Body Loathing as the New Normal
- Author: curvy angela
- Filed under: Body Image, Self-esteem
Apr 21,2008
A friend of The Curvy Life sent me this item from Post Secret. Body loathing has become so normal that to even think that you like your body qualifies as a “secret.” (See the Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters post for more on this.)
“I love my body and think it’s perfect, but I pretend not to because that’s what Normal girls do.”
I love that this picture is from an episode of America’s Next Top Model where the models had to pose as plastic surgery “victims.” The cut lines marked on this idealized body make for an interesting visual commentary. (I spent several weeks addicted to the re-runs of ANTM on MTV, but that’s a story for another time.)
I often use the term “body loathing” to refer to hatred on one’s own body; however, there is a category of body loathing that is directed outward, particularly toward fat bodies, that I refer to as “fat loathing.”
Here is an example from Post Secret of fat loathing:
“Every time I am around my friend, I fight the urge to tell her that her kids are fat because she is a bad mom.”
Wow, could you strike a woman any more severely that to attack her children AND her parenting skills? There is an underlying viciousness toward fat people that I never seem to see elsewhere. Why all the hate?
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6 Responses for "Body Loathing as the New Normal"
This is just my opinion, but when women and girls are shown all these thin, airbrushed, photo-shopped ideal women and they strive to meet that ideal and keep failing, that failure is not seen as the fault of the people pushing the ideal. It’s seen as our fault for not working hard enough to meet that ideal, which means we’re flawed and lazy. Those are moral negatives that end up getting internalized. When you hate yourself that much (because you’ll never be able to meet that “ideal”), it’s so much easier to turn that hatred on others who aren’t meeting it and hate on them to make yourself feel better.
So true. The shame around failure to meet this plastic ideal creates an environment that fosters hate speech–both inwardly focused and outwardly directed–that is a form of violence. Women and men are “beating” themselves and others for failure to conform.
Sadly (for us, the viewers) the media machine that creates these images is just trying to sell us something. They claim to be selling us “happy” and the only way to sell happiness is to convince us that we are unhappy. And how amazingly effective this pitch has been–as you say, no one seems to realize that the images are (arbitrarily) imposed from without, rather than being naturally occurring.
This is so disturbing. I love that my 10-yr old daughter thinks her body is amazing and beautiful. It makes me so proud that I haven’t ruined her yet, at least not that way.
How do we keep her loving her amazing body? This Post Secret card makes me think: has hating your body become “cool?” Is loving your body “uncool?” It boggles my mind.
At 10 years old I wasn’t even thinking about my body, other than hating that I had to get glasses (glasses were WAY hideous back in the day) and being bothered that my glasses would slide off my face when I was out running around or riding my bike.
I wish I could get back there.
I think its a very good ad but associating it with America’s Next Top Model really detracts from the message. If I had a daughter, I would not let her watch that programme in an attempt to improve her body image, in fact, there’s no way I would allow her to watch it. The body image messages that the programme gives out, seem to me to be powerfully negative. The practices of calling out how much the girls weigh, hinting, or directly telling girls who are already thin that they need to lose weight and praising the bodies of the very thinnest of them are just several examples of this negative influence. I am not criticising the people who make the programme. I like Tyra Banks, she seems like she really cares about body image issues, in a way, but she is operating within an industry where a truly positive conception of one’s own body cannot and does not exist. It cannot exist in a climate where the ‘ideal’ body type that they are currently making so much money from is physically unattainable for most women.
oooohhhhh thats not an ad, someone wrote that and just used that picture for it. oooopppps. ok, i’m sorry that my rant (above) is totally irrelevant. its still true though! ok, i’m gonna take this as a sign that i should get back to the essay i’m supposed to be writing!
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