The real problem with media beauty standards

Finally, it seems that a significant change is taking place in the corporate media. Ultra-thin women are no longer the only ones who meet their previously very rigid beauty standard, or what it really has been, a acceptability standard for women.

Women with real fat on their bodies (gasp!) are now increasingly represented on mainstream television and even in fashion magazines. They are not only appearing, but are being presented as examples of great beauty.

Sports Illustrated featured beautiful model Ashley Graham on its cover in 2016, who made international headlines because, by traditional media standards, she is about 70 pounds overweight.

Graham will now be a judge on the panel of “America’s Next Top Model” with Tyra Banks.

The popular HBO show “Girls” made headlines in recent years because it revealed real cellulite on one of the show’s stars. Glamor magazine did the same, featuring all four stars on its cover, one of them boldly fat, her cellulite exposed on purpose.

Cable television, YouTube and other forms of alternative media distribution established the past a decade or more earlier. They have allowed us to see real bodies represented on video on a regular basis.

Now, the corporate media itself is changing. Actresses in TV commercials, meteorologists, even pop stars… It’s happening. Women who are thinner than a scarecrow are no longer prohibited from being portrayed as normal, and even beautiful people.

What a victory, or so it seems. After all, for decades, feminists, concerned parents, and “plus size” activists have objected to media presentations of ultra-thin women as the measure of female beauty and the body type required for women. even qualify to be a star.

They argued that this standard places nearly all women alive, even thin women, in the “too fat” category, and that it leads many girls and women to develop anorexia, bulimia, and the kind of diet that ultimately leads to Binge.

Corporations like Dove have listened. The mainstream media is adapting to these demands. The basic tenets of public discussion of “body image” and the representation of women have changed. It’s progress, for sure.

But something is missing here. Something as big as an elephant in a room.

It’s something that has a lot to do with why so many women and girls have “body image” issues in the first place, and why so many develop eating disorders.

That something is not simply about an inflexible or unrealistic beauty standard or even physically unhealthy.

It is also about how the beauty of women is treated. It is about how women’s bodies are represented, however diverse in size, color and age.

To put it in feminist terminology: the problem is sexual objectification.

The cover of Sports Illustrated with the beautiful Ashley Graham might have sent the message to women thinner than a scarecrow that they, too, can be sexually desirable at their weight.

But is this a message about respectful longed for? Or something else?

Do the photos of the three featured women of various body types elicit in the male viewer: a respect for women’s boundaries, a recognition of their self-mastery and complex humanity, and an understanding that a woman’s sexuality is share only with those women? choose to share it with?

Or does it send the message to the male viewer that the complex humanity of the women who turn them on isn’t really real or doesn’t matter? Does it send the message that women have no meaningful sexual boundaries? And that women aren’t picky about who they choose to share their sexuality with because, just look, these three diverse models who have what many consider to be the best job in the world for women, modeling, offer it up to the camera. and for millions of anonymous male viewers, no criteria needed?

Girls and women do not develop low self-esteem, body image complexes, and eating dysfunctions simply because their body type is not represented in the media.

That’s part of the problem. But it is not the most important part. In fact, strict control over an outward beauty standard is really just one facet of the real, deeper problem, and that deeper problem is the disrespectful representation Of woman. The representation of women, and even girls, as sexual objects.

Not all women will agree that the sexual objectification of women is a form of disrespect. Some women feel that accepting that role is a way of reclaiming their femininity, and that the sexual attention they receive is not disrespectful.

I would say that what they are enjoying is relief from open disrespect and contempt.

To men who have learned to objectify women, the prelude to “getting some” seems like a kind of respectful behavior: smiles, nods, attention, perhaps gentlemanly courtship.

But if paying attention doesn’t see a complex and inherently self-possessed human being when they see a woman presented as a sexual object, there is no realism in their display of respect.

If you read stories from women and girls about how their eating disorders started, most refer to sexual abuse in the family, objectively commenting sexually related to the ultra-thin beauty standard, and being overly influenced by that ultra-thin beauty standard in the media. of communication – after your self-esteem is low.

And low self-esteem comes from being treated like you’re invisible. It comes from being treated as if one’s interior, one’s infinitely complex humanity, is not real or meaningful.

It comes from being portrayed in the ubiquitous media as if one doesn’t have the physical and sexual boundaries that people who matter do. The kind of limits that need to be respected. It comes from being treated as if one were an object for someone else to use, whether the “object” is designated as “beautiful” or not.

In response to the objectification of culture, especially in the media, women and girls learn to objectify themselves.

The natural perception that a girl has of herself, which she inherently has as a child, ceases to be the important subject of her life: the one who experiences his body, who experiences the world – to be an object for the visual pleasure of others.

She still has the needs of a subject, a real and infinitely complex person, but her self-perception is shaped by how she is treated and by the cultural representation of people who resemble her.

She begins to conceive of herself in terms of images. The images that represent the means. The images she knows of others (who are also media trained) see when they look at her.

It could be said that a “bad body image” problem occurs.

But a human being naturally does not think of his own body primarily in terms of an “image.” His conception of his body is naturally – before self-objection – multisensory.

This natural self-conception includes your visual understanding of your own body from the outside, but, before self-objectification is internalized, your internal experience of your body is not separate from your visual image of it.

If we don’t objectify ourselves, we naturally associate our visual impression of ourselves with our internal experience of ourselves.

When we have this natural perception of ourselves, we don’t define ourselves according to a “body image”. We don’t think of our body primarily from an external point of view, as if we were another person looking at our body.

It’s not that a self-possessed person doesn’t care about their appearance. The opposite is true. When we feel in control of ourselves, we care about our appearance because we are proud, in a healthy way, of who we are.

Some in the “body positivity” movement have said that women’s appearance is emphasized too much in the media, and that instead, women’s qualities should be valued in addition to physical appearance.

I think what they are intuitively opposed to is the objectification of the woman’s appearance.

Appearance does matter, because we matter. Our appearance is part of our totality.

It is the body’s internalized separation from individuality – self-objectification – that needs to be repaired.

It is the sexual objectification of women and girls in society that needs to change.

When we own ourselves, we love our body without having to reflect on whether we love our body.

We love being alive, we love being ourselves, we love being in an incredible human female body, incredible because it is alive and gives us life.

We are all masters of ourselves by nature, before our relationship with our bodies is severed by the violent and subliminal insistence throughout society and in the media that the female body does not signify human individuality. Instead, the female body is conceived and presented as if it were publicly accessible, until it has been privately claimed by someone other than the human self in that female body.

The natural self-love that we are all born with is hurt or destroyed in this process.

The battle against the uncompromising ultra-thin beauty standard seems to have been won, or at least the victory is in sight. But the problem behind that standard of beauty, why it was so damaging and why it existed in the first place, is sexual objectification and disrespect towards women. It all starts with objectification.

Time to name that “invisible” elephant in the room.

The problem that is currently identified as the “poor body image” of women and girls will continue until we launch another movement that effectively challenges the objectification of women and girls.

We already made some progress. Let’s get on with the change.