Can someone tell you to have good body image?

[breakinglight11]

In my quest to learn more about stylish dressing, I have begun checking out the writings of a handful of style bloggers. Two I recommend are Sally of Already Pretty and Allie of Wardrobe Oxygen, which have been extremely helpful in learning about the basics of fit, quality, color, and figure flattery.

One thing that throws me a little is the frequency, particularly in Sally's blog, of articles on bad body image and how to get out of it. In theory I think this is a great idea; every woman should love their body and not feel less valuable because of it. But when I come across them in the blog, they make me feel weird, and I'm genuinely not sure why. Is it because I am in that elusive "traditionally pretty" group and am assumed to not have to worry about the stuff other women feel insecure about? Am I feeling guilt by implication of desiring and being able to conform to the supposedly "unrealistic standards" which makes so many other women feel bad?  Am I feeling unfairly demonized  as a perpetuator of the Cult of Thin and not feeling I deserve the blame for other people's lack of self-esteem?  Am I just so digustingly narcissistic that I can't stand the idea of anything but my body type being allowed to be considered beautiful?  

I don't know. I'm really not sure. Okay, I doubt it's that last one, or at least no more than the faintest touch. I just know that something seems off to me about all these exhortations to self-esteem. Maybe I'm just not sure how someone telling you to like stuff about yourself that you don't is going to work. Does that really work? It kind of comes off as "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me," to me. Like, where's the line between learning to genuinely find beauty in your body and reciting happy crap because you can't stand feeling bad anymore? Can anyone tell you how to change your mindset about yourself?

Most people see me having the opposite problem to "comparing my body to the supposed ideal and now it feels inferior." I get tarred with the brush of "my body is only beautiful because it can meet the standard." Now, by now anyone who knows me should have some idea that it is incredibly important to me to stay thin. It is worth a great deal of work and sacrifice to me to maintain my lean strong figure. I think I would really look less attractive if I gain weght. Some people seem to think this is an indicator that I have bad body image. "You feel like you can't be beautiful unless you're thin. You have pinned your self-esteem on something unhealthy and unrealistic." 

But the thing is... I love my body. Yes, I love it thin and spare the way it is right now, but I genuinely do love it. Does the believing in the condition that I stay thin in order to be attractive mean that I have bad body image even though I love my body? If I didn't meet the conditions I set for myself, would I hate it?

I have bad days, sure; I think everyone does. I have days when I feel like a cow, when all I can see is acne and boxy ribcage and flat rack and knobby hips and stomach, stomach, all of that fucking STOMACH that obsesses so much of my mental real estate. But in general... I love my body, and I love the way I look. I look in the mirror and love the gorgeous face and the killer, sexy, fantastic figure reflected back at me. It sounds incredibly conceited to say this stuff, but why shouldn't I believe such good things of myself? Isn't that what everyone in the body-positive movement is supposed to work towards? I am proud to say I am an astonishingly beautiful girl. 

And not only do I believe I'm an astonishingly beautiful girl, other people do as well. People I know, people I don't know. I get stopped on the street, at the mall, in the grocery store, at the goth club, everywhere I go by people who want to tell me I'm beautiful. I have heard the words "fantastic," "ridiculous," "my ideal," "stunning." I even love that this pretensious prick I met once hilariously called me "mainstream in extremis"-- which I choose to interpret as "the pretty that everyone acknowledges."

Of course that raises another question-- how would I feel if I didn't have that self-image reinforced by others? If I didn't have so many people who found me beautiful and made the point of telling me so, would I still be so comfortable and confident in that truth? What if skinny girls weren't plastered all over the media as the chosen attractive image? Would the fact that I still don't have those goddamn flat abs I covet so desperately get to me if outside factors didn't validate me?

But then, when Jared tells me some part of myself I don't think is so beautiful is beautiful in his opinion, does it really change my mind? Does him telling me "You'd still be beautiful if you gained weight," make me really believe that? I'm not so sure it always does.

This isn't a very coherent entry. I'm just kind of thinking out loud. I'm not sure what the distinction is between genuinely changing your mindset and forcing yourself to believe things you didn't before. Where does good body image come from? I guess I just don't know if I think you can get it from some outside force telling you to have it. I don't know.

What do you think?

Comments

[lisefrac.livejournal.com]

I LOVE Wardrobe Oxygen. Even if, uh, I am a fashion victim so frequently. I even wear cardigans sometimes.

