If we value our young, we need to collectively take better care of them. Their whole capacity to be good and happy human beings will grow in direct proportion to this caring, and their sexual happiness and wholeness will be just one aspect of this.
Finding the Courage to Get Real
Tania Andrusiak
On my hard drive is a folder I’ve called ‘Real Women.’ In this folder are hundreds of images of women. Some are celebrities, most are not, but all of them are beautiful and brave because they boldly put themselves before the camera in a culture that derides their size or shape. They’re not all bigger women, but they all recognise that they have more to offer than their dress size. These women defy the social messages to stay hidden and out of the cultural gaze because they don’t ‘fit the mould.’
These women live in a world where discrimination based on what your body looks like is legitimised by an unhealthy obsession with manufactured beauty, and the misguided belief that thinness is synonymous with health. This is the same world I inhabit, where I’ve been told to lose weight since the age of eight, and where people roll their eyes in disbelief if someone suggests they’re happy with their body the way it is.
This is the world in which we’re asking our daughters to get real about their bodies. It’s a world where from ever-younger ages, girls are not just sexualised and diagnosed with eating disorders, but indoctrinated into consumption-driven lives by cosmetic, diet and fashion industries which demand they reject who they are and what they look like, to instead pursue an ‘improved’ version of themselves.
The images in my folder sit there to inspire me. It’s a place of refuge for the days I feel bad about my body. Because if we’re serious about ‘getting real,’ if we want a world where all women are respected and valued, if we’re to present future generations of women with options that truly realise the equality offered by feminism, it’s going to take more than letters of protest and bans on advertising. It’s going to take more than changing legislation or a market-driven ‘Pussycat Doll’-concept of girl power, where merely embracing our inner pole dancer amounts to liberation.
For millions of women hating what they see in the bedroom mirror, or dealing with derogatory remarks in the workplace, or wanting to relax in front of the TV without hundreds of images telling them they’re not good enough, real change will require one more thing.
Courage.
Getting real is going to take courage.
It’s going to take a collaborative effort to reject a mainstream view that values only one size, one shape, one demure pout. Getting real is about having the courage to embrace a diverse range of body shapes and sizes, instead of tearing each other down. It’s about looking to one another as allies to combat the disapproving chorus of voices saying ‘hasn’t she let herself go?’
And like our bodies, courage comes in all shapes and sizes.
Courage is my lovely friend Sarah who defies a lifetime of body image struggles by draping her curvaceous body in vibrant colours and beautiful patterns, refusing to fade away and avoid the attention of others.
Courage is the spunky eleven-year-old girl who told me how advertisers wanted girls like her to feel inadequate without the brands they sold in girls’ magazines—and who hated the way they made her feel as if buying these brands would make her loved, rather than lonely, in the school playground.
Courage is the women of size whose blogs I read; women who refuse to buckle under degrading comments made by ill-informed health professionals. Courage is the women who go for health checks even when they fear being lectured or ridiculed about their weight. Or who gather courage to attend appointments for their annual Pap smear and insist on having it even when they are told to come back when they’ve lost weight.
Courage is also a Melbourne GP who, with his fabulous 2004 book, If Not Dieting, Then What?, provides a desperately-needed antidote to the body hatred gripping our culture. Since meeting the author, Rick Kausman, we’ve shared ideas and stories about body image, the diet industry and its impact on so many lives—particularly women—but also their partners, families and communities.
It was through Rick that I found myself sharing teenage stories with Jeri.
Jeri has spent a lifetime dealing with anorexia, having been hospitalised several times to stabilise her weight. Now supporting her ageing parents, every day Jeri summons the courage to swim— an activity she described to me as a ‘passion for being enveloped in water’—knowing that her love for swimming is only matched by her hatred of exposing her body in public. She keeps on going, even when people tell her, with no hint of irony, that they’d kill to have a body like hers.
Rick noted that we often hear of courage in the context of men and sporting achievements. But when, he asked, do we celebrate the courage of women who struggle to live normal lives with deeply ingrained body image issues? When do we celebrate women like Jeri, whose actions are completely normal, yet incredibly brave?
Jeri’s quiet courage may go unrecognised. But it is rich in her caring for her parents and her refusal to give up swimming, no matter how confronting it may be. More than that, courage resonates in her ability to just keep going in a culture that too often glamourises her isolating and debilitating illness. It is there in her simple desire to share painful stories with me: to connect with someone she didn’t even know.
As we talked, Jeri and I managed to laugh about our similar food and weight obsessions; mine due to bulimia, hers through anorexia. I couldn’t believe she beat me at obsessive weighing: my ‘scales-in-a-day’ personal record was 30. But Jeri tells me she’d step on them a hundred times a day. A hundred times. Just getting on, getting off, and getting on again.
What were we looking for? A magic number? Permission to actually like ourselves? Happiness? Who knows. But we both knew how it felt to look in the mirror and utterly hate what we saw. Who am I? That ghastly reflection? Ugh. What a disappointment. It’s called the hate train, girls. Catch it at your nearest newsagent.
But we don’t just find it there. It’s so often handed to us as we first catch our mothers looking in the mirror at their own bodies with disgust. It’s there on the covers of women’s magazines that tower over us at supermarket registers. Young girls learn about it in every ad, TV show, Disney movie and music video they see.
Most young women understand only too well that obsessing over weight and appearance is simply expected of them. And why wouldn’t it be, when maintaining a ‘perfect’ body defines so many of the role models we’re expected to admire? When women’s bodies are now expected to snap back like elastic bands as soon as we’ve given birth? How do we fight against a mindset this immense, this entrenched?
