Full Frontal Feminism_ A Young Women's Guide to Why Feminism Matters - Jessica Valenti [68]
One summer, my sister lost a ton of weight. Too much. She did not look good—she looked sick. The truly upsetting part was that when she lost this weight, a lot of our family and friends started remarking how great she looked. They congratulated her, told her how super it was that she was losing weight. I wanted to throttle them.
A 2005 study from New York University says that the more a woman weighs, the less her family income and
Vanessa finally caught on that she wasn’t well. I remember her looking at pictures of herself from that summer—I think it was the first time she really saw how she looked from the outside. She said, “Damn, I look too skinny.” And that was it for her and her obsessive dieting. Obviously, this isn’t the case for most women.
In fact, a recent study found that more than 80 percent of college women diet—no matter how much they weigh. And the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry says that 40 percent of nine-year-old girls have dieted, and that girls as young as five are concerned about dieting. I’ll repeat that: Five-year-olds are worried about their weight.
There’s something seriously amiss when women are spending so much of their time and energy, you know, killing themselves than they are actually living their lives.
So please, gals. Eat something.
And yes, men have body standards to live up to as well. I know this. But their body standards—big, strong, muscular—push them to be strong, to take up space. Ours—skinny, skeletal, weak—push us to be fragile, to take up less space, to disappear essentially. I’d say those are some vastly different expectations.
So What Now?
So, yeah. Shit is fucked up when it comes to appearances and women. We’re expected to be hot—but if we are, we’re vain and stupid. And if we’re not hot, we’re useless. Kind of hard to get around.
But we’re not stupid. We know that we’re doing damage to ourselves—not only to our bodies but also to our mental well-being. And it’s not worth it. It’s not worth the pain. It’s not worth the time and the money. And really—with all the money or time you spend in front of the mirror—have you yet to be truly happy? I’m guessing not.
So what can we do?
Thankfully, some people are taking unhealthy beauty standards seriously.
During fall 2006 Fashion Week, Spain banned too-skinny models from a Madrid fashion show,3 and the mayor of Milan, Italy, said that she would seek a similar ban for her city’s fashion shows.4 Around the same time, designer Jean-Paul Gaultier used a size 20 model in his fashion show as a comment on the skinny-model debate.5
Another interesting turn of events has been the Dove “real beauty” ads—which feature . . . real women. (Too bad they’re selling cellulite cream with the “real” women!)
Now, clearly, these are just small steps—and they’re still mired in consumerism, so it’s hard to take them seriously. So we’re not going to be changing the world of beauty expectations anytime soon.
But we can do one thing that, while totally simple, is completely revolutionary: We can stop hating ourselves so much. I know sometimes that’s much easier said than done, but we have to try. I mean, really. In a world that makes it near impossible to feel up to par, liking yourself and the way you look is a revolutionary act. I’m so self-help, I know; I’m aware it’s a bit cheesy. But that doesn’t make it any less true.
12
SEX AND THE CITY VOTERS, MY ASS
Ah, politics. We love to hate it.
Women are underrepresented participation- and representation-wise in politics, and it’s a damn shame. We’re getting fucked over constantly through anti-woman legislation, and yet we’re not running for office and we’re voting at abysmal rates.
Younger women in particular are being assailed for not picking up the political slack—and you know what? This time it may be warranted. While younger women are definitely active in a lot of ways, it seems that electoral politics just doesn