I came across a case in point today, fucking blew my mind: Body dysmorphic disorder. Basically, people perceiving flaws where none exist.
Now, this would be a reasonable diagnosis in a culture where average bodies (meaning, the bodies that most of us, on average, possess) were considered 'normal' and were reflected as such in our media - movies, magazines, newspapers, etc.
But when we're subjected to headline after headline, day after day, month after month, shaming some female celebrity for gaining or losing an ounce, or hell, 20 pounds (whose fucking business is it, anyway???), women begin to get a little paranoid. I mean, when you realize that Photoshopping is standard practice on every single picture of a woman ever published in a glam magazine, there is no such thing as normal.
To pretend that we can, or should be, immune to the millions of images our visual space is inundated with every single day of our waking lives is, not to put too fine a point on it, pure, unadulterated BULLSHIT.
What's more amazing is that there are women who manage to avoid having some kind of severe and disabling insecurity about their appearance. I mean, imagine being Britney, or Oprah, or Kirstie-whose-last-name-I-forget, but whose face is currently being splashed across all the tabloids at the supermarket checkouts. Every weight gain and loss, every slightest fluctuation, every speck of cellulite is breathlessly analyzed to death by the media. Why do we put these women up on these impossible pedestals, and then do everything in our power to knock them down again? Sounds like the whole culture has a disorder, if you ask me. 'Impossible expectations' disorder, maybe.
Kirstie is 60 years old, for fuck's sake! How long are women supposed to keep up this bullshit practice of trying to look 18? Google her and look at a photo. She's fucking gorgeous! The fat probably helps her look young and fresh rather than dried out and old.
And you can't win for losing: Another stunner such as Nicole Kidman has managed for an unreasonable number of years to benefit from her genetic luck of the draw; and now, in her early 40s and after two kids, she's finally starting to show a few gray hairs and has succumbed to the pressures of her industry by having some 'work' done. And she gets lambasted! For being 'too plastic', for 'refusing to age gracefully'. Tell me, how many American actresses over the age of 40 can you name who are still being hired for anything other than 'Driving Miss Daisy' types of roles? Even Kate Winslet, at the ripe old age of 33, was referred to recently as a 'cougar'. (For fuck's sake - if they raise the bar any higher, soon 14-year-olds are going to be worrying about wrinkles. For all I know, they already do...) Meryl Streep joked in an interview with Ellen Degeneres that she'd been considering accepting a role thinking she was playing the 'older woman', only to discover that the 'older woman' was being played by Uma Thurman (?!) and that she, Meryl, was going to be the 'older, older woman'.
My head hurts from banging it on the wall.
Here for the photo portion of our essay I'll trot out my personal favorite, Helena Bonham Carter, a woman who I find to be the epitome of aging naturally (yes, I realize spending hours being made up and having your hair styled, and having people specially light you to your best advantage is not 'natural' - it's all relative), navigating the pitfalls of stardom with style, class and grace (not to mention her incredible, delightful sense of wackiness). At the age of 40-something, she can still look fantastic on the red carpet:
A while back I was looking for photos of Bonham Carter as an antidote the Hollywood's hyper-plastic starlets (I don't blame them, truly. I just need to look elsewhere for inspiration). In my search, I came across this ridiculous ultra-closeup taken at the same event, lamenting that 'Miss Bonham Carter has had a waxing failure' and 'needs to visit the dentist' or some such tripe:
How many of us would look flawless this close up at the age of 40-something, after a hot walk under the merciless glare of the photographers' flashes? Anyone who looks this good without the constant cosmetic 'adjustments' Americans seem to be coming to take for granted - teeth whitening, caps, facial sandblasting (I forget the proper name) - is nothing short of a miracle of nature, if you ask me.
Jesus, if these gorgeous women who are still held up as the epitome of beauty by the fashion industry in their 40s aren't 'good enough' for the pathetic little shites who sit in their frito-dusted dungeons and take anonymous potshots... fuck 'em. The pathetic little shites, I mean. That's all I have to say.
But back to the point: When women like this are ridiculed for the most miniscule 'flaws', how can we expect 'normal' women not to be a little edgy and insecure??? We live in a world where models actually aspire to be a size zero (and trust me, they didn't get there on their own. Blame the fashion designers who see models as nothing more than animated clothes hangers to parade their wares. Can't be cluttering their clean, spare lines with unsightly, actual flesh, now, can we - that would just simply be too utterly, unspeakably revolting. /snark off). What the fuck is a 'size zero', anyway???? Non-existent? Where do we go from here - negative numbers? Jesus. And people wonder why anorexia has an almost cult-like following among some teenage girls. WAKE UP, people!!!!! As ye sow, so shall ye...etc. These so-called 'diseases' do not spring forth fully formed from the brow of Zeus or what have you.
Yes, of course we can rationally 'know' that the images the media portrays of women are false, misleading, unrealistic. But when they're the images held up as 'ideal'? When we never see women like ourselves reflected anywhere in our popular culture? This is powerful stuff. No matter how feminist, intelligent, enlightened we may be, we're all susceptible to the messages our culture feeds us about who and what we should be. One of the ways we know we're 'ok' is that we see images of ourselves reflected in our world. A world that doesn't reflect us back is basically telling us: You're not OK.
Holding women individually responsible for resisting the insane obsessions of our culture is just, well, wrong. Not to mention stupid, pointless, and a complete waste of time. Any woman who manages to maintain her sanity in this fucked-up mess of misogynistic, materialistic mindlessness should be given a fucking medal.
Sigh. So many cognitive dissonance-producing messages to call out and untangle, so little time.
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