Millions of people aren’t happy with the way they look. The
National Eating Disorder Information Center estimates that up to 40% of 9 year
old Canadian girls have dieted to loose weight- even when they were at a
healthy, normal weight. There is a new group of trailblazers storming the
Internet, newspapers and television who are trying to combat society’s current
views of what an attractive body looks like. These fiery souls come with the
tag lines “real women have curves”, “healthy is the new skinny” and other
similar sentiments. While this can be seen as progress in a society that has
long equated a woman’s worth with her ability to maintain a thin physical
appearance, the argument is damaging and flawed. The argument is flawed because
it shames thin women, leading us to believe that thin women aren’t healthy or
real, and again this attitude places sole focus on a woman’s physical
appearance. Does this new school of thought mean that in order to be “real” a
woman must be curvy?
When I dissect the idea of women innately despising their
bodies (or at least parts of their bodies), I am personally left with two root
causes. The media plays a huge role in the current issue, however, for the
purpose of this article I will focus on the idea that women have been taught by
other women to dislike their bodies. Ask yourself this question: Is there a
time in your life when you have ever watched a woman lovingly admire herself in
the mirror and make a comment such as “Wow, am I ever grateful for this hot
body”? Chances are you have had experiences closer to the ones I encountered
growing up, where a woman I admired would look into the mirror with distain and
immediately criticize her own body, or ask me if she looked fat in her outfit.
I even witnessed women who were extremely thin telling themselves they looked
fat (How annoying, especially when I weighed a good 40 lbs more than them. talk
about a slap sandwich). But I see now, those women truly believed they were fat
due to the sickness we breed in North America surrounding body image. It is these experiences of viewing our
mothers, sisters, cousins and grandmothers tragically disapproving the image
staring back at them in the mirror, that colour the way we think about our own
bodies. These experiences teach us how to hate our own body. So, let’s give our
girls a fighting chance at self-esteem and allow them to see us compliment
ourselves the next time we get into a bathing suit, or stand in front of the
mirror in our skivvies. This small act repeated will give girls permission to
embrace what they have, and see themselves as perfectly imperfect.
What about shifting the focus to personal characteristics
when discussing what makes a woman “real” or beautiful? How about we change our
statements to focus on traits/ values/ characteristics/ virtues when discussing
what makes a woman stand out? Tag lines and company names like “healthy is the
new skinny” and “real women have curves” are just playing into the old this
body is good and that body is bad thinking that got us in a headspace of self
loathing in the first place. Ultimately, instead of trying to balance the scale
between what is reasonable vs. unreasonable in terms of our own expectations of
ourselves, we need to step off the scale completely. So, here is an idea and a
challenge: Let’s stop trying to validate women based on their curves or lack
thereof. Let’s show our daughters what an act of self love looks like. Let’s have the courage to step naked in
front of a mirror, like what we see, and admit it. Most of all, let’s have the
nerve to not give a damn about what others think or say about our appearance;
because if you ask me, it doesn’t get more healthy, beautiful or real than
that.
