Dedicated to my peers:

I want to remind you all that at the end of the day, we’re all just people. The fat on my body is no different than the lack or abundance of it on yours. I believe that the stigma around what constitutes female beauty is a large proponent of the power hierarchies put in place to marginalize women; and I urge you to reject these ideas that there are right and wrong ways to be beautiful. Do not allow your worth to be determined by anyone or anything other than your own self. The reclamation of our bodies will be pivotal in affecting change in the near future.

Feminism and Body Image

         There is something about beauty, pain, and loneliness that seems inexplicably intertwined. I find myself, time and time again, in great existential pain at the thought of my loneliness, the failings of my own beauty. Of course, entertaining these destructive thoughts is only temporary; I’m always snapped back into reality upon the realization that my own internalized misogynies are just that: constructs of patriarchal society put in place to ensure my own self-marginalization. Ultimately, my anxieties and pains can be traced back to the extra fat my body carries. Furthermore, so many men and women struggle with body image and feeling comfortable in their own skin, I can’t help but wonder: is bodily shame a result of patriarchy, or is it a result of human nature? In this essay, I will be studying the works of Leslie Jamison, Lucy Grealy, and others to examine my own ‘plus-sized pain’ and its validity, or lack thereof, as well as other numerous struggles with body image, within the feminist issues of patriarchal beauty standards, to prove that the pain of bodily dissatisfaction is indeed rooted in patriarchal society.
Leslie Jamison’s Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain (2014) offers great insight into the way that female pain is both romanticized and erased. She states, “We may have turned the wounded woman into a kind of goddess, romanticized her illness and idealized her suffering, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t happen” (Jamison 3). Her assertion suggests that the very romanticization of female pain is what ultimately erases it, that pain cannot be simultaneously beautiful and real. She discusses how this erasure of pain creates a desire among women to manifest physical (i.e. ‘real’) pain through various forms of bodily harm. Jamison uses an example from Carol Knapp, who tried to display her pain to her mother by highlighting her body that had been destroyed by anorexia:

If using your body to speak betrays a fraught relationship to pain—hurting yourself but also keeping quiet about the hurt, implying it without saying it—then having it “work” (mother noticing the bones) would somehow corroborate the logic: Let your body say it for you. But here it doesn’t. We want our wounds to speak for themselves, Knapp seems to be saying, but usually we end up having to speak for them (Jamison 7,8).

Can this display of dramatic weight loss as a vehicle for psychological pain also apply to weight gain? While I’d like to believe it can, Jamison clarifies that even a frail and thin body, like Knapp’s, was ineffective in accomplishing the goal of drawing attention to her pain. Perhaps beauty standards that enforce the idea that thinness is beauty make this recognition of the anorexic body are the very one that prevented Knapp’s mother from recognizing her daughter’s pain.
I believe there is something to be said here about the way that beauty standards contribute to this erasure of pain. An article from the National Eating Disorders Association draws a connection between ‘thin culture’ in media and how it shapes the way young women view their bodies:

There is no single cause of body dissatisfaction or disordered eating. But, research is increasingly clear that media does indeed contribute and that exposure to and pressure exerted by media increase body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. Numerous correlational and experimental studies have linked exposure to the thin ideal in mass media to body dissatisfaction, internalization of the thin ideal, and disordered eating among women (NEDA).

These negative interactions with media can turn body image into a much larger problem for some. In Autobiography of a Body (1997), Lucy Grealy describes how her childhood cancer and its effect on her body not only destroyed her body image, but also fueled the idea that to be beautiful was to be deserving of love. She states, “beauty was the key to all happiness, and the only way I would ever find love; without it, I was meaningless” (Grealy 4). Similarly, in Our Barbies, Ourselves (1991), Emily Prager explores the overtly sexualized Barbie Doll in contrast to the genital-less Ken Doll:

Why, I wondered, was Barbie designed with such obvious sexual equipment and Ken not? Why was his treated as if it were more mysterious than hers? Did the fact that it was treated as such indicate that somehow his equipment, his essential maleness, was considered more powerful than hers, more worthy of the dignity of concealment? …How do they think I felt, knowing that no matter how many water beds they slept in, or hot tubs they romped in, or swimming pools they lounged by under the stars, Barbie and Ken could never make love? No matter how much sexuality Barbie possessed, she would never turn Ken on (Prager 3).

