The eye of the beholder, part 2

Figleaf got me thinking. He posted something a few days ago about body image, how it's sometimes difficult to see ourselves the way others see us. I responded, saying that

'It's sometimes very difficult to know that somebody's attracted
to me. I hear so many negative things about my body (or about famous women with similar physiques) all the time from so many different sources that it's easy to believe they're true and that they represent the only valid opinion'.

Yes, I really do get negative comments about the shape of my body said to my face on a fairly regular basis. I also get a lot of angry stares.

On an intelletual level, I understand why.

Popular media is obsessed with skinny women. Pick up any women's magazine. You won't find the buxom, curvy, oozing-sex types that you'll find gracing Maxim's cover. What you'll see is tall, angular, bony women... Women are trained to believe that skinnier is always better.

In media aimed at women, you'll find images such as these:

Only the reality is that not everybody's that shape.

And so there's backlash. The alternative media, the gossip sheets, and ranty feminist types will go on at great length about how models starve themselves to maintain the figures they do. About eating disorders and drug addiction and malnutrition...

Heaven forbid one should actually be skinny. That's not allowed. Accusations of all sorts will be hurled. I've been accused of all of the above. I've been told that it's wrong to believe that everybody has to look like me. I've been called disgusting. People who barely know me have watched me eat and promptly told me that they hate me. I've been told point blank that my weight problems are irrelevant. 

A few years ago I had pneumonia. I lost weight, probably about 20 pounds. People who knew me, who were perfectly well aware of how ill I was, who saw how rapidly I dropped to an entirely unhealthy weight, told me that I should shut up and not speak of my difficulties in getting back to a healthy weight. I had to listen to them complain daily about how hard it was to lose weight, but if I said anything in response, I was denounced for being heartless.

We've managed to create a society in which women are obsessed with being thin and yet plagued with guilt and disgust at their own desire to be thin.

It's not even about being sexually attractive to men. It's about competing with other women.

Take a look at the publications aimed at men. You're more likely to find women like these:

Larger breasts. Soft curves instead of hard angles. Rounded butts.

Only the reality is that not everybody's that shape either.

Why? Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we artificially create a standard of beauty and then villify anybody who comes closer to it than we think we do?

I do it too. I don't mean to, but I do.

I'm not hot. I'm not hideous either. I suppose there are a lot of people out there who think I'm one, and plenty who think I'm the other. Everybody has their own ideas of beauty.

And now I'm ranting and I've completely lost the train of this. Maybe I'll come back and clean it up later.

Comments

[figleaf]

Very, very well put, V. Thank you.

figleaf

[FTN]

How do you know you aren't hot? Maybe you are, you just haven't been told lately.

I understand completely what you are saying. I've seen women jokingly say "I hate you" to thin women who don't gain weight easily. I'm just going to guess that most of the criticism you describe comes from women... but perhaps not. I know my wife gets irritated at certain thin friends who always point out how hard it is to gain weight, and what size they wear, that sort of thing.

I am very tall, and I'm amazed (well, more amused) at the things strangers will say to me. I can't picture them saying those kinds of things to very short people, or very overweight people. People tell me it is because they wish they were also tall and thin. So if I wanted to be short and fat, would it be socially acceptable for me to walk up so someone and say, "Man, you are huge! How much do you weigh?"

[virgin]

Figleaf: Thanks. It co-ordinates nicely with your post, I think.

FTN: How do I know I'm not hot? Well, it's all relative. To some I am. To some I'm not. My point was that my point was not that I was hot. Or something...

And ya, the tall thing... They do the same to skinny people. Perfect strangers will demand to know how much I weigh.

[Bliss]

You're absolutely right. And pick up a GQ, or an Esquire, or look at a A&F ad - same thing happens to men (albeit to a lesser degree). I've praised it before, but I still love the commercial with the two ordinary guys looking at the Gap-ish billboard, and then daydreaming about playing football with the guys in the ad - the models just stand around the field preening. :)

And, as a side note, here's something I take a lot of grief over - whenever I post the 5 or 10 celebrities I think are hot, I always have Toni Collette near the top of the list - I take almost nasty abuse from males and females alike about putting her on the list, b/c she's not in the traditional mold of "celebrity gorgeous." Go figure....

[Stan]

I'm a heavy, bald man. Women especially feel that putting down bald guys is perfectly acceptible. As an adult I rarely hear comments about my size but a few times a year I hear derogetory comments about my baldness or baldness in general.

I have accepted being bald but the open rudeness of these people is remarkable.

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