Self-hatred isn't healthy

[liv]

There's been another round of non-controversy over the use of mannequins with proportions approximating those of average women rather than unusually thin women. Which rather trivial news has been greeted with hysteria over the prospect that the mannequins might promote unhealthy lifestyles.

I find it completely baffling, this idea that even the most mildly positive image of anyone who isn't thin is going to destroy everybody's health. I personally am not convinced by the evidence for the view that being fat causes diabetes and heart disease and cancer, but I appreciate this is conventional wisdom. Even accepting that correlation, for one thing it seems like the only body shapes that don't provoke this health panic are those that are much thinner than the proportions recommended by those who are convinced that weight is the major factor in long-term health. This round it's size 16 mannequins (ie about the median dress size for women in the UK), other times it's been "plus-sized" models who are still thinner than 90% of adult women. And for a second thing, vaguely positive images of non-thin people don't cause people to gain weight and most certainly don't cause serious long-term health conditions. And we're talking really tiny amounts of positivity: a plastic statue of a woman standing in a shop window and wearing fashionable clothes is hardly an aspirational role model. I am incapable of imagining a woman deciding, oh, they have mannequins of about my body type in the window of Debenhams, I won't bother doing any more exercise or maintaining a healthy diet any more.

I've seen two really good, really personal responses laying out the consequences of everybody rushing around with their hair on fire whenever anybody not extremely thin appears in the media. innerbrat: Yes, it's fucking personal, and rmc28: If feeling miserable and ashamed of my body achieved anything, I'd have been toned and slender long ago

In some ways this applies to me too: I'm somewhat thinner than Rachel and somewhat fatter than Debi, and considerably less fit and active than either, (but more active than quite a lot of people who are much thinner than me). But I'm definitely still in the category of people who are not allowed to see any positive images of anyone who looks even remotely like me, because if I get the slightest possible notion of maybe liking my body, I'm going to contract of all kinds of terrible diseases and be a drain on society's resources. Or sometimes it's the other way round, well-meaning people post inspirational images of people who are positioned as challenging body type norms, who are confident and gorgeous in spite of being fat, and yet are considerably thinner than I am. Which sort of boils down to, maybe it's just about acceptable to be a little bit bigger than a typical fashion model or film actress, as long as you have absolutely flawless skin and ideal features and most certainly don't have any rolls or folds.

So people are saying that they want to encourage people to be a healthy weight, but in fact the only message allowed is that everybody should aspire to be extremely thin. (I'm not assuming that people with the figures of models are necessarily unhealthy; population statistics don't apply to individuals, and it may well be that the sort of people who succeed as models are rare outliers who are actually very healthy with body fat percentages that would be dangerously low for more typical people.) And not only are we supposed to aspire to be right at the thinnest end of the population distribution, we aren't even allowed to have any sort of self-confidence or positive feelings about our bodies until we reach that goal. Losing weight is really hard work; where's the motivation to do that hard work for the sake of your health if you also hate yourself? It does appear that self-loathing works somewhat well as a motivator for some people, though that's an emotional response I find hard to imagine personally. But it carries with it a whole swathe of major negative psychological effects, almost certainly enough to outweigh any possible benefit from weight loss.

On an indirectly related note, skud has a brilliant and really fascinating rebuttal to the meme that if you can't find clothes to fit, you can "just" make your own.

Comments

[kaberett]

Thank you.

[monanotlisa]

♥

[lilacsigil]

And the obsession with fat=immoral/unhealthy causes severe damage. I know I'm only one of many who was told to lose weight (to be more precise, eat less and exercise more) in lieu of actually checking if there was anything wrong with me. And I appreciate it when posts like this avoid the "thin is sick instead!" route - my brother was extremely "underweight" until the age of 30, and yet was healthy, and he took a lot of bullying for that. I guess my family just runs to extreme body types!

[liv]

I definitely agree there are loads of other problems with health panic about people being fat. And many of them are worse than the one mentioned in the links. I suppose by passing on the links I was trying to reach people who do buy into fat=unhealthy, but might be persuadable that not-extremely-thin isn't automatic doom.

I think it's extremely simplistic at best to assume that positive images of thin people cause eating disorders. They most certainly don't cause other conditions where being extremely thin can be related to health problems, cachexias and malabsorption conditions. Basically I want more positive images of people with bodies in general, not to extend the deliberate promotion of self-hatred to thin people as well as average-sized and fat people!

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

... or find someone to make/modify/mend clothes for you. I've done that for a bunch of friends. Sometimes it's just a quick fix. Other times it's a big box of barter. Doesn't cost me anything to do lapwork while we're talking, although making clothes from scratch is more challenging. I wouldn't want to do a tailored blouse again -- it worked, but it was a nuisance -- although the skirts and looser tops were no problem.

It's good to have options.

That said, I'm in favor of more diverse mannequins.

[liv]

Yeah, there definitely is a middle ground between making all your own clothes from scratch, and relying on cheap, mass-produced off-the-peg clothes. I have neither interest nor talent for acquiring the sorts of skills that would allow me to make my own clothes to a standard suitable for the professional environment, but I could see the point of acquiring the skills for mending and possibly altering. Like, I can sew on buttons but I'd really like to be able to repair and replace zips. Because I have a bunch of reasonable quality clothes I've had to give up on wearing because the zips die when the rest of the garment is still perfectly serviceable. Also being able to repair seams, hems and minor tears would probably make my life better.

[marymac]

I can do you a step by step for zip replacement if you're reasonably confident of your hand-sewing and brave enough to rip out part of the seam (absolutely no getting around that bit, sadly). The main trick is getting the right size of zip.

[liv]

Thank you, I would very much appreciate that! I think I could convince myself to rip some seams, on skirts where the zip has gone so I can't wear them anyway. I wouldn't say that I'm confident of hand-sewing, but I have some concept of how to sew and being unconfident just means it takes me a long time. A small amount of mending, like a few inches of seam, isn't going to matter if it's not absolutely perfect, I think.

[(Anonymous)]

I've obviously been seeing things in a different bubble to you, because mostly what I've heard about these mannequins is not to do with them being too big. Instead I've heard people saying that they are problematic because even though the "size" is the average dress size the proportions are still massively unrealistic for the vast majority of women.

MC

[liv]

Both the personal responses I read were reacting specifically to a comment thread in LibDem Voice where people were worrying that the mannequins might (horrors!) encourage women to think that overweight size 16 bodies are acceptable or desirable. I don't buy into the converse sensational story either: slightly larger mannequins aren't a wonderful feminist victory that will magically fix all the pressures and misery around body image. So I'm not surprised that there is criticism.

[khronos_keeper]

It occurred to me the other day, about women's clothes sizing, that there is a a message even more depressing than just "it's not okay to be big".

I read a post a while back where a young woman went to a number clothing stores, and showed that the sizes varied drastically-- from a 16 to a 4-- that would fit her, depending on the brand. And then I remembered another post, where someone talked about a quote that the way that people call a woman ugly is to say that she's fat, a slut, or aged poorly-- which essentially came down to the idea that society finds women who enjoy themselves ugly.

And then I realized something-- when I was about 17 or 18, I fit an Old Navy size 4. Today I fit a size 2, but could get into a size 0 if I didn't mind some snugness. But the sizing really didn't change, just the numbers; and the sad thing is, lot of women aspire to be a size 0.

As someone who studies human messages in symbols, it struck me rather strongly that only in fashion is the concept of 0 a positive one in human communication. We don't normally celebrate the lack of something-- if you get a 0 on a test, your normal response is negative. If your paycheck is 0, your response is negative. If someone calls you "a zero", you get pissed off, because that person is negating your existence.

But take that last one for a second-- if someone, in a confrontation, said, "You're zero, you're nothing," your response is to be hurt and angry, because you ARE something. But in fashion, if you're "a zero," suddenly that becomes a positive.

Except it doesn't, not really.

Because we finally did it. Society has finally found a way to get women to accept a negative ideal collated with a positive ideal. Part of Western society's beauty ideal is that a woman is obedient, and beautiful. We've harped on women for so long that if they don't obey society's beauty ideals, they won't be worthwhile of love or attention. So we've combined the two.

Women aspire to be nothing. Society has taught women that our bodies are ugly, that if we show presence, if we deviate from the unhealthy beauty ideal, that makes us undesirable. To show that we are nothing, to show that we accept society's expectations of our body, we starve ourselves, and we hide from the idea of our bodies' ugliness by escaping into the concept of non-existence.

So the message even more depressing than "it's not okay to be big" is that "you should be nothing".

[princess]

I wish I could laser writer your comment in the sky, eight million feet tall.

[liv]

Wow, this is a really powerful comment, thank you! We don't have the "size 0" thing so much over here, but we do still have ridiculous size negative inflation. Pretty much every woman I know would rather have a realistic view of what size clothes to try on, than be "flattered" by something that's labelled with a lower number than the one she'd normally look for.

I definitely think you're right about making women aspire to be non-present, and that this is a really negative ideal. I really wish it didn't have all this health stuff tied up with it, because I could easily say, I don't have to starve myself to be beautiful, and it would be obvious to any thinking person that I'm in the right. But it's much harder to rebut people telling me that I have to starve myself and try to reduce my existence and presence to as near nothing as I can manage for the sake of my health.