Prager asserts that the sexualization of women is inherently rooted in the power hierarchies of our patriarchal society. Women are taught, even through the toys they play with as children, that their own bodies are less meaningful and less powerful than mens’, and are therefore, obligated to sexualization. Prager also touches on the idea that women are taught to suppress their sexuality from young ages, while men are celebrated for theirs.
Another author that explores the way that gendered socialization is harmful to young identities is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her book, We Should All be Feminists (2014). She explains, “we teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way boys are” (Adichie 15). This refusal to allow girls to create connections with their bodies creates a sense of shame. Adichie goes on further to state, “we teach girls shame. …we make them feel as though by being born female, they are already guilty of something” (adichie 16). Jessica Valenti expands on this idea of shame through the use of the word ‘slut,’ and its connections to patriarchy in her Alternet article, He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut: The Sexual Double Standard (2008):

But it makes sense when you think about what the purpose of the word “slut” is: controlling women through shame and humiliation. Women’s bodies are always the ones that are being vied over for control — whether it’s rape, reproductive rights, or violence against women, it’s our bodies that are the battleground, not men’s (Valenti).

To combat this double standard that condemns women’s bodies and sexualities alike, Adichie suggest that a change must be made early on. She asserts, “we must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently” (Adichie 13). Could a focus on breaking down these standards of body and sex during childhood development be a huge step in the right direction when it comes to dismantling the patriarchy? Erin Tatum of Everyday Feminism Magazine seems to think so. In her article, 4 Things we Need to Teach Boys to Avoid Nurturing Their Sexual Entitlement, Tatum outlines possible solutions to the overused and unacceptable excuse that ‘boys will be boys.’ Tatum suggests that teaching boys that their “virginity is a burden” is a main contributor to the idea that women are objects, and also enforces the idea that “sexually active women don’t deserve their respect (Tatum). These ideas lead boys to believe that women only exist for their sexual pleasure, and consequently, really are objects rather than people. Perhaps identifying these subversive teachings and replacing them with constructive messages about female identity early will be key in the feminist revolution.
While childhood development is crucial to the construction of body image and the female identity, messages seen throughout adolescence and adulthood still carry great weight. As a plus-sized woman, I strongly believe that one industry that has failed to create constructive body image most is the fashion industry. For as long as I can remember, it has been a chore to find basic clothing that fits. While some people may argue that I need to just suck it up and come to terms with my fatness, it’s important to remember that not all overweight people have a choice in being overweight, and 67% of all American women are considered plus-sized. To put it simply, there are more of us than there are of you (I’m looking at you, Satina Edwards and Kris Voronin). So, if plus-sized women are the new norm, why is it so hard to find clothes that fit us? In an article for the Washington Post, Tim Gunn explains, “this is a design failure and not a customer issue. There is no reason larger women can’t look just as fabulous as all other women” (Gunn). He goes on to explain that although the $20.4 billion market for plus-size fashion is growing, designers like Karl Lagerfeld, and even brands like Abercrombie & Fitch show open disgust toward plus sized women. This circle of body shaming has to stop within the fashion industry in order to be more representative of American women.
In conclusion, beauty standards and their negative effects on body image are functions of the patriarchy. While harmful media causes physical manifestations of psychological pain through the destruction of young bodies, many girls go believing that their beauty equates to their desirableness. The way children are raised only enforces these ideas that a woman’s body is not inherently hers, that the way her body forms is perverted, that men are entitled to her. Even the prevailing size demographic of American women are turned away from society because their bodies do not conform to the idealization of what a woman should look like. There is something horribly wrong here, and to continue to perpetuate the cycle of shame is to become complacent in the face of oppression. Adichie’s words can no longer be solely immortalized in a Beyonce song, they must be immortalized by our actions as well.

Works Cited

          Jamison, Leslie. “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain.” VQR Online, The Virginia Quarterly Review, 2014.
National Eating Disorders Association. “Media, Body Image, and Eating Disorders.” National Eating Disorders Association, n.d.
Grealy, Lucy. “Autobiography of a Body.” Nerve Classics, Nerve, May 2015.
Prager, Emily. “Our Barbies, Ourselves.” Interview Magazine, December 1991.
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. We Should All be Feminists. Vintage Books, 2012, 2104.
Valenti, Jessica. “He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut: The Sexual Double Standard.” Alternet, 2008.
Tatum, Erin. “4 Things we Need to Stop Teaching Boys to Avoid Nurturing Their Sexual Entitlement.” Everyday Feminism Magazine, 2015.
Miller, Kelsey. “We Let You Down & We’re Going to Fix it.” 67% Project, Refinery29, 2016.
Gunn, Tim. “Tim Gunn: Designers Refuse to Make Clothes to Fit American Women. It’s a Disgrace.” PostEverything, The Washington Post, 2016.
Banjo, Shelly and Molla, Rani. “Retailers Ignore Most of America’s Women.” Bloomberg Gadfly, Bloomberg L.P., 2016.