So I've been thinking a lot, lately, about self-image and body-image, and how we perceive these things and how horribly fucked our social perceptions of these things are. Exhibit A: me. I'm five foot three, weigh 123 pounds, and wear a size six. Ninety percent of the time, when I look at my body, my immediate gut-level reaction is "That is disgusting, what in the hell do you think you are doing, you are a disgusting and ugly mess and no one wants to see that." I am getting better at drowning out that gut-level reaction voice, and have gotten super adept at picking on very small specific parts of my body to be okay with (topping my list is "you know what, I totally have a great rack." Which is not actually a small specific part of my body, but. XD)
Over the last few months I've picked up a lot of consistent reading in the feminist blogosphere-stuff that I read on a daily basis includes Shakesville and Shapely Prose-and as part of reading that I've become more aware of-or at least, more able to identify and put into words-the ways in which the constant social message is you are never good enough. I am not thin enough. I am not pretty enough. My breasts are not big enough. My thighs are too jiggly. My smile is the ugliest thing known to mankind. My eyelashes aren't thick enough, for God's sake. Those hips are six miles wide, how dare I show them in public. My hair does the stupid dandelion-poof thing when I look at it wrong. There are six million products I can buy or try, thousands of "little beauty secrets" to "fix" everything that's "wrong" with me.
But here's the thing. I could use all those products, and they could all work exactly as advertised, and I could be the perfect woman. Except for how I wouldn't be, because I'd still be lazy, still not be the next Julia Child, still not be CEO of a Fortune 50 company, still would not have children which we all know is the greatest possible failing any uterus can commit and seriously, that biological clock is ticking GET ON THAT SHIT you are GETTING OLD, Miss Not-Yet-Thirty, and you have failed life, the universe, and everything by not being the perfect supermom who's also smoking hot and blah blah blah.
So hey, guess what. I'm twenty-seven. I've still got fifty plus years to kick around here, assuming medical technology continues to improve and I don't do anything stupid and nobody else decides to be an asshole and kill me or something. So why is it I'm supposed to have all this shit figured out already?
I'm trying to put into words the way in which I find the priorities of American society so wrong and broken, and I'm having a hard time with it. The best I can come up with is: when your society is built on the enforcement of being discontent, rather than being built on encouragement of contentment, you are doing nothing but hamstringing yourself repeatedly.
If I added up all the time and productivity I have lost over my life-which is pretty short yet, remember-to worrying about how I'm not good enough, not pretty enough, not thin enough, not smart enough, not successful enough, everyone is laughing at me, I am a failure, and the whole rest of that mental carousel, and if I had spent all that time knitting instead, I could have clothed half of Chicago by now. (Nevermind that I don't knit. It was the first quantifiable production idea that came to mind.)
I can make miles of lists of why certain individuals, or classes of individuals, would want to enforce discontent of self-image or body-image on other individuals or classes of individuals. Corporations do it so you will want to buy their products. The kyriarchy does it to keep themselves in power because those who could effect change are too busy being lost in their own inadequacy to believe that they can effect that change.
But I look at these lists of reasons and I wonder: how did we get here? I mean I understand the value of encouraging people to always strive for something better, because that's how improvements are generated; stagnation can be death, in certain circumstances (metaphorically or literally.) For example, wanting to improve medicine so that fewer people fall ill and die, or so fewer people suffer: this is an excellent goal. But when did striving for something better necessarily begin to equate to inability to be okay with what one already has? I mean, sure, I would like to be more financially well-off. That doesn't stop me from recognizing my blessings in my current financial state, or being aware that I live rather comfortably and could remain at this income level (we'll assume adjustments for inflation) for quite some time. I am willing to pursue betterment, but not at the cost of the joy I currently have in my life-for example, I am not willing to take a job that requires eighty-hour weeks, because then I have no time to enjoy the fruits of my labour. I'm really quite okay with that, and happy with that decision.
So how come I still hate myself whenever I look in the mirror, or catch sight of my stomach?
Our society is fucked in the head, I tell you.