s not like someone sat down and decided to make thin “in”. But it’s the kind of thing that can change over the course of several decades to centuries, unlike biology. (Biology is, of course, changing too, just much more slowly.)
So, to address this point of yours,
But taking that evidence of discrimination and then demanding that men somehow change their preferences and go against what I consider an instinctual drive, well, I think that’s asking a lot.
Since it’s not an instinctual drive, but societal conditioning, I don’t think it’s asking much to ask both men and women to try to reject that societal conditioning in the interest of helping half or more of our population not be miserable. This book helps us reject the conditioning by calling it out for what it is, letting women relate to it and helping men to understand it, and to understand just how harmful it is.
Reichart
An acceptable position is not feeling cheated out of the junk food noshing supermodel they deserve. As with most other things, feminism is the answer. Once they start to accept on a deeper level that women are people and not trophies, it’ll get better.
liberalrob
This But taking that evidence of discrimination and then demanding that men somehow change their preferences and go against what I consider an instinctual drive
is not even close to what the post is about. Go back and read it again. We are saying it is unfair to expect thinness without effort, and really couldn’t care less what gives you a hard on. I realize that must be a hard (eheh) concept for you to accept. But no, no one loves you, and no one cares what turns you on on a feminist website. Talk about something related, or go away.
and that you are in no way entitled to have women make this effort invisible to you, to protect your pwecious illusions of having the “perfect” woman on your arm.
oh yeah…and no, nobody here cares what turns you on, due to the astonishing (i’m sure) fact that it isn’t ABOUT YOU.
liberalrob:
Even if all the men you survey agree that Rubens’ women are too fat, that doesn’t mean it’s instinctive. Speaking English feels instinctive to me — why, I even *think* in English! — but that means absolutely nothing.
Jon wrote:
The societal change happens slowly, so it’s not like someone sat down and decided to make thin “in”. But it’s the kind of thing that can change over the course of several decades to centuries, unlike biology.
As a biologist, I have to disagree: this particular societal change happens extremely quickly, and has shifted markedly in a single lifetime.
My question for liberalrob if he’s still around is, what on earth gave you the idea that male body type preferences are innate or instinctual? No, really — did you not realize that your father and grandfather’s “ideals” differs from yours? Do you seriously think that this is the sort of thing that would have changed so much since Renoir’s day (c.1890) due to *evolution*?
Where do you get these ideas?
Can’t it? What’s your basis for that, or is it just your opinion? Hint: your opinion carries no greater weight with me than my opinion does with you or anyone else here. And neither of our opinions is scientific fact. I have a theory. You don’t have to like it.
I agree with you that it is unfair. But “what gives me a hard on” (i.e. what I consider physically attractive) has everything to to do with the kinds of women I’m likely to pursue a relationship with. It’s not all about me, but it is about all of us men and all of you women. If women are going to get all torn up about impossible ideals placed on them by men, I think it’s important to know whether what you’re up against is merely a conscious choice or some involuntary impulse. Conscious choices can be altered by education and advocacy; instinctual impulses aren’t so easily redirected.
Anyway, I see you don’t want to talk about that so have a nice day.
Shorter liberalrob: But, but, but… when I objectify women it’s all science-y and shit and couldn’t possibly be sexist social conditioning AT ALL and y’all fat bitches just need to get over the fact that I won’t fuck you and you can’t MAKE ME!
Shorter fat bitch (i.e. me): Thank all the gods for that.
I went up in weight for a couple of years, but I’ve been about this size for more than 5 years. Did I “diet”? Not really. I accepted that I’d been overeating and quit doing that. But it worked for the 15 pounds extra I was carrying around….I would have stayed heavier at bare minimum if I hadn’t made changes, so which one is my “natural” weight?
