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By Sarit Rogers. Originally posted at Visions Adolescent Treatment Centers. Cross-posted with permission.
I know an 8-year-old who’s been known to choose an outfit specifically because it makes her “look thin.†This same 8-year-old often doesn’t finish meals because she thinks she’s fat. She’s the same 8-year-old that has begun to develop food rituals, often leaving the table with a reorganized plate full of uneaten food. Simply put, she already has an irrational fear of getting fat.
It’s hard being a girl. It’s hard to find a way to look at your unique self without comparing it with images of Barbie or Bratz. It’s hard to accept that the beauty standard set by Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty isn’t actually real. But children, whose minds are filled with wonderful imagination and fantasy, aren’t going to cognitively recognize images that are potentially harmful. Instead, many will attempt to achieve the pink, thin, fluffiness of a Disney princess, or the skinny sass of a Bratz doll. Often times, even when parents are encouraging a healthy body image, the education on the school yard has a dramatically different lesson plan than the one from home. I’ve overheard conversations on the school yard that have made me pause – it’s clear that body-image issues are in abundance and the pressure to look thin and svelte is invasive and intense.
So what can parents do? Start with eliminating the shame game. This might mean letting your daughter dump that maple syrup on her pancakes or having a cupcake at a birthday party. It’s a treat, not a vehicle for punishment! Encourage healthy eating, but can you do it with compassion rather than the mallet of criticism? Eliminate “fat talkâ€: your kids don’t need to hear it and frankly, it’s not good for you either. Stop trying to control what those around you eat. It’s not your job! I’ve seen dads controlling the food intake of their wives and daughters to the point of devastating eating disorders (my dad was one!); and I’ve seen moms spewing “fat talk†or signing up for any and every diet fad while their daughters learn to eat in secret or restrict because they’re terrified of the incendiary reaction of their parental food monitors. These behaviors certainly don’t encourage self-love. If anything, they sow the seeds of self-destruction.
If you’re worried that your son or daughter might be developing an eating disorder (boys are not immune to this!), look out for some of these signs (Note, certain behaviors are warning signs, but in combination and over time, they can become quite serious):
Behaviors specific to anorexia
Major weight loss (weighs 85% of normal weight for height or less)
Skips meals, always has an excuse for not eating (ill, just ate with a friend, stressed-out, not hungry). Refuses to eat in front of others
Selects only low fat items with low nutrient levels, such as lettuce, tomatoes, and sprouts. Reads food labels religiously; worried about calories and fat grams in foods. Eats very small portions of foods
Becomes revolted by former favorite foods, such as desserts, red meats, potatoes
May help with meal shopping and preparation, but doesn’t eat with family
Eats in ritualistic ways, such as cutting food into small pieces or pushing food around plate
Lies about how much food was eaten
Has fears about weight gain and obesity, obsesses about clothing size. Complains about being fat, when in truth it is not so
Inspects image in mirror frequently, weighs self frequently
Exercises excessively and compulsively
May wear baggy clothing or many layers of clothing to hide weight loss and to stay warm
May become moody and irritable or have trouble concentrating. Denies that anything is wrong
May harm self with cutting or burning
Evidence of discarded packaging for diet pills, laxatives, or diuretics (water pills)
Stops menstruating
Has dry skin and hair, may have a growth of fine hair over body
May faint or feel dizzy frequently
Behaviors specific to bulimia
Preoccupation or anxiety about weight and shape
Disappearance of large quantities of food
Excuses self to go to the bathroom immediately after meals
Evidence of discarded packaging for laxatives, diuretics, enemas
May exercise compulsively
May skip meals at times
Teeth may develop cavities or enamel erosion
Broken blood vessels in the eyes from self-induced vomiting
Swollen salivary glands (swelling under the chin)
Calluses across the joints of the fingers from self-induced vomiting
May be evidence of alcohol or drug abuse, including steroid use
Possible self-harm behaviors, including cutting and burning
If you notice even one of these, it’s time to address it. Talk to your daughter or son, talk to your doctor. If necessary, elicit the help of a treatment facility. In other words: Get help. Showing our kids that we care and are willing to stop our own negative behaviors in order to help them is invaluable. It’s a family problem, not an individual one.
When body image activists call out products and advertising campaigns, like Urban Outfitters recent “Eat Less” t-shirt, for the irresponsible messages that cultivate, promote and reinforce unhealthy, even deadly, definitions of beauty, there’s always a backlash.
We’re overreacting. We have no sense of humor. We must be ugly and bitter (after all, we’re jealous because we’re so damn ugly) if we object over the name of a pair dark-washed jeans or a bag or pretzels, the shape and name of a soda can or a brand of margarita mix. They’re harmless.
Perhaps, one bag of pretzels or one protein bar named “Think Thin,” might arguably be fairly innocuous and benign, but these messages and images are not isolated or few. They’re one in a torrential flood of repetitive images and messages actively constructing our cultural reality through the process of cultivation, a theory proposed by media experts George Gerbner and Larry Gross.
Cultivation is the building and maintenance of a stable set of images, a theory steeped in several longitudinal studies that assessed the behavioral and attitudinal effects of television. The studies revealed that long-term exposure of television shapes our ideas and concepts of reality; our expectations of others, our relationships, our dreams and goals and, ultimately, our view of ourselves.
I’m not concerned solely with The Gap’s jeans campaign. I’m distressed how message after message, image after image, reinforces a cult of thinness. This cult of thinness is not limited by age, race, or class. It’s a message that is ubiquitous and celebrated in every aspect of our media culture. Thinness is one of the primary components of our beauty ideal, the primary and, often sole way, girls and women are valued and ranked in our culture.
As my student, Elizabeth P., noted, “Because anorexia and harsh diets are no joke. Healthy balanced diets are always better than “always skinny” and skinny by all means.”
Am I taking these messages seriously? Absolutely. Am I taking them too seriously? Absolutely not. You can’t take these issues too seriously when 4th graders are dieting because they’re “scared” to be fat and women are dying.
I vow to be “always critical” and always expose the potency of media messages. After all, they’re the water we swim in and the air we breathe.
Originally posted at FemineUs, a student run blog created as part of their final project for my WS 30: Women and Pop Culture course. Cross-posted with permission. Created by Alexa G.; feminist, blogger, CrossFit badass and all-around amazing young activist and scholar.
Nearly a year ago I became a CrossFitter. For those of you not familiar with what I’m talking about, CrossFit is a high-intensity workout program that’s designed to help build all-over strength. I didn’t enter the program with a specific goal in mind. I wasn’t looking to lose weight nor was I looking to shape myself into a top-tier athlete. At the very least, I figured I would get into better shape and be a bit healthier. So I started taking classes, became hooked to the challenge it provided, and soon found both my body and mind undergoing a radical transformation.
Over the months my body began to change dramatically. Strength I didn’t know I had came out of nowhere. You want me to deadlift and back squat my body weight? I can do that. And you want me to shoulder press and front squat half of my body weight? Hey, I can do that too. Don’t forget plenty of sit ups, pull ups, and push ups for good measure. Having been skinny and without any kind of muscle tone my entire life, being able to do these kinds of exercises was a big deal for me. I felt stronger and more confident than ever- something I hadn’t always felt about my body before.
But even though my body has changed for the better, part of me feels uncomfortable with my new-found biceps and muscular calves. Instead of celebrating my strength and confidence, I sometimes find myself wanting to be skinny again. I’ve put on 20 pounds of (what I’m guessing is mostly) muscle weight and have gone up two pants sizes because of it. And I know that this isn’t a bad thing because I’m the strongest and healthiest I’ve ever been. So while I am blessed with greater health and wellness, I still find myself wanting to go back to a body that wasn’t healthy for me.
I find myself caught in an odd position here. Here I am, a self-declared feminist who is uncomfortable within her own body. I’m well aware (and I’m sure you are too) of the ridiculous and unrealistic beauty standards that women are expected to live up to. But even though I do have this feminist consciousness, I still compare myself with this impossible beauty standard. This is all embarrassing for me to admit to because I do know better and I do know that being a size zero is unhealthy for someone like myself. But even with this knowledge, there is a part of me that still longs to be skinny and tiny and everything that popular culture tells me I should be.
And I know I’m not alone with these feelings. Countless books have been written for, by, and about women on the topic of body image. Some of these books deliver a lighter hearted, but still serious take such as Leslie Goldman’s Locker Room Diaries. Others, such as Susan Bordo’sUnbearable Weight deliver a more academic take on Western beauty ideals and culture. Both are fully aware of and discuss the consequences and impact that these beauty standards and images have had on women. Goldman speaks freely about her own battles with eating disorders and talks to women of all ages about their body image.
Am I planning on giving up CrossFit any time soon? Not if I can help it. I do my best to ignore what popular culture tells me I should look like, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t affected in some way.
Her latest book, Bodies, maps the progress of our alienation, from a time when we took our bodies for granted to one where they are an endlessly perfectible work in progress. “When I was growing up,” she explains, “one or two girls were beautiful, but it was not an aspiration, right? We didn’t expect to be that sportsman or that beauty queen. That was OK, that was what movie stars were for. That wasn’t something that was essential for all of us.” Yet today, movie-star looks are not just an aspiration but an imperative, and ordinary people think nothing of starving or surgically enhancing their bodies in a tireless campaign to make them look as though they belong to somebody else altogether.
Just as Donald Winnicott identified the “false self”, whereby a neglected baby will blame itself for its carer’s lack of interest, and create an artificial version of itself in the hope of winning love, so Orbach argues that we are creating false bodies. Assailed by media imagery that celebrates only one type of body and one type of beauty, we assume any discrepancy between our own appearance and this digitally airbrushed “ideal” must be our fault, and that it’s not merely necessary but morally virtuous to do whatever it takes to correct our deficiency. The simultaneous rise of anorexia and obesity is not a paradox, but rather two sides of the same psychological coin – both manifestations of our panic about hunger, in which normal appetite becomes pathologised as the enemy. Crucially, whereas once we might have experienced the pressure to look different as an onerous tyranny, today we tell ourselves that it’s empowering.
“We transform the sense of being criticised,” Orbach writes, “by becoming the moving and enthusiastic actor in our own self-improvement programme. We will eagerly repair what is wrong … We see ourselves as agents, not victims. It is the individual woman who feels herself to be at fault for not matching up to the current imagery … She applies herself to the job of perfecting that image for herself and so makes it her own, not assaultive or alien.”
Orbach’s writing is closer in tone to cultural studies than to the jaunty self-help register of most contemporary books about eating, but in person there is nothing abstractly academic about her. Framed by a mass of curls, she is small, even birdlike, but her sprightly energy conveys a vivid sense of aliveness. Her accent has a faint American inflection, which can sound almost antipodean at times, particularly when her sentences end in a question mark – “right?” – and she is surprisingly relaxed, even imprecise, with her words, often letting sentences tail away unfinished. But she is very clear about where we are going wrong.
I’ve been half looking forward to the meeting, and half dreading it because, although it must be 20 years since I first read what Orbach calls “Fifi”, her work feels uncomfortably relevant to my own current state. She is the sort of woman you find yourself confiding in, and I admit to her that halfway through my first pregnancy, my overriding preoccupation is with weight gain. To my dismay, what I’m really thinking about most of the time is how I’m ever going to lose it. And right there, according to Orbach, is the source of our troubled relationship with food. Mothers transmit their own anxieties to their babies; it all begins in the family.
“The only way to solve the problem is to provide very different help to new mums,” she says briskly. “Because every mother wants to do right by their kid. It would mean training health visitors and midwives; you’d raise a mother’s awareness of her own body. This is an opportunity for both of you to find the rhythm in terms of relation to appetite. I don’t think it would be difficult to design. And it would be very cheap. And new mums would really benefit from it. But instead, they are being told to do sit-ups straightaway, and why not even consider having a C-section, so you don’t have to get that last month’s weight gain? All of that nonsense. It’s completely counter to what a baby’s mental health requires – and what the mother needs as well, actually.”
What can parents say, I ask, to a 16-year-old girl who is convinced that a regime of dieting and beautification is not self-punishing but empowering? “Well, it’s awfully late at 16. But I’d be saying to the mums: ‘Watch your own behaviour – how often do you criticise your own body in front of your daughter?’ Stop making the body the cause of the problem, or the solution to the problem. The problem isn’t how she looks.”
But surely a teenage girl would say that how she looks is precisely the problem? “But what she’d be picking out aren’t imperfections, they’re just what makes her her, right?” What if she says she’s overweight? “Well, they all feel overweight. Even when they’re tiny, tiny, tiny. But where are they getting that idea? That’s why I think the mums are doing something.”
If Orbach were just another voice in the cacophony of finger-pointing that surrounds most discussion about weight, I would be feeling unpleasantly guilty by now. But her analysis of what she calls “disordered eating” extends beyond mothers and the family, to encompass everything from the diet industry – “which relies upon a 95% recidivism rate” – to the media, which produces glossy magazines in which “not a single image is not digitally retouched, up to hundreds of times” – and globalisation, in which a culture of “aspirational bodies is the mark of entry”.
One of the things that strikes me is the statement that “movie-star” looks were not always an aspiration or expectation. Each semester my students conduct an oral history and time and time again, women over 60 respond to questions about beauty standards and beauty norms that existed when they were girls and teenagers with the same sentiment. There was a time, before the all out media assault, when standards of beauty existed that weren’t as relentless or unrealistic as they are today. Girls and women recognized a celebrity figure as exactly that. A celebrity. A star. Someone unlike themselves.
Girls and women today are inundated with relentless messages that proclaim that they CAN look like the celebrity du-jour and that they SHOULD and if they don’t attain that image they have failed, they are without value and should try harder.
It is little wonder that girls and women see these “failures” as personal rather than recognizing the failure on the part of the mass media machine to portray “ordinary” girls and women.
Sitcoms and films from my childhood portrayed more “average-looking” individuals. Not everyone was primped and polished with the intention of looking “natural.” “Natural” beauty these days is nowhere near natural or easy and breezy. It is an all out organized campaign with a low success rate.
“I was so sick all week…but (giggling), I lost ten pounds.”
“I’d rather die thin than live fat.”
It’s strange, frightening and altogether not too surprising that girls and women rejoice in weight loss that results from illness and disease. Most girls and women understand the serious side effects of chronic yo-yo dieting, diet pills, colonics, laxatives, drug-use and over exercise as the torture devices du-jour to pursue insane degrees of thinness. But, the stakes are high and, as a result, too many take the deadly gamble.
Images of thinness have gotten more extreme and a female’s value is wrapped in a stick-thin frame no matter what else she does. If you’re independent, successful, professional, intelligent and you’re not thin (and attractive, with thin being a means to being considered attractive in this culture), you’re not as valuable as you could be being all those things. And. Thin.
So, when the FDA announced yet another diet pill being pulled off the market, I’m wasn’t at all surprised and I don’t think anyone else is either.
Government health officials are announcing the recall of popular weight loss pill Hydroxycut, after reports of liver damage and other health problems.
Food and Drug Administration officials said Friday the manufacturer of Hydroxycut has launched a nationwide recall of the dietary supplement, used by people trying to shed pounds and by body builders to sharpen their muscles.
Hydroxycut is advertised as made from natural ingredients. It accounts for about 90 percent of the market for weight loss supplements, with sales of about 1 million bottles a year.
Dietary supplements are not as tightly regulated by the government as medications. Manufacturers don’t need FDA approval ahead of time before marketing their products.
I mean, who are we kidding? It’s not like there isn’t a history of harmful side effects linked to the use of diet pills resulting in recalls. Think Fen-Phen in 1997.
I don’t think the manufacturers are surprised. I don’t think the FDA is surprised. I don’t think the general public is surprised. I certainly don’t think the users of Hydroxycut are surprised. I mean, really, anytime a pill claims to have the ability to help you lose weight with minimal lifestyle changes such as changing one’s diet significantly and exercising regularly and being able to help you lose wight and/or tone and sculpt your body, you have to take pause. That’s just weird. And wrong.
Haven’t we learned that there’s no magic pill or quick fix for anything? Are we still that obsessed with immediate results and instant gratification that we have ignored the lessons of the past and what our common sense tells us?
Maybe. But, when the stakes are high logic goes out the window.
Thinness and the pursuit of thinness, no matter how toxic, is glorified in our culture. In fact, the toxic pursuit of thinness and the vile and disturbing results create fascination and stokes the flames of infatuation.
Just this week in Us Magazine’s print version there is yet another article focusing on Lindsay Lohan’s skeletal figure and the claim that she proudly uses Adderall. Us Magazine’s online version provides the reader with a slide show of Lohan’s “weights ups and downs.” Last week, Star Magazine ran a similar piece focusing on Lohan’s break-up and subsequent weight loss.
Lohan’s weight loss can’t be attributed entirely too her break-up when you consider the sea of images that glorify the cult of thinness and advertisers provide various instruments, pills and potions to make the mirage appear real.
Hydroxcut’s recall is predictable. Lohan’s severly thin frame is predictable. The media’s response is predictable.
And, I have no doubt, a new pill will replace Hydroxcut in the same way Fen-Phen was replaced and the cycle will continue until there is some honest dialogue.
Until then, girls and women will put their health on the line for an outrageous aesthetic that is pandered to the masses.
In this week’s Us Magazine, we have yet ANOTHER story of success: a new mother of twins sheds all her baby weight after a mere 11 weeks. How did she do it, you ask? Oh, ya know, it’s just an illusion created by a “good dress.” Oh, and by receiving deliveries of assorted Asian fruit and vegetables, mussels, crabs and prawns. No exercise, though. Nope. Just good genes and the usual claim: breast feeding! Salma Hayek spoke out against this myth. As she said to Oprah, “The only way women lose weight this way is by not eating AND breast feeding…and this is bad for the baby.” Amen, sister.
The emphasis on unhealthy, often deadly, thinness is bad enough but to add that same pressure on pregnant women and new mothers moments after delivery is ludicrous! This signals an unhealthy and potentially dangerous trend by creating unrealistic expectations for ordinary women that don’t have the time of the means to devote their all of their energy to weight loss. Not to mention, even with the time and money, baby weight gain is not designed to fall off immediately. No matter who you are (Nicole, Angelina, Jessica, Katie).
Bump watch has taken over the tabloids in a furious and obsessive way over the last few years and includes the intense scrutiny and public commentary on how much weight pregnant celebrities gained and how much they lost soon after birth. Salma Hayek was absolutely chastised for not losing her pregnancy weight immediately after her daughter was born. which is one of the reasons she chose to publically address this craze on national television.
