diverse! It is something you can see easily when walking down any urban street. Short women, tall women, skinny women, fat women, long-legged women, short-legged women, blondes, brunettes, young women, old women- the variety is staggering, if you think about it.
So why do we hang on to an idea of what a beautiful body should look like that excludes most of these bodies? Why is it so difficult for us women to accept our own diversity?
The beauty ideal we are taught we should conform to does actually describe the body of an adolescent girl. Small breasts, legs that are long in proportion to total body height, narrow hips. No curves, if possible. The moment that the inevitable happens and curves begin to grow, you are not beautiful any more by that standard.
One of the most tell-tale garments in existence is the spanx (tm) body suit. What is tell-tale about it is that even women who are almost in compliance with the shape ideals still feel that they have to squeeze themselves into such a garment in order to have a body that does not jiggle.
Almost every experiment made to decide what kind of body shape is deemed attractive in Western society points to one sad fact: when asked what kind of body shape they´d prefer in a woman, women chose a silhouette at least two sizes smaller that what men would chose when given a choice of the same row of silhouettes.
So, it´s not the MCP´s doing. We can let the male sex off the hook here quite nicely. Men want some curves on their women´s bodies. Just look at any edition of the well-known girlie magazines. I bet you will not find any anorexic bodies in there. What you´ll find is plenty of girls who even have surgery to have their cup size brought up. That´s another story, but it proves that those of us who try to hunger off any trace of fat including in the chest area are actually a long way off what men want.
So, what this amounts to is that we, we women, have been putting the pressure on ourselves. We are making ourselves miserable by thinking we´ll never be good enough unless we look exactly like those so-called supermodels.
Did you know, by the way, that the original decision to employ super-skinny women as runway models was due to the consideration that these women would not distract from the clothes they wore because such slim bodies were considered ugly back then? The super-skinny models were in reality considered to be no more than walking clothes racks!
And that is now the beauty ideal we try to conform to, and, if we fail, because our body has different proportions, because our genes tell our bodies to grow curves, it´s what makes us feel ugly and miserable.
We treat our dogs better than ourselves, there. Nobody would expect a cocker spaniel to have the legs of a greyhound, or a dachshund to be as tall as a dobermann. And the diversity of shapes is something that we even enjoy in dogs.
It is something that we could enjoy in ourselves, too.
Our society places such a high premium on individuality. We are continuously reminded that we are, each of us, unique.
And so are our bodies. Down to the lines on our fingertips. Every cell in our body is unique (or almost, if you´re an identical twin).
Take that in for a moment. Each of us is unique.
Then why should we live in cookie-cutter identical bodies?
Imagine, just for a moment, a world where every body can be beautiful. A world where beauty isn´t defined by conforming to some ideal shape, but by making the best of the body you´ve been given, treating it with kindness and respect, and allowing it to be at peak functionality, regardless of size.
To me, that´s mind-boggling.
In that world, I could take care of my body as best I could without having to fight the feeling of failure because I´m not stick thin and will never be. I could rejoice in every physical ability that comes back with condensing myself and moving more. I could thank my legs for having carried me thus far instead of hating them for being fat.
And I would instantly be rid of a ton of feelings of low self-worth.
What a wonderful world.
The only thing that keeps me from living there...
is my old ideas about what my body should be.
And my fear of not conforming to standard.
It´s high time we set ourselves another standard. One we can all live with. One that does not force us into a futile fight against our genes for all our lives.
Of course, we have a lot of unlearning to do then.
But new standards, like muscles, are a matter of training.
Are you ready to change your standards to include yourself?
Julia
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