Having recently watched part of Jean Kilbourne’s new video on Brene’ Brown’s blog and you tube, it appalls and saddens me that our society is going backwards when it comes to girls/women body image issues and the media.
Forty years ago I had these same issues as a sixteen-year-old. I thought I was fat, ugly and needed lots of dieting, make-up and help from Seventeen magazine to be attractive. I developed eating disorders and alcoholism in order to cope (among other reasons) as thousands of girls have through out the past decades.
Looking back at photos of myself, I realized years later that I was beautiful and wonderful just the way I was! And I couldn’t see it! I wasted years of my precious life focused on the scale! Think how many thousands of women in our culture have done this! Wasted years, obsessed with diets and looks!
It seems it is just a vicious cycle with the media attention now focused on obesity/junk food epidemic. Yes, many in our society have eating disorders on the other side of the spectrum. But dieting is NOT the answer!
Obsession with our bodies is not the answer!!!! Diet businesses (Jenny, Nutrisystem, and Weight Watchers among a few) are making millions off our obsession with body image and weight. The problem is it doesn’t work! Most people who diet gain the weight back! (Think Kirsty Alley) The problem is in our HEADS and HEARTS!
The answer is in loving and accepting ourselves the way we are. We are enough. The focus needs to be on WHOM we are INSIDE, rather than OUTSIDE! Geneen Roth has been writing about this for years. Her new book, Women, Food and God makes the point that our issues are spiritual as well as emotional rather than just physical. When you start focusing on the inside needs and wants, the weight comes off. You may not look like Keira Knightley but you will be the ideal weight for YOU!
As far as the media, as long as we as a culture continues to give the media power over our minds, they of course will run with it. The author Mary Pipher coined the phrase Lookism about thirty years ago in her book Hunger Pains. It is about the fanaticism with looks. Buying fashion magazines, dieting, checking the mirror/scales constantly is feeding the crazy machine. I know ads pay for magazines but I am disappointed to see all the ads that promote Lookism in Oprah’s magazine O. You’d think if anyone understood the media/weight/body image issue it would be Oprah!!!!
Please increase your awareness. Watch Jean Kilbourne’s videos on You tube, read books like Geneen Roth’s and Brene’ Brown’s. Think about whom you are on the inside, not about what size you wear or what skin cream you need to use to look twenty at fifty. We need to change the track on the media/culture’s obsession with looks. We are not who the media says we are! Please, help our daughters! We are SO much more and WE ARE ENOUGH!!!!
Deb, as you know this is a issue I have been deeply troubled by, but from a slightly different perspective. I wholeheartedly agree that we don't want people obsessed with their outer image, and whatever-the-next-stringent diet might be. I agree that the ad industry has been a huge part of this image-consciousness. I also agree that it is, in part, a spiritual issue. But I also think we have to raise up some conversation about our health, about the alarming rise in type 2 diabetes in the U.S., and how so many in our culture are poisoning themselves to death with food. (Some of that is also an industry-related thing, when large companies use cheap products for flavor that are not good for our bodies.) It can't become taboo to talk about health, and the personal choices we make that are directly linked to our health. For me, personally, any steps I am able to take are for my health, ability to function, and hopeful longevity, not about appearance. Surely talking about health and how we can improve and maintain it is appropriate, isn't it? Our bodies as temples? I also see this as part of recovery, for me, and an appropriate task of mid to later recovery. To not talk about it would seem like we are back to ignoring the elephant in the living room. Is there a middle ground, wise and not judgmental, but also aware and open? And how do we find it? I haven't read Women, Food and God, but will look for it. The book that most changed my mind and heart about eating was Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, (though I admit to skipping over the brief sections throughout that were written by her daughter).
ReplyDeleteHello, Deb.
ReplyDeleteI am very moved by your passion on this subject--that women need to accept themselves and love themselves for who they are in the inside. So true. Thank you for mentioning my book, Women Food and God.
I have found that women turn to food when they are not hungry because they are hungry for something they cannot name: a connection to what is beyond the concerns of daily life. Something deathless, something sacred.
It's not so much that we want to eat a hot fudge sundae. It's that we want our entire lives to be hot fudge sundaes.
Remember to reteach yourself your loveliness.
Geneen Roth
As the mother of a 16-year-old daughter, I am acutely aware of the role that body image plays in today's society. My daughter is very thin by nature, but she has recently decided that she is too thin and has been working on gaining weight in a healthful way. I am encouraged that she has accepted her body for what it is and that she is discovering that she IS beautiful (inside and out) just as she is. But the pressure on teens to conform to society's idea of beauty is so intense. Keep raising these important issues, Deb.
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