Me and My Body: It's Complicated

My body and I have a complicated relationship. Some days I call it a love-hate relationship and some days I even question whether I truly love or hate the girl in the mirror. Love and hate are such strong words. Can I justify hating my body when I wear size S t-shirts? How can I possibly love it when my thighs rub holes through my jeans? Some days I will tell the girl in the mirror that her hair looks nice but some days she is slouchy and has too many belly rolls. Some days she has legs a mile long and on others she has eight chins. No matter how many times my past or present significant others tell me that I am beautiful, sexy, pretty, or even cute, I struggle to use these words myself in any way other than self-deprecating, sarcastic jokes. Even typing them out here brings out surprisingly strong feelings of self-doubt and vulnerability. And I know I am not alone. From my own experiences, discussions with friends and family, and stories I see on Facebook, I know that women in our culture are struggling to love their bodies. 

The most intimate relationship a woman will ever have is between herself and her body, and yet this is also the relationship in which she has the smallest voice and about which she receives the most input from all directions. Our culture is viscous in the ways in which it interferes with a woman's relationship with her body, and messaging from all sides manifests in the behaviors of women everywhere. Pale women tan their skin, while dark women bathe in bleach. Curly-haired women straighten while straight-haired women use curlers. Women are trying desperately to have the body they are told to want, not the body they have. The conflicts between the image of commercial beauty and the social messages women receive are impossible to navigate. Women and girls see clothing and makeup ads, with thin, tall, beautiful women with perfect skin and teeth. Medical centers encourage overweight women to get cosmetic weight loss surgery, and there are endless parades of diets, healthy cookbooks, pills, and programs which women need in order to be beautiful. 

There is resistance against these harmful messages of industrial beauty. There are body positivity movements, which encourage women and men of all body types to simply disregard the endless stream of beauty ideals and pressures. Many people have been properly alarmed by thinspiration and bikini bridge social trends, expressing their fears and concerns in articles such as these and these. However, the efforts of feminists and body positivity cannot silence the endless and well-funded screams of corporations who fill their pockets with the money of vulnerable women. When websites such as Anaface.com tell women specifically what is wrong with their faces, it is extremely difficult to ignore.

 

Websites such as Anaface teach women to hate their bodies. 

Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals provide an interesting look into the relationship between a woman and her body. After her mastectomy, she receives many messages, both subtle and blatant, which try to dictate the way in which she feel about the new body she lives in. There is enormous pressure for her to wear a prosthetic, from nurses, members of recovery groups, and from people in her doctors' office. She writes that "with quick cosmetic reassurance, we [women] are told that our feelings are not important, our appearance is all, the sum total of self" (p. 58). Lorde does what is extremely difficult for other women to do; she does not allow the external influences she experiences to determine how she thinks about her body. She refuses to hide her missing breast in order to make "a woman-phobic world" more comfortable (p. 62). This makes those around her, not including the supportive women in her life, highly uncomfortable and anxious. She is not encouraged to love her new body the way it now is, she is told to hide the difference and pretend she is the same as she was before.

Why aren't women allowed and even encouraged to love their bodies? Seeing this mess every day, and struggling with my own perceptions of myself, I want to know the answer. I want to know why women are shoved into this competition against themselves and other women. Why are such harmful beauty ideas shoved down the throats of women? Why are women told to love themselves, but are only applauded for doing so if they look a certain way? Why is it shocking for me to read Audre Lorde's loving and gentle words about her body and her right breast? I think she is right to call this a woman-phobic world. I think each woman has a difficult task in front of her: to love her body as no one else will, despite those who would tell her to change. 

Lorde, Audre. The Cancer Journals. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1997. Print.

Image source: http://www.xojane.com/issues/i-tried-the-internets-top-6-body-shaming-challenges