Lesson Five
Ah, the media. From Reality TV to the pages of Glamour Magazine, we repeatedly see thin and mostly white women's bodies as normal, standard, accepted. And most of the time, we can't get enough of it. We pour billions of dollars into an industry that keeps us enthralled with skinny girls and their celebrity successes. Because without the media, where would we learn about how to get a guy, how to drop 10 pounds, how to apply blue eye shadow and all those other tricks that make one an officially successful woman?
It's common knowledge that the images that bombard us don't reflect reality. Images can be digitally doctored; camera angles can distort and alter—all of it leads to a media culture that inundates us with the perfect body. I know that. You know that. We all get it. Why, then, do these images have such power over us? I mean, why are over half of thirteen year old girls unhappy with their bodies, and why are over three-quarters of seventeen year old women expressing similar sentiments? And while the majority of Americans seem to be getting chubbier and are increasingly struggling with obesity, actresses and models seem to be getting younger, thinner and taller . So why are women hating the fact that we(for the most part) don't resemble these lanky women that gaze out from the glossy pages and strut across the silver screen? Why do women care about these unobtainable beauty standards?
Well, lets start with the obvious answer: money. The media sells more than just products, right? It sells the idea of normalcy—who we are and who we should be. We learn unconsciously that thin is success, fat is failure . So, the media keeps us running scared of fat, and continually consuming thinness in any way, shape or form. Are we surprised, then, that t he diet, fashion, cosmetic and beauty industries all thrive, making billions ($160 billion-a-year to be exact) by exploiting women's body insecurities?
But it doesn't end with the money. In a society where women are still struggling for professional and social equality, the message “control your body, control your life” has very powerful implications. I see this message as a metaphor, substituting body and size control for control lacking in other areas? We're told that if we just diet and exercise enough, if we just work hard enough, we can accomplish anything. We're told that the perfect body is rewarded with success. And as more women enter the ‘male' dominant world of higher education and employment, we all seem to strive for perfection. The perfect body is our new status symbol in today's world. Weight consciousness has become part of our campaign for upward mobility—because you can never be too rich or too thin, right?
But what happens when women find that they can't diet or exercise their way into thinness? Many take extreme measures—either throwing up the food they eat or not eating at all. Anorexia and bulimia are no longer conditions that affect women in their teens and twenties, but large numbers of women of all ages are suffering from a seriously disordered relationship with food. Others resort to plastic surgery, opting for face-lifts, tummy tucks, breast implants, and liposuction. Women's bodies are regularly reduced to parts or objects , and women have come to relate to their bodies as tools or even weapons to win the war and achieve social success. So the media teaches us that we are always in need of modification—women's bodies are objects to be perfected. And while we continue to search for that illusive perfection, we forget what real women's bodies look like; we judge ourselves by the standards sold to us (at huge profits) by the beauty industry, the popular media, our friends and lovers and parents.
It seems like women have always been encouraged to manipulate their bodies to conform to a beauty ideal. Think of those Victorian corsets or the Chinese tradition of foot binding . The world has always foisted its twisted conception of beauty onto the bodies of women. It's up to us as feminists to uncover what's really behind what's being pushed as femininity today and to not always buy what's being sold.
