Lodged in the groove of a patient subconscious drone: imfatimfatimfatimfatimfat…
No matter how enlightened, hip, radical, or feminist a womyn is, it seems that an unhealthy relationship with one’s image and body is an inevitable by-product of our toxic culture.
I know, I know, this is some tired-ass bullshit I’m ab out to launch into. Body image and weight preoccupation has been analyzed, categorized, and dissected past ad naueseum. Furthermore, next to rape, war, genocide, torture, and female genital mutilation, body image seems downright trite.
Unfortunately, body image plays into all of these things, and we’re not over it yet.
Not by a long shot.
As I’m sitting here typing this, I’m feeling guilty about eating the crackers and hummus I snacked on earlier. It may not be sexy, empowered, or feminist to admit that, but it’s the truth. The ricockulous, sad, lame, distorted truth is that to almost everyone I meet, my appearance supercedes almost any other aspect of my personality or anything I’ve accomplished. It’s impossible not to absorb some of the pressure to conform to the dominant beauty standards. Psychology 101: if a person (or a rat, for that matter, let’s not get species-ist here) is punished for doing something, and rewarded for an alternate course of action, it stands to reason that the being in question is going to aim for the course of action that elicits the positive consequences.
Unfortuantely, the ideals of beauty are by definition impossible to meet, because unobtainability has remained a constant part of beauty standards, even as the external aspects that have defined the ideal have shifted.
“I’m pretty. I’m pretty. Look at me. I’m pretty. The joke’s on you, pretty girl…”
Even for those who live up to the beauty standards, the sense of impending doom can sometimes engulf one in an all-encompassing state of panic. If we haven’t attained sufficient progress toward our life’s goals by the time the inevitable decline begins, necessity will reduce us to the status of bitter, carping old bags.
Enough re-hashing the obvious. The question is, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? This shit has got to stop. I know that ridding ourselves of internalized misogyny takes more than a lifetime, but individual women have discharged the majority of their negative body attitudes. Some people can, by and large, regurgitate the unhealthy cultural messages. If it can be done on an individual basis, it can be done on a systemic basis. The question is, how? My personal journey is full of sidesteps and stumbles. I wish that I could exist in the happy-fun-all-womyn-are-beautiful kind of state of mind all the time, but then I walk out the front door and the way that other women and myself are talked to and seen almost erases hope that things could be different. I feel disembodied, disconnected from the core of myself that walks the physical plane.
I’m tired of striving for “sexy privilege.” I’m weary of having parts of me that I want to keep for myself twisted and distorted for the consumption of others. But things aren’t that complicated. Appearance-based validation is intoxicating, even though I did nothing to earn it and can’t keep it. Look at me. Look at me. Smile. This is sick.
The academic-ky side of me is tugging at my sleeve, reminding me that we’re never gonna sell feminism to the masses by telling women they have to stop caring about their looks. I wish we could all understand how restricting it is to be addicted to other peoples’ approval. I understand it, but that doesn’t make it lacks emotional appeal. There is no such thing as a social vaccuum, and my behavior is going to be shaped by other peoples’ reactions, period, so don’t give me that tired horseshit about we need to “validate ourselves.” We need that, and a whole lot more, tif we’re ever gonna effect a real revolution.
Images have a revolutionary power. For example, if I happen to pick up a copy of Cosmo at the gym, my confidence in my appearance starts to ebb at rate constant with the amount of time I spend gazing at photoshopped waifs. Therefore, I am trying an experment of the opposite type: I’m trying to use my visual sense to re-align my perceptions of beauty. Beauty can mean so much more than just glamming up to look sexy or cute.
I’m going to take one photograph a day of myself, for an entire year, and post it here. The rules are: 1)I must take a picture every day, no matter how I’m looking or feeling.
2)I only get one shot, unless my face is entirely out of the frame or the exposure is really jacked up. This isn’t going to be something where I take a whole bunch of pictures and post the best looking one.
3) I can take the picture at any time of day. Just like everyone else, there are times when I look suitably doe-eyed and peachy, and there are times when I resemble a proverbial Swamp-Thing. My goal is to capture a nice mixture of both, so I can re-align my perceptions of myself and disconnect them a bit from unhealthy cultural expectations. I can’t do anything about the way other people treat or react to me, but feeling more inwardly confident could help me to deal with the sexist reactions of others.
I know that putting this out there on “THE INTERNETS” opens myself up to criticism and harassment. Bring it on, trolls. I’m doing this for me, and if anyone else gets some kind of inspiration or enlightenment out of it, it’s worth putting up with bullcrap from trolls who bully people online because they feel powerless in other aspects of their life.
06/03/2008 at 5:53 pm Permalink
Love this idea. Thanks for sharing.