Whether it really is that we are constantly bombarded with advertisements and movies telling us to be thinner, curvier, etc., or just that we have too much time on our hands in 2015 to NOT obsess over our appearance (plus, so many mirrors! Mirrors everywhere), the fact of the matter stands: a lot of people, especially teenagers, are unhappy with the way they look. According to Glamour Health, 97% of women have a negative thought about their bodies at least once every day.
Yes, it’s easy (and somewhat cathartic) to blame advertising executives and media companies for our self-negativity. But a far more proactive approach to this growing epidemic of body dissatisfaction is to support the companies that DO put out campaigns promoting self-love and unconventional beauty (which, to be cynical about it, probably benefit their sales as much as they benefit society). The one downside to these advertising campaigns, though, is that they are often so superficial, so generically empowering, that they can only make you feel psyched for about 5 minutes before you return to being bummed about your thighs. To paraphrase from the Incredibles movie, calling everyone special is another way of saying that nobody is. We can’t all be flawless goddesses. These ads tell us to “love ourselves” and to “be kind to ourselves”, but they can’t answer, “Why?” That is something that, unfortunately, we have to figure out for ourselves. And I’ll admit, some days it’s easier to just avoid looking in the mirror than to try to reconcile some kind of body image positivity with my lard-like appearance.
But how about instead of telling girls to look in the mirror and say, “You are a truly beautiful, spectacular human being who literally shimmers in the sunlight and is probably who Stevie Wonder was referring to when he wrote “Isn’t She Lovely,” despite the fact that the song is about a baby and also that you did not exist at the time,” what if we tried telling them “Just look in the mirror and say, ‘Hey. This is what I look like. Sometimes, I hate it, and other times I think it’s pretty cool. But maybe, just maybe, I look like the person that somebody needs to see today. Maybe nobody cares if I have perfect legs, or takes note of the fact that my hair is naturally straight up to 90% humidity. But maybe somebody out there today will see my face full of acne, or my imperfect body, and note that I’m still overflowing with confidence. And that makes me pretty damn inspiring.’”
Perhaps this post is just white noise in the (already quite blaring) body-positive Internet crusade, for which I am markedly tardy, but hopefully if you took anything from it it’s that I’m funny and that some people are still quoting the Incredibles movie.
So love yourself.
Maddie
Sources:
static.oprah.com and glamour.com/health-fitness
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Although it isn’t discussed as often, it’s important to realize and raise awareness about how much boys are affected by self-image related issues too. My little brother, 13 years old, tries to get rid of his belly fat because apparently males are suppose to have abs, not belly fat. He is only 13 years old.
My older brother’s friend has struggled because he is short among his friends that are tall, and surely he has been teased about his height his most of his life. I myself have experienced my female friend calling him “her knees’ length” in his presence; although it was said in jokes and all, no one laughed. Self image and self esteem is too often associated with women, perhaps because it isn’t manly enough for males to talk or discuss these types of things, or they shrug it off.
It can be considered that us girls promote the pressure for males to be a certain way because many of us imagine our perfect guy to be tall, “insert other physical characteristics here”, etc. Would love to see a body-image related post next time regarding males, especially because it too often goes unmentioned. Great post Maddison!
Thanks for your feedback, Hafsah! And I totally agree; I started off the post being careful to say “people” instead of just “girls” or “women”, but by the end of the post my gender pronoun usage sort of devolved into what might be expected of this kind of post: it became all about females.
It’s so sad that your brother has to feel that way- and that he is not alone! In terms of the male battle with body image, I believe that it is at least as serious, if not more so, as the one we face as women. This is mostly because there is still so much pressure on guys not just to be conventionally attractive but to do it with stoic silence, and the issue receives very little media attention. I think guys tend to feel like they can’t talk about this sort of thing without being called “weak” or “girly”, which is seriously not fair to them. I feel as though, in a lot of ways, society and the media are letting guys down by often focussing only on how gender issues affect women, when, in reality, these are the sort of social constructs that are supposed to be combatted by feminism.
I didn’t want to cheapen the issue by “tacking” it on to this post, which I had intended to be sort of “for everyone.” I agree; I think the issue deserves its own article! 🙂
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