Well, clearly, you are the expert on your body. But, as far as I can tell, the theory about “natural” weight only applies if you’re actually using your hunger cues, which many of us are not. I can’t speak for you, but when I was in the ‘diet’ mentality, I overate as much as I restricted, and yes, I gained weight. But the point is that if I had listened to my body, none of it would have happened, because it really was never saying, “Eat that entire pint of ice cream!!! *nomnomnom*,” it was probably saying, “Eat an avocado.” And I would have eaten the avocado, instead of saying it had too much fat, then satisfied my hunger, and been done with it. So, theoretically, overeating can push you out of your natural weight range just as much as undereating can, because both types of eating are ignoring the fact that, in all probability, your body knows more about what it needs than Dr. Atkins does.
One last point to Jon. If my preference for thin women is societal conditioning, I should perceive it as a conscious choice. Wouldn’t you think? I should have actively chosen to be attracted to thin, “perfect” women. (Which would be incredibly stupid of me, because I would have cut myself off from 99% of available women.) Since this isn’t the case, I see two possibilities: either it’s something instinctual, or the societal programming has been so subtle and insidious it would have been the envy of Cold-War era Communist “reprogramming” officers. If it truly is societal programming on such a massive scale, and I am so brainwashed that I have no idea how I came to feel the attractions I do yet there they are, then it seems to me you don’t have a hope in hell of changing it. And it strikes me more as tinfoil-hat style conspiracy theory than actual fact.
I would liken it to homosexuality and the “pray away the gay” nitwits. They believe that homosexuality is a conscious choice and if only people pray hard enough, they will change their thinking and become hetero. “Deviant sexuality” is only around because of an insidious program of constant bombardment with homosexual imagery and preaching about “tolerance” and “diversity,” not because some people are innately attracted to members of the same sex.
I don’t find it unprecedented in nature. Different species of similar animals can be attracted to different things.
tricia, you are so far off base you’re not even in the parking lot across the street from the ballpark.
“I don’t find it unprecedented in nature. Different species of similar animals can be attracted to different things.”
Dude, all humans are ONE species.
ALL. ONE. SPECIES…
I have a hard time swallowing that what I feel is a natural, instinctive drive is in fact something dreamed up on Madison Avenue.
You can’t tell me that foot-binding is a biologically attractive feature, yet it was accepted as an ideal in China for centuries (even longer than our culture’s attraction to Twiggy!). So yes, clearly something that is *not* a natural drive became attractive when it was held up as the ideal. Did that happen with Madison Avenue? It’s debatable. But creating a cultural ideal of attractiveness has happened before, people have bought into it before, and those people would probably say that it’s totally natural to be attracted to women who can only stand for minutes at a time. Seriously, we don’t care who you date, we’re just saying that, maybe, you learned your idea of attractiveness from your culture as much as the Chinese did in the 12th century. And please, don’t say we “evolved” away from it, unless you can give an explanation of how we could have “evolved” to it.
If my preference for thin women is societal conditioning, I should perceive it as a conscious choice.
Hah. You think that? This whole thread is about the societal conditioning that makes women hate their own bodies. You think women consciously choose to hate their own bodies, that they wake up one day and just decide that it’d be fun to hate themselves? No, it’s society’s message, and instead of choosing to embrace it, embracing it is the default. They have to consciously recognize that that’s the case, consciously decide to reject the message, and even then it’s hard to deal with.
or the societal programming has been so subtle and insidious it would have been the envy of Cold-War era Communist “reprogramming” officers.
Congratulations, you’ve gotten it! But you’re mistaken in thinking that it’s some thought-out conspiracy. It’s either subconscious or unintended. Perhaps it’s what drives profits - the very presence of McDonalds and Weight Watchers (I am of course, oversimplifying this) leads to the Perfect Girl/Starving Daughter dichotomy. Perhaps it’s the fashion industry’s profits - since they want women to model their clothes as if they are nothing more than hangers, they’re putting the message out there that model=glamour and therefore that waif=glamour and waif=attractive.
If it truly is societal programming on such a massive scale, and I am so brainwashed that I have no idea how I came to feel the attractions I do yet there they are, then it seems to me you don’t have a hope in hell of changing it.
Well, the way to counter it is by educating the public through feminism. Feminism teaches people to look at society, and therefore inside themselves, critically.