Waging our own war against the magazines, building-sized billboards and ignorant comments from family and friends takes courage. Ignoring the calls to be skinnier, prettier, sexier, to eat less, spend more time at the gym, to count calories everyday of our lives takes courage too.
And while it’s hard to reject the ideals of flawless beauty and a size zero body, it’s much more painful to not fight it. In pursuing the ‘body beautiful,’ we commit to looking in the mirror and wishing we were different. We undervalue the gifts and talents that make us who we really are. We reject the truth that women are perfect without the constant dieting, waxing, buying and dyeing.
This is the price we pay when we buy into the beauty myth: in looking so hard at the fake images before us, we never get to see how much stronger we’d all be if we looked to each other instead. Our culture’s obsession with the ‘perfect body’ creates a distance between us.
Even worse, it leaves us with fewer ways to really connect. It pushes us to unite through games that prove our own body hatred: games like ‘my thighs are bigger than yours’ keep us from understanding one another. They prevent us from hearing each others’ stories. And, like Jeri and I, from hearing just how similar we really are.
If we looked to each other instead of the digital mannequins in front of us, we coul
d find the courage to show our children and communities what it means to get real. We could stop making apologies for the bodies we find ourselves in: ‘Oh, my bum’s too big. My breasts are too small.’
But, too big for what? Too small for whom? If we don’t ask these questions, we forget the impossible standard we’re comparing our bodies against: a fantasy designed not to give birth, or age, or embrace the cyclical nature of life, but one designed to sell product, titillate men and give us a goal so unachievable that we will never stop spending. Some role model.
This is the final result of a culture so allergic to body diversity: it isolates us from our own bodies. It makes a series of problems out of every one of us: problems that only consumption can solve. Bodies designed to nurture life are reduced to the sum of their parts. Our worth is based on our ability to fit a physical mould representing less than three per cent of the population.
So here’s the real bottom line: this epidemic of body hatred makes a few select people very rich; and so many of us very sad.
Who decided that a body isn’t ‘good enough’ until its excess fat is shed and its loose skin pruned, or stretched, or pinned back? What would happen if every mother found the courage to love her own body, so that her children may learn to love theirs?
What if we found the courage to talk back to ads, or refuse to take the number on the bathroom scales as an indication of our worth? What if we found the courage to get out and move our bodies simply because it feels good, not because we want to be three sizes smaller?
What if we all started collecting images of real women in their myriad shapes and sizes, and began to see a more accurate picture of true body diversity? Would we begin to see that what’s reflected back at us in celebrity images and advertisements isn’t normal?
Would we instead find the courage to look back at our own genetic heritage and realise that our bodies mirror those of our relatives and ancestors? Could we look to the bodies of real women our own age? Because if we did, we’d see breasts of all different shapes and sizes. We’d see drooping tummies and generous bottoms; uneven nipples and stretch marks. We’d see floppy underarms and inner thighs, and dimpled flesh on even the thinnest of bodies. All normal. All perfect for the bodies they find themselves on.
Or what if we organised to meet in groups small and large, in cities and the most remote of rural places, to raise our voices against the media manipulation of women’s bodies and to call for greater diversity in media representations of women? We could call ourselves Women Unite (or something fabulous!) and use it to connect, like Jeri and I, by sharing stories and finding comfort in our similar struggles.
If we worked at it, eventually it would serve its purpose. Then we could return to our tennis clubs, barbecues, environmental groups or belly dancing classes—or even just to Saturday nights with friends—and talk about something other than how women look, who’s had botox, and how much weight we’ve lost or gained. How great would it be if, instead of greeting each other with, ‘Wow, have you lost weight?’ we said, ‘Wow! You’ve learnt something new!’
Or what if we simply started by asking ourselves what the deal is with this obsession with women’s bodies? Aren’t we sick of the amount of attention paid to those who pass or fail the perfection ideal? Who cares if Britney Spears has gained four pounds? Why on earth is it breaking news if an actor has bumpy thighs? Don’t we all?
We urgently need to find the courage to see through these images.
Because the women we’re dying to emulate are nothing more than collaborative works of persuasive art, manufactured by teams of creative people, driven to synthesise and execute an idea for sale. They are not prescriptions or directions for a happy life.
And the truth is that no, pictures of thin women alone won’t give you an eating disorder. But they will certainly increase the possibility of one. Trust me: these images will rule your life if you let them. They’ll steal your brain. They’ll poke holes in your self-confidence. They’ll drive you to harm your bodies in ways you can’t imagine.
These images don’t just say, ‘Here, buy our product.’ They say, ‘Here. Buy our dream.’ But it’s an empty jar. The emperor has no clothes.
Look. All of us bleed. We all sweat, fart, burp and smell more like one another than any of us would care to imagine. We all dance, cry, dream, sing and want to rip our hearts out when someone we love dies. That’s because we’re all human. All of us.
Each of us is an exquisite symphony of muscles, nerves and synapses. Our bodies are extraordinary vehicles given to us to experience this earth, our lives. Yes, our bellies sag, our breasts droop and our skin crumples as we age. It’s inescapable. Our bodies will change with time. It takes courage to accept the inevitable cycles of life. We can’t keep back the tide forever.
And, why would you want to?
References
Kausman, Rick (2004) If Not Dieting, Then What? Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
One Woman’s Activism: Refusing to Be Silent
Julie Gale
In 2005, I was thinking about a theme for my next one-woman show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. I explored what was annoying me most—this is always a good starting point and I love satire. It was clear that I was becoming increasingly angry about what my young children were exposed to. Sexualised imagery on outdoor advertising, sