It’s a Lose-Lose Situation

As I was reading through Beauty Cult in the Full Frontal Feminism book all I could think of is how messed up our society is. I read and underlined key phrases such as “ugly is powerful,” “it’s killing us,” “suffer for beauty,” “hating yourself,” etc. These phrases were the key in opening stored memories of my childhood and adolescent years. Although Valenti’s focus is on “overweigh” women and young girls, I couldn’t help but recall my personal memories. I was always considered too skinny in the eyes of my childhood friends, family and high school peers.

Ugly is powerful. It really is! I always had nicknames such as skinny bone jones, spaghetti legs, skinny banana (just because I wore a yellow shirt one day), and twig. I did not like any of these names and it made me mad but I kept it to myself. I feel that these names led to me being shy, unconfident, unspoken, belittled, and reserved.

It’s killing us. It was killing me. As I entered my teenage years I was constantly asked if I was bulimic and/or anorexic… I was seriously neither. No one believed me – including my family! I think this led to some depression. I felt that what I had to say didn’t matter, which further made me all of the above mentioned.

Suffer for beauty. I always tried to eat to my maximum potential to try to gain weight. Most of the time I “suffered” from stomach aches, food comas, and feelings of being unhealthy. I wanted to be perfect and gain weight in all the right places, so I excessively exercised only focusing on attaining sexy legs and a flat stomach.

Hating yourself. I hated being too skinny, too shy, too insecure, too unspoken…I hated who I was far too often. I hated being asked if I had an eating disorder every other week. I hated being flat from the front and the back. I hated myself – congratulations society. Wood’s article further supports this point by indicating that even successful women feel this sense of self-hatred, physical obsession, and dread of lost control (p.487).

Our culture had portrayed this perfect woman in media and has implanted at such a young age that women should always strive to be/look in a certain way. It’s sickening to see how society has made women so concerned about their appearance. It’s a distraction that has a hidden agenda- to oppress women. While a female student spends 1 hour of her time getting ready to go to school, her male counterpart is perfecting his essay/homework/assignment. While a woman is spending money on cosmetics and boobs, a man is spending his money on “logical” things such as education, investments, and home purchases.

As I was applying on mascara today, I accidently caught some in my eye, it was not pleasant. Then I thought, eyelashes are suppose to keep particles and irritants out of our eyes and here we (women) are defeating the purpose of them! This incident reminded me of the article If Men Could Menstruate, where it mentions white skin being superior, but went in fact it’s more subject to ultraviolet rays and wrinkles. It all ties back to oppression; in my mascara scenario its “to keep male dominance intact” as Wood stated (p. 488). Basically society wants you to think your ugly, no matter how you look- your too fat, your too skinny, it’s a lose-lose situation for many women.