Jon wrote:
The societal change happens slowly, so it’s not like someone sat down and decided to make thin “in”. But it’s the kind of thing that can change over the course of several decades to centuries, unlike biology.
As a biologist, I have to disagree: this particular societal change happens extremely quickly, and has shifted markedly in a single lifetime.
My question for liberalrob if he’s still around is, what on earth gave you the idea that male body type preferences are innate or instinctual? No, really — did you not realize that your father and grandfather’s “ideals” differs from yours? Do you seriously think that this is the sort of thing that would have changed so much since Renoir’s day (c.1890) due to *evolution*?
Where do you get these ideas?
Just to clarify, I was merely making the comparison between rates of cultural change (fast) and biological change (slow) - I’m perfectly willing to concede the point that cultural changes happen faster than I said, since it changes my argument not one bit. My argument was pretty much the same as your question to liberalrob.
Liberalrob: Go read a primer on evolutionary biology before you open your mouth again and make yourself look like even more of a tool.
Gah. So fraught is this topic that happening to come across a post about it on a blog that usually discusses other stuff has wrecked my mood and filled me with despair. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it.
Not your fault, Amanda. Perfectly good post.
liberalrob: Unlike your comments on this thread, which have been so far off base that you were trying to attend a Boston/Yankees game by driving to AT&T Park?
:::eyeroll:::
Rob, buddy, on behalf of everyone here, please shut up and listen. You’re only digging yourself deeper.
Thought question: If all thin women disappeared from the earth tonight, would straight men ever have sex again?
Not just fat versus skinny, but there are cultures where breasts just aren’t a big deal at all.
As I’ve noted before, you don’t even need to travel for that. My experience tells me the one thing that you don’t have to worry about is a flat chest if you’re going for the indie punk look. Not that there aren’t outrageous beauty standards in that subculture—there are—but what exactly they are is different. You still have to be skinny, but you don’t need the curves.
By the way, thanks for showing up and proving my point that a lot of men do in fact vocally demand perfection in women and will whine if they don’t get it, liberalrob. I don’t want to be harsh on you, but it’s worth noting that I’ve never heard a woman say that she needs someone with 6-pack abs who spends all his time not at the gym but cultivating his sparkling wit, impish personality, and ever-interesting opinions on various philosophers. That, I suspect, is what we’re talking about when we talk about male privilege.
It’s frustrating as hell, because I think a lot of men who do vocally set these impossible standards eventually do fall in love with a flawed woman who is human and has a little cellulite or perhaps a bad day where her wit sparkles a little duller. But how many have the wisdom to learn their lesson and how many will keep talking up a big game fantasy they think is real, while hurting the real life women they have and love and are unintentionally tearing down with these fantasy women-driven standards?
Well, clearly, you are the expert on your body. But, as far as I can tell, the theory about “natural” weight only applies if you’re actually using your hunger cues, which many of us are not. I can’t speak for you, but when I was in the ‘diet’ mentality, I overate as much as I restricted, and yes, I gained weight. But the point is that if I had listened to my body, none of it would have happened, because it really was never saying, “Eat that entire pint of ice cream!!! *nomnomnom*,” it was probably saying, “Eat an avocado.” And I would have eaten the avocado, instead of saying it had too much fat, then satisfied my hunger, and been done with it. So, theoretically, overeating can push you out of your natural weight range just as much as undereating can, because both types of eating are ignoring the fact that, in all probability, your body knows more about what it needs than Dr. Atkins does.
Tough call. I think that you’re right to an extent that learning to listen to the body is helpful. Eating slower is a big plus, since it takes a long time for your body to register that it’s full. But it’s also been demonstrated that people’s body sends different signals according to what food is front of you. For instance, there’s always room for sweet stuff. People who couldn’t eat another bite of a protein or non-sweet bread will start digging into sugar. This is the sort of thing that’s been scientifically demonstrated.
One way to get around that problem and be a more body-listening eater is to avoid sweets, of course. Which we probably should do anyway, since refined sugar is the devil.
Well said.
The demand for “perfection” is mostly about status. Status conscious men want these women and status conscious women want to be these women. And status conscious usually does equal douchebag.
My point is that most guys, at least most non-douchebag, heterosexual men, understand that perfection is unrealistic and actually like ad are attracted to real women.
Now, I do not have first hand experience with any of this, but I see the most damaging problem not the images and ideals of perfection themselves, but that women are trained and socialized to please everyone, including the douchebags. In other words, I believe that the problem goes far deeper than body image.
I do want to clarify one thing. I did not mean that all women who strive for perfection are “status conscious douchebags.” Most women who strive for this perfection do so because they believe they have no other choice.
What I meant is that some women can and do strive for this perfection because they want to be the status symbol. Women can be quite brutal to other women over these things.
that should be “and are actually attracted to real women”
Rob, normally I’m fairly sympathetic toward semi-trolls on this blog, but your idea that socially conditioned responses should be obvious to the individual is wrong. You should read some ethnography if you’re interested in how invisible this sort of thing can be to those affected (even if you have a low opinion of recent anthropology [and I’m not saying you do or don’t] this point was well-established by the late 1800’s). If people here were arguing that guys are pigs for not being attracted to 300lb women, I’d side with you. But what I’m hearing is anger at the societal over-valuation that women be extremely thin (and otherwise ‘perfect’), which is not universal.
{It’s frustrating as hell, because I think a lot of men who do vocally set these impossible standards eventually do fall in love with a flawed woman who is human and has a little cellulite or perhaps a bad day where her wit sparkles a little duller. But how many have the wisdom to learn their lesson and how many will keep talking up a big game fantasy they think is real, while hurting the real life women they have and love and are unintentionally tearing down with these fantasy women-driven standards}
And also cant handle the fact that a woman ages & her body changes, then they cant get it upfor her anymore. Becuase really, she’s never really been more than a thing to him –an image to get wood over. Not really a human being with imperfections, who ages, who still needs comfort & love…how many liberalbobs spend their lives, after a brief number of years, jerking off to porn instead of a real woman or give it up altogether, becuase theyve never graduated to a level of humanity that’s past their own infantile & narcissistic wants?
Men have made themselves sociopathic; where only they are real in this life. Only they are completely real.
{One way to get around that problem and be a more body-listening eater is to avoid sweets, of course. Which we probably should do anyway, since refined sugar is the devil.}
Maybr one way. But ive heard the opposite: that it’s good to eat something sweet after a mwal so your body knows you are done, & also because it’s fucking tasty to eat something sweet :p
Eating a piece of fruit for example is a great way to end a meal & aid digestion, too. Even so, a cookie or two wont kill you if you stay active.
May i also say: work on the perfectionism; the all-or-none thinking, too. That is the real cause of unhealthy eating habits & not necessarily all these rules & outward restrictions… Some people really cling to rules like they were gold bars
I’ve been living in Cameroon for the past couple of years and had previously spent a lot of time abroad in Africa since graduating from college. I’m raising my 3-year-old daughter here but will soon be returning to the US for grad school. (Just found out about being admitted - YEAH!) So far, my little one has been almost completely shielded from the materialistic, looks-are-everything culture of the US and has instead been surrounded by women who, no matter what their size, take great pride in their feminine looks. It has always fascinated me that women here, who are oppressed in so many ways, are not under the same pressure as we in the US to confirm to a certain beauty standard. Even I (a fairly big women) feel better about my own looks when I’m over here.
I know when we go back to the US, I’m going to need to make a very conscious effort not to revert to using self-effacing language or obsessive habits because I don’t want my daughter exposed to that. But I know as soon as she starts going to school, the comparisons with other girls will start. It scares me. I don’t want her to go through the horrible time I had from age 10 to about 22 (and beyond). But the shopping culture and the sex-saturated media - and this definitely includes kids’ shows and cartoons - are going to affect her. How am I going to avoid this?
I’ve been living in Cameroon for the past couple of years and had previously spent a lot of time abroad in Africa since graduating from college. I’m raising my 3-year-old daughter here but will soon be returning to the US for grad school. (Just found out about being admitted - YEAH!) So far, my little one has been almost completely shielded from the materialistic, looks-are-everything culture of the US and has instead been surrounded by women who, no matter what their size, take great pride in their feminine looks. It has always fascinated me that women here, who are oppressed in so many ways, are not under the same pressure as we in the US to confirm to a certain beauty standard. Even I (a fairly big women) feel better about my own looks when I’m over here.
I know when we go back to the US, I’m going to need to make a very conscious effort not to revert to using self-effacing language or obsessive habits because I don’t want my daughter exposed to that. But I know as soon as she starts going to school, the comparisons with other girls will start. It scares me. I don’t want her to go through the horrible time I had from age 10 to about 22 (and beyond). But the shopping culture and the sex-saturated media - and this definitely includes kids’ shows and cartoons - are going to affect her. How am I going to avoid this?
I’m really glad that liberalrob joined this discussion, because he very clearly exhibits the mindset of a significant part of the population. It’s one I usually think of as libertarian, but it’s pretty common in many conservatives, too:
1. your own mental & emotional states are transparent, known by inspection.
2. what goes on in your mind is either the result of conscious choice or of “hard-wired”, genetically-determined instincts.
3. culture and society, if they exist at all (see Margaret Thatcher) are the results of both conscious human choice and hard-wired instinct, but nothing else.
There’s no role for the unconscious, but also no role for habit or even learning. “Evolution” is invoked as a kind of hand-wavy magic spell, a secular version of the proof-texting used by Christian fundamentalists.
Doc, it’s pretty absurd to call that the ‘libertarian’ position. What you just laid out is the polar opposite of, e.g, Hayek’s position.
Mama Kate, it seems to me that the obsession with bodily perfection has developed as women have gotten more rights and freedoms and is part of the backlash against that progress, a way to perpetuate control over women in a way that is very hard to combat. Obviously all cultures have physical ideals, and I in no way want to idealize the past, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that women in Cameroon have fewer rights and opportunities overall but aren’t obsessing about their weight. Of course, at least in Western European/American culture, the other thing that has changed is that corsets and other “support” garments have gone out the window but we’re still expected to have the figures that those garments facilitated - just “naturally” and “effortlessly.” And as I think about it as I’m writing, maybe I’m wrong - foot binding, those women with the neck rings, corsets, etc. - but I’m still going to post just to put this out there. At least in our culture, I think there is a connection between the current obsession and anxiety about changing gender roles, and it sounds like Courtney refers to that (though I haven’t read the book).
Reichert, I call it “libertarian” because it accords with the actual statements of non-philophical libertarians, which are common as dirt in blogoland.
Thanks for the review. I’m going to have to read the book. All the things mentioned are very familiar to me as I’ve had disordered eating. The inner brat/perfect girl split makes sense to me not only with food, but with sexual drives and also oddly, keeping a clean house.
As if being thin, pure, and tidy equals a sense of morality and eating lots, fucking lots and not giving a fig about the dishes equals something not so nice.
Funny, though how eating a good meal, having great sex, and being too involved with life to keep the house clean actually feels better right?
My goal is moderation of course, cause health is important. Eating well and keeping at least a moderately clean house are both good for general health.
Apparently Rob is a Lamarckian?
That would jibe with his whole “science is a matter of opinion” thing.
I’m a very small woman, Rob. I don’t really have to watch what I eat; I stay “underweight” (according to BMI charts) without any effort. (I have to make more effort in other aspects of my appearance — alas, I am not the model of feminine perfection to which you appear to feel entitled.) I’m attracted to slender, brainy men who tease me. It would be tough for me to shake that preference; on a rational level, I don’t like being dwarfed by my partner, and on a less rational level, bigger men seldom turn me on.
The difference between us, Rob (other than the fact that I fit my own physical ideal and you don’t) is that I’m not so arrogant as to pretend my preference is biologically hard-wired or shared by the general straight female population. Other women drool over men who leave me cold, and vice versa.
You’re welcome to your own preferences, Rob, but don’t patronize women with unsupported blanket statements about what men are “hard-wired” to want. You’re not that representative, or that important.