(Via: feministing)
Recently Zaslow went back to ask the now 32 and 33 year old women whether they feel it is even harder for girls to love their bodies and avoid eating disorders and unhealthy habits today. He received a resounding “Hell yes!” from his interview subjects.
How did this happen? I am not surprised by the results of the studies quoted in the WSJ article, but I am disappointed. As a 32 year old feminist who has fought a pretty uphill battle not to hate all 140 pounds on my 5‘4” frame, I had hoped that it would be easier for my younger sisters. That they would not find themselves packed into washroom stalls at lunch hour learning how to binge and purge.
Guess I was wrong.
So the question is, who’s to blame here? To a degree, I think I am.
As a third generation feminist I got excited by goals that seemed the most progressive: queer activism, women’s labour, globalization and feminism. Worse yet, I didn’t follow the K.I.S.S rule of politics (Keep It Simple Stupid). I let myself get caught up in the exciting, but fundamentally confusing, world of post-feminist theory. That means I can define transitional identities, bio-boys and girls, hyperspatial, translocal, migratory and situated experiences of gender or embodied praxis, etc. But I can’t really make a convincing argument against a week-long laxative purge anymore. I wouldn’t know where to start.
I guess I thought since I had stopped struggling with my weight the rest of the world would too - breaking free from body politics was like leaving the boring second-generation feminist stuff behind. I didn’t want my fat to define my purpose, so I decided to ignore that whole issue, and pretend it had been figured out.
Maybe I am taking on too much of a burden here. I should blame the media, and the fashion industry, and parents. Frankly there are all sorts of people and industries I could blame, but if I truly believe (and I do) that the purpose of feminism is to make life easier for girls and women, then I feel that by choosing to focus on issues that don’t resonate with teens I have failed the generation that follows mine. What do you think, my younger sisters, cousins, and friends - do I have a point?
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four comments
I'm also in this age group in question and I completely agree, unfortunately. Not only that, doesn't it seem to have gotten *worse*? We seem to have progressed on so many crucial issues (there are more women than men in the workforce now, as per CTV news channel; & there are more female graduates of medicine than males), but the shallow & degrading of images seems to just have gotten to the nudest legal level.
Mir, you did what you wanted to do in feminism, and what you thought was necessary. Things change, people change, now with some hindsight & additional wisdom, you can choose to go in the direction in which you want, & that you feel is of the most use to society. We're all trying here! How can that be wrong?
I do agree that we need to speak up about the shallow, pornified media. We need to know ourselves, love ourselves, and love our bodies.
We need to refuse "consuming" (aka shopping) for things that are sold to make us feel complete, & that are marketed to make us feel better.
We need to be in touch with what's good for our *souls*
Posted by Daniela
September 5, 2009, 6:59 PM
It might also just be a question of maturity; I don't think it ever stops being hard to be a young woman (or person), and if you can progress from a body-image-obsessed adolescent to a confident, proudly feminist adult then presumably other kids can too. I definitely think there are more options and visions of positive modes of existing for young women than there used to be, and many of them have come from women who immersed themselves in struggles that encompassed or drew on the exciting and confusing world of third wave, queer and yes even post-feminist feminism. Adolescence and childhood are huge mind-fucks, and the repercussions can take many forms, but I believe (well, I have to believe) that the chances of emerging from them as a solid, self-actualizing human female are getting better rather than worse.
I also don't believe in charity activism; you have to work on what matters to you, and if nothing else show by example that battles, whatever they might be, can be fought and won.
Posted by Anna
September 5, 2009, 9:07 PM
I just read over what I wrote last night and realized it sounds like I was drunk... I wasn't, just a little tired. Basically what I'm trying to say is that almost every young person goes through brutal struggles with self-esteem, the roots of which can be deeply psychological and far beyond simply being on the receiving end of negative media images (though those certainly don't help). And in some ways repeatedly telling young women "stop worrying about your body" is like saying "stop thinking about pink elephants" - I think it's better and healthier for everyone to focus on figuring out what matters to you and working on that, at which point you realize that fitting some physical ideal just isn't that important, because there's so much more to do.
Posted by Anna
September 6, 2009, 12:45 PM
I absolutely agree Anna. We can speak much more intelligently about body issues when we recognize that the whole concept of inner and outer beauty reflecting eachother is a crazy and pointless one. Our inner and outer worth usually have little to do with eachother and a preoccupation with outer worth tends to conflate them, while an emphasis on our value as mental and emotional people first, rather than aesthetic people shows the irrelevance and danger of this conflation. As for the article, we all have different paths and both despite and because of the increasing media onslaught on women and feminism the body image activism in feminism continues to be enormous, probably exactly because it's timeless and easy to understand and tap into. We may be going backwards right now, but we retain a foothold on the collective mindset and need to give ourselves credit for that. It's a huge accomplishment, given how much money and time is spent both on producing and consuming the body image ideals we find harmful.
Posted by Myra
November 19, 2009, 10:51 PM
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