On the body image idea, I dunno. I think the fact that your positive body image has never really been challenged - i.e. you are conventionally attractive - means you may not be able to accurately predict how you would react in the face of negative attention. But I'm not inside your head, so I can't pretend to judge.

I think what it means to have a good body image is to have positive self-regard despite outside influences. As women, it seems like our bodies are often public property, and we have to reclaim a vision of ourselves that hasn't been trekked all over by other people.

FWIV, I don't think I have a very good body image. Right now, I'm mostly unhappy with it for all the health issues I'm dealing with (only some of which are questionably related to obesity). And I'll admit, I wouldn't complain if I magically lost 20 lbs or so. But I'm not really willing to put in the time to make it so, am I? (If weight loss is even realistic for me).

[crearespero.livejournal.com]

with me it is my intelligence, usually, not my body, that I have a bad self-image of... (though I admit that sometimes I am seized by a sudden disgust with FLESH and want it all to just GO AWAY), but through this i have really come to understand, recently, what is meant by the whole "bad-self-image" and "self-esteem problem" thing. I have, for the past two years or so, had pretty terrible "self-esteem", off and on, for the first time in my life. For me, though, solving the PROBLEM has always seemed to be the obvious solution, rather than sitting here trying to MAKE myself be happy with a situation displeasing to me. As such, "repeating happy crap" has never struck me as particularly helpful. Especially if it is happy crap that other people tell me to say . . . I'm not doing anything, just parroting back syllables. How does that make me more awesome? None of my favorite awesome characters have to spend time repeating happy crap in order to make themselves awesome: neither should I. Has always struck me as such BS. What has not struck me as BS, though, despite its also being questionably unproductive, is . . . a kind of pilgrimage which I can make in my head, to a cave where other people are NOT. That is, I make the problem temporarily go away, not matter to me, and then calmly work towards solving it - bettering myself - without _thinking_ about what I'm doing.

As far as body image goes, I have for some time been faced with this peculiar dellimma of having mainstream beauty well within my grasp, but not making the effort, because that is not what I _want_. Nor do I _want_ to have "gender-identity" issues, because those also strike me as . . . superficial and otherwise yuck, though . . . If i am to be perfectly honest, what I resent most about my body is the fact there are these sacks of FLESH sitting on top of my rib cage (my beautiful, lovely ribcage [sighs]...) and they will not go away unless I completely starve myself, at which point I would be so weak and sick that I could not do the things I love.

dear gods, I wrote a lot. I do believe I may be procrastinating. :P

[ultimatepsi.livejournal.com]

I don't think you should feel guilty for being traditionally attractive, or for expending effort toward maintaining that. It's your body and your choice of what makes you happy, and you don't need to be responsible for what mainstream or counterculture feel body image should be.

For me, I was raised to think of physical appearance beyond being clean as unimportant, and I've got an engineer's viewpoint, so I'm more likely to complain about my body's function rather than it's appearance. I exercise with the goal of being able to do a pull-up or climb 4 flights of stairs without getting winded. I believe I'm beautiful physically, despite being slightly overweight, because people keep telling me so, but this doesn't make me happy. Instead, I'm worried that people, especially potential romantic partners, won't get to know me beyond the physical level. I think you're lucky that you don't have that reaction.

[offside7.livejournal.com]

I had an argument online a while back with some people who talked about how "a real woman has curves" where "curves" was misused to mean "a higher BMI." (Which is so bogus, I've seen very small girls with hour glass figures and larger girls with boxy bodies.)

But when I objected to the use of the word "real" in that sense, people were infuriated. I said, "I wouldn't define how 'real' a woman is by the shape of her figure, whether small or large, curvy or boxy. If a woman had gone through chemo and lost a lot of weight off her chest and hips, would you say to her 'I think of you as less of a woman now?'"

People were enraged (and not because I dragged cancer into it to make a point), I almost got blocked from a friend's journal, and I actually lost sleep over a stupid internet argument. (I think I dragged cancer into it because they dragged health into it- shoving studies and statistics about how heavier women, barring extremes, are more fertile and healthy and yadda yadda. So now health defines a real woman?)

Later it was explained to me that people use these terms to create a "safe space" for people who are usually the ones that get put down. What bugged me so much was the idea that in order to create a "safe space" and make themselves feel better, they couldn't just build up themselves, or say "size doesn't matter" they also had to tear others down.

I'm sure everybody does that all the time, every day, in small ways. Putting others down in order to raise oneself up is part of human nature. But I guess I felt it was more institutionalized (I've heard "real women have curves" many times before) and they were putting me in the "not a real female" group, even though I wouldn't put myself there, and my opinions on the issue were considered "irrelevant" because I wasn't the same size as the people I was talking to.

So I guess, even if it comes off a little hokey, I'd much rather hear the version of it that you mentioned than the version I usually hear, which is "real women have curves." (Both because of its bogus use of the word "curves" and its definition of the term "real women" as something purely physical.)

But honestly, I don't buy either one. Maybe I'm projecting, but I'm living my life in a modern, Western culture, and I fully buy into Hollywood's standards of beauty (and I feel guilty about it), and I guess I kind of assume every one else does too, whether they admit it to themselves or not. ...I think any reasonable psychologist would say this is probably classic projection.

[breakinglight11.livejournal.com]

Oh, Christ, you hit on one of my BIGGEST pet peeves related to body positivity-- when the people who have been made to feel bad about their bodies turn around and demonize the other group in order to make themselves feel better. You don't know how many times I've been hit with "You look like a twelve year old boy," and "Only eating disorders get you that thin!" by people who aren't happy with their own weight. The nasty part of me wants to respond to that whole "real women have curves" bullshit with "Uh-huh. You know what else has beautiful curves? The zero on the tag in my dress." I find it incredibly offensive as well as horribly unfeminist for anyone to spout about what makes women "real" or "proper." It's just as cruel and just as unfair going the other way.

[offside7.livejournal.com]

Since that argument, I've tried to be more accepting of it, partially because I know everyone does it in their own little ways for other sorts of insecurities (including me) but also partially because I know it mostly comes from a place of hurt. However unhappy my own body issues are, I know I've never actually had the unpleasant experience of, for example, being called fat to my face. Though I wish people wouldn't think "I've had it worse, therefore my opinion on the matter is more valid."

What mostly caused me to allow myself to get dragged into the conversation was that I thought I had a valid point (womanhood shouldn't be defined by anything physical either way) torn down, and I didn't feel their reasons for tearing it down were fair.

[meamcat.livejournal.com]

I can't help but interpret this post as wondering what it's like to not be "beautiful", to not have that privilege of being pretty. You certainly have the privilege of pretty, Phoebe, and I admire and respect you for asking what it's like to not have it. I'll bite! Lengthily.
In my experience, to have positive body image when nobody else tells you you're pretty, you've got to both change your mindset of what beauty is and conform a little bit. Let me explain.
I've been visually awkward my whole life. "Beautiful" is a word my parents use. I've had more people outright call me "ugly" or pause awkwardly after I ask, "So how do I look?" than call me beautiful.
I used to assume that I wasn't pretty and never would be, so of course I went though some periods of self-loathing and acceptance of my perceived "ugliness": wearing unflattering clothes, gaining massive amounts of weight, etc.
Basically, to achieve a positive body image when your kind isn't plastered over billboards or lounging on cars, you've just got to deal.
Not only did I have to stop putting so much value into other people's biases, I had to realize that everything other than "pretty" isn't "ugly". I may not have the privilege of pretty... but fuck if I'm going to conform to some dumb duality.
It took me a while- like, until this fall- to realize that I could dress conventionally well without someone calling me out for being something I'm not. I don't assume that I'm ugly anymore- I embrace myself and wear cute clothes anyway, and I honestly feel better for it.
Not because I think others will automatically respect me, but because I feel confident in pretty clothes. If somebody compliments me, awesome, even better. But my self-image comes first, and at this point it's pretty damn high.

[breakinglight11.livejournal.com]

Wow. Emily, I think you may have hit the nail on the head there. I think you've figured out what my trouble was, even though I couldn't. Maybe I just felt too awkward about it to say it, but I guess, yeah, my question is "How do you feel good about the way you look if you don't feel you're pretty?" Thanks for that. I feel weird asking that question. But it is something I don't think I totally understand.

And thanks for your comments on the issue. I had never thought of simply rejecting the dichotomy of "pretty" and "not pretty."

[meamcat.livejournal.com]

It's an okay question to ask! And aw, thank you, I was glad to give my thoughts.