A high school classmate of mine posted something on Facebook
today comparing herself to a well-known and extremely thin celebrity. The gist
of the post was why bother competing if we have already lost. It is a very good
question but it got me thinking about body image and the way we view ourselves
as women.
I don’t think any female wakes up every day and thinks she
is supposed to look like Barbie or Kim K or Gwyneth Paltrow. I do, however,
think we wake up every day and are told that we should want to look this way.
This puts us in this weird middle place where we know that the whole world is
not judging us on a daily basis, watching the number of calories we take in,
the number of hours we spend in the gym, and how flattering our outfits are on
these rock hard Pilates bodies. No. We might be judged by the people we know,
our friends, family, coworkers; and we might be judged in passing by strangers
we walk by in the mall or at a restaurant, but in general we do not experience
the same type of scrutiny to always look amazing as celebrities do, and yet we
feel we should put ourselves through that experience.
Most days after showering I look at my naked body in the
mirror and I see some really positive things. I have great collar bones, my
back is really nice, I have a stellar ass, my legs are long and toned (even if
there is a tiny bit of cellulite). But I also seem to focus on the negative
aspects of my body. My stomach is not flat, my hips are too large, I have back
fat that cosmetic surgeons refer to as flanks (I know this from looking up
liposuction), my breasts are too small, the backs of my arms are not as toned I
would like them to be, my nose is slightly crooked, my upper lip is too thin,
my eyebrows are different shapes, my ankles are too skinny, and so on. Yet,
with all of my imperfections, most days, I look in the mirror and can overlook
the things I hate about my body. I can put on clothes and know they flatter my
body. I can walk out of the house with my head held high and know that I look
good.
The paparazzi don’t follow me around every single day, and I
think that helps my self-confidence, living in the PNW doesn’t really hurt it
either. But I guess my point is, who decides what is beautiful and why do we
all expect to fit into the same box of beauty? Why do we even want to? We all
have different hair color, eye color, skin color. We come in different shapes
and sizes, so why are we trying to force ourselves to change? Of course, I am
not saying to accept being overweight, or people shouldn’t get cosmetic surgery
if that is what they really want, but I am saying that striving to look like a
celebrity is ridiculous. Those women are paid to be beautiful whereas the rest
of us are paid to show up to work every day and perform our job duties. Sure,
being pretty helps me in my profession of slinging margaritas, but my job is
not to be pretty.
Comparing ourselves to knockouts such as Jennifer Lawrence is
like comparing ourselves to aliens. We seem to forget that we do not live in the
same world as these beauties. Sure, we might inhabit the same planet, but we
are not actually competing with them. I wake up every day having no fear that
my boyfriend might one day leave me for Angelina Jolie, partly because he has
never done a movie with her, but also because it is never going to happen. We
spend so much time worrying about how we look and wondering why the girls that
grace the covers of gossip rags have these perfect bodies while we slave away
trying to maintain a reasonable BMI that we forget these starlets are freaks of
nature. We forget to look around the grocery store and see the women we are
actually competing with, and usually against those women, we are safe.
But the bigger problem is that we seem to forget we are more
than just our outside appearance. For all of my physical flaws, I am pretty
fucking awesome. I am smart and creative, I dance and laugh at myself, I make
my friends and family laugh (usually at my own expense), and generally I am a
pretty cool chick. So, while being pretty might be what gets me free drinks,
being rad is what makes guys, friends, family, strangers, whoever want to
continue a conversation with me. That has to count for something, and honestly
I think that has to count for a lot more. I was born with this body type. I
came out of my mother’s womb destined to have a pear shaped body and be
mistaken for a lesbian throughout my formative years, I cannot change that.
Being awesome is something I had to groom, not a lot because I was also born
pretty freaking awesome, but it has been honed, slightly. That is what I think
we should be focusing on. Not who looks the most like some famous actor or
singer, but who can hold a conversation and have an original thought and make a
joke and laugh at themselves. Maybe if we started focusing more on those things
we would be jealous of how funny or smart a celebrity is instead of how thin or
large breasted. And maybe it is just me, but I would rather look up to a smart
person than a pretty person.
No comments:
Post a Comment