A woman's work is never done
If it's not one variety of body image angst, it's another. When do we get to rest?
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Also! Speaking of rest, I’m taking some. Body Type will be on a publishing hiatus from Dec. 14 until late-January. The past year on Substack has been the most rewarding time of my writing career. Thank you. See ya in 2024! Also, a gift idea:
Too many women I know have spent most of their lives feeling insecure and ashamed about not having the “right” kind of body, and within the past few years have shouldered an additional kind of body image-related torment: Guilt.
Guilt, specifically, about still having any nagging desire to look different — smaller, thinner, “fitter” — than they do, despite the ascendance of body acceptance movements in the mainstream and despite feeling they should be, well … somehow over it by now as smart women who know better.
I’ve heard this from many women in my life and online. I recently came across this quote in
’s , from writer of the :“I think a lot of women feel torn about body acceptance and body positivity. Sometimes I want to just be like Virginia says, and love life and love my body, and yet I just really feel like I want to lose 15 pounds, and that makes me feel unevolved and basic and like I should be smarter.”
And back in November 2022,
wrote about the idea of getting her body “wedding ready”:Do I want to […] “get my act together,” change my eating habits and feel confident when I look in the mirror at future dress fittings? Or would I rather continue my life as is and risk feelings of socially conditioned anti-fat bias when I look at my future wedding photos? Because I don’t think I have enough time to completely unpack all the negative conditioning I grew up with about female bodies and what it means to be a beautiful bride in less than 12 months …. I hate that I am not far enough along in my body acceptance journey for this not to be an issue.
Another writer, Jo Hughes of
, was kind enough to respond to some of my Body Type posts in one of her own. As she discussed her body image through the ages, she wrote:“[When I’m] fit and strong I feel better. I’m struggling to figure out how much of the feeling better comes from thinking I look better when I’m fit and strong. Sadly, it probably does play a part.”
I’ve had similar thoughts many, many times. But lately I’ve started feeling tinges of anger about sentiments like this — certainly not toward these women or any others who feel this way, but toward the conditions that create these negative feelings. If women have even the faintest desire to look different than we do, or if we appreciate that we look “better” per a certain aesthetic standard, some of us feel bad or sad that we care, or we perceive these feelings as a moral and intellectual failing on our part. Same as it ever was:
In the early to mid-aughts — the apex of blatant thinness obsession as far as many of us can recall — we internalized that it was our fault if we weren’t skinny. We were failing to be the correct kind of woman who looked the correct kind of way. Now, at a cultural moment marked by “the tyranny around loving yourself” as
puts it, if we want to lose weight, if we like when we look hotter or sexier, or if we struggle to accept our bodies after lifetimes of internalizing that they were bad, we feel it’s because we’re unevolved and basic and dumb and too dependent on other people’s gaze. Now, we are failing to be the correct kind of woman who thinks and feels the correct kind of way.In light of all this and with that anger coursing through me, I have to ask:
Why can’t we allow ourselves even a shred of grace for not always thinking or behaving “correctly” where our bodies are concerned?
How do we find relief from body image anxiety, if some vague definition of “body positivity” doesn’t seem to be working?
When do we get to direct our angst toward something besides ourselves?
I’ve started to form what I think are some answers: