Kelley Wheeler, junior studying art studies
With swimsuit season fast approaching, it seems like all the women in my life are dieting, exercising, tanning and most excessively, the women in my life are unsatisfied with their bodies.
While this fact is apparent and striking at this time of year, it is nothing new. According to a February 2014 TODAY/AOL Ideal to Real Body Image Survey, women spend an average of 55 minutes every day working on their appearances — that’s 335 hours every year, or two weeks. Other studies have suggested even greater amounts of time wasted. In January, a Yahoo Health survey of 2,000 people discovered that men are twice as likely to be satisfied with their appearances than women.
Not only is it in the numbers, but from Erin Andrews’ lawsuit to Kim Kardashian’s nude selfie controversies, recently it has been exceptionally obvious how the obsession with female bodies saturates our culture — we even live in a culture in which beauty is often blamed for sexual violence against women.
For groups commonly or historically discriminated against because of their appearances, learning to love their appearances for the culture and heritage they represent is important. However, the Positive Body Image Movement, while nobly intended, has created a culture obsessively focused on appearance, and is not without its issues.
A writer for the WomanStats Project Blog referenced in a 2014 post, “Why I Dislike the Positive Body Image Movement,” the “body image debate,” which means that by choosing to create a positive body image by changing your body through lots of work and exercise, these people are pitting themselves against an ideology that attempts to create a positive image by loving themselves as they are. Self-love ideologies create teams that tend to just shame the other.
The real problem with body positivity is the obsession with female bodies in general. Women are pressured toward eating disorders by celebrating unrealistic thinness and on the other extreme, unhealthiness is celebrated when harmful obesity is promoted.
Self-love is becoming a movement that, at one extreme, means, “I love myself so much, I will transform my body.” Self-love manifests itself in obsessive exercise, extreme dieting, tanning, plastic surgery, getting manicures and pedicures, getting your hair dyed and cut, purchasing expensive designer makeup and shopping for clothes that will mask your flaws. Even wearing corsets and “waist-training” is gaining popularity. Changing your body to feel confident is a completely false sense of self-love, and it’s an obsession that caters to what others see.
Many women I know have “thinspiration” or “fitspiration” Pinterest boards that are intended to inspire them to achieve a perfect body; in actuality, these images just make them feel extraordinarily inadequate.
Now, social media campaigns are all about “brave” no-makeup selfies and women displaying their bodies, tracking progress, writing long posts about why they love their bodies and spending hours upon hours crafting self-confidence about how they look on the outside.
No matter which extreme of the body positivity movement a person resides in, it is obvious that it has transformed from positive and helpful and into shallow and ridiculous.
The WomanStats Blog insists that “the positive body image movement may have started out nobly, but it has devolved into another exercise in vanity and self-absorption. It has taught women to become self-centered and to believe that thinking about their bodies, no matter how, is absolutely essential to healthy functioning.”
Women should love their bodies for what they are and should strive to keep them healthy. It would be healthier if we could take the focus off bodies entirely and stop publicly “appreciating” female bodies and physical appearances, whether it be negatively or positively.
Suzannah Weiss, a prolific lifestyle writer about female-body-image issues for Marie Claire Magazine, stated, “Accepting how much space our bodies take up can be empowering — but so can giving our bodies less much space in our heads.” The truth is, body hatred of this “body image obsession” can distract women from power and accomplishments.
The message we receive from the Positive Body Image Movement is that you can be fat or thin, but the focus is absolutely still on how you look. We need to change the focus from our appearance to our capabilities, from how confident we are in a bikini to how confident we are asserting our opinions, goals and our power.