Our Bodies, Ourselves (16 page)

Girls and their allies are taking on the challenges of creating alternative representations of women. In magazines and websites created by, for, and about girls, such as New Moon (newmoon.com) and Teen Voices (teenvoices.com), young women are presenting their own stereotype-busting stories.

Websites such as Shaping Youth (shaping youth.org) and About-Face (about-face.org) are attempting to counter the media's and marketers' influence by providing stories and resources of their own. As girls get older,
Bitch
magazine (bitchmagazine.org) provides a critical and engaging perspective on all aspects of pop culture.

Our self-worth is often tied to the numbers on the bathroom scale. Since mainstream culture tells us that fat women are undesirable to men—and to society in general—many women will do almost anything to be thin.

Yet fat is inextricably linked to the female form; our breasts and hips are, quite simply, made of fat. Women need more body fat than men, and extreme dieting can cause serious health problems; women who are too thin do not menstruate and cannot bear children.

In the United States, one need only call an accomplished woman “fat” to put her in her place. Making women afraid to be fat is a form of social control; we must diet and live in constant terror that we'll gain weight, lest we be ostracized from society.

Conservative radio show host Laura Ingraham dismissed Meghan McCain, an author and pundit (and daughter of Senator John McCain), calling her a “plus-sized model.” McCain responded, “What do women think when I speak my mind about politics and I want to have a political discussion about the ideological future of the Republican Party, and the answer is, ‘She's fat, she shouldn't have an opinion.' What kind of message are we sending young women?

“It infuriates me,” she said. “I'm a political writer on a blog, and all of a sudden I'm too fat to write?”
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Current notions about weight are so pathological that even pregnant women struggle to not see themselves as fat. Weight-loss surgery, as well as weight-loss medications and supplements, can pose health risks. In an attempt to shed pounds, nearly half of all women are on a diet on any given day, spending almost $59.7 billion a year on diets
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that fail the great majority of the time.
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Researchers have begun to quantify the dangerous increases in stress that accompany dieting, and how dieting has a tendency in the long term to lead to more unhealthy eating habits.
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Other researchers also found that adolescents who diet put on more weight than those who do not.
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Because of the intense focus on body size, our feelings about weight often get tangled up with how we feel about ourselves. “Do I look fat?” is a mantra uttered by many women, yet beneath the surface, it has little to do with weight. Researchers have found that young women often express themselves through what is called “fat talk.” In such conversations, we use self-disparaging body talk as a way to bond with peers, with talk about weight substituted for talk about feelings. “I'm so fat” often translates to “I'm depressed,” or, “My life is out of control.” In return, friends will usually assure the girl that she is thin, thus boosting her self-esteem. Such talk can drive some girls from borderline to full-blown eating disorders.
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Because the thin ideal is promoted in the media primarily through images of white women, many believe that women of color do not feel the same pressures to be thin and must not suffer from poor body image. Some studies have suggested that the reason African-American women and girls are shown as generally experiencing higher levels of body confidence than women of other races is in part because studies often neglect to explore attitudes about skin color and hair texture.
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Other research shows that poor body image and eating disorders do in fact affect women of all races.
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African-American and Latino men seem more appreciative of bigger thighs and rounded buttocks, but beyond that, their preference for thin women seems similar to that of white men. My female peers (black, middle aged, and middle
class) are all on diets. They're all obsessed with weight and hair length and the importance of those things in getting a man.

Other women who are expected to be naturally thin are sometimes overlooked when they diet excessively. An Asian-American woman talks about the widespread belief that Asian women come in only one size: petite.

Many of my friends weigh less than 100 pounds and keep losing weight, yet nobody calls that anorexia because Asian women are supposed to be tiny. Doctors are subject to these stereotypes, too. At my last physical I weighed 112 pounds; the doctor was shocked, as if I were fat.

Many of us feel stuck between our knowledge of the importance of healthy eating and our desire to accept ourselves. Conversations about feeling fat often revolve around guilt—being “good” and resisting bad-for-you foods, or being “bad” and giving in to temptation. Marketers commonly use “guilt-free” labeling on low-fat or low-carb food, reinforcing this notion, even though the food may not be healthy.

I spent so many years endlessly dieting and trying to be skinny, skinny, skinny. It was so freeing to finally stop and accept my body. As I reach middle age, I know I should eat better, but as soon as I put any restrictions on what I can eat, I feel deprived and instantly crave the very foods that are bad for me.

Though studies show that our well-being and longevity have less to do with weight than health, blatant discrimination against and ridicule of fat people are considered acceptable. In fact, studies in recent years have confirmed a significant increase in discrimination based on
weight.
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One woman describes how internalizing these attitudes affected her relationships:

In my late teen years, I occasionally engaged in relationships that I didn't particularly want to be in …because I felt lucky that somebody would be interested in me in spite of my body. Now I am with a great guy who is attracted to me for many reasons, but partly because of my body.

“Fat” is extremely relative, too—some women consider themselves fat simply because they are larger than most of their peers, or they have suddenly become larger than they were for most of their life. Our national weight obsession is often cast in moral terms, making bias against fat people acceptable. Thin people are assumed to be virtuous, while fat people are considered lazy and lacking self-control.
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Similarly, larger people are assumed to be unhealthy and unfit. The reality is that some fat people are in excellent health, while some thin people are not.

Tools such as the body mass index (BMI) are unreliable measures of health, as they fail to take into account muscle weight and individual body types. Even medical and insurance tables listing heights and weights do not take into consideration the natural variations in body size.

While there are clear health risks to being very overweight or obese, the solution most often proposed—for individuals to diet and lose weight—oversimplifies complex realities. We live in a world where highly processed, refined foods are cheap and readily available. The government subsidizes the production of grains including corn and wheat, which are used primarily to make corn sweeteners and refined carbohydrates, but not of healthier foods such as fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts, thereby creating artificially low prices for the least nutritious options. Processed foods are far more profitable to the food industry, and ads incessantly push fast food, soft drinks, and other high-calorie, low-nutrition products. Dieting and weight loss are a multibillion-dollar industry. Yet this chronic dieting has not slowed the rise in the number of Americans classified as overweight or obese: In 1980, just under half of U.S. adults were overweight; by 2008, this figure had jumped to 68 percent.
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Dieting is notoriously unsuccessful at producing substantial long-term weight loss: the vast majority of dieters regain the weight they lost, with between one-third and two-thirds regaining more weight than they lost. Body shape is not as changeable as we are led to believe.

Given these realities, an increasing number of health experts are focusing on a model of health called Health at Every Size, which encourages
women to stop focusing on body size and body weight and instead:

• Accept and respect the natural diversity of body sizes and shapes.

• Eat in a flexible manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite.

• Find the joy in moving one's body and becoming more physically vital.

For more information and resources, visit Health at Every Size (haescommunity.org).

It may seem impossible to avoid the persistent images and messages that confront us every day—and inevitable that at least some of the constant chatter will make its way into our heads. But being aware of the way media and advertising distort girls' and women's appearance and cultivate a body-obsessed culture can go a long way in helping to fight their influence.

Progress is also being made politically. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) have introduced the Healthy Media for Youth Act to promote and fund media literacy and youth empowerment programs and support research on the role and impact of depictions of girls and women in the media. It also calls for the establishment of a National Task Force on Girls and Women in the Media.
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In the wake of an alarming report by the American Psychological Association's Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls,
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multiple advocacy groups convened the first-ever summit to campaign for change. The SPARK Summit (spark summit.com), which stands for Sexualization Protest: Action, Resistance, Knowledge, was held in 2010 at Hunter College in New York City. Younger women activists learned about media literacy skills and how to create their own media and build
alternative representations
.

One of the most underdiscussed issues regarding body image and our eating-disordered culture is the loss of joy and authenticity that it engenders. When we become obsessed with our weight and appearance, not only are we unwell physically; we also settle for lives less vivid and fulfilling.

When we are counting calories, overexercising in rote, uninspired ways, and/or spending so much of our mental energy on self-criticism, we forget what we used to
enjoy
doing, such as spending time with friends or pursuing our passions. We also have less time and energy for productive social and political activities that make our communities better places for everyone. It is totally radical for a woman in today's society to heal her relationship with her own body. You can be a model for everyone around you.

Courtney Martin, author of
Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters
, offers these suggestions on how to stop settling for self-hate and reclaim your right to wellness and joy.

• Reconnect with your authentic hungers. What do you feel like eating? When are you hungry? When are you full? All of the wisdom you need lies within, not in the next diet book.

• Move in ways that make you happy rather than getting caught up in strict exercise regimens. The more diverse and joyful your physical activity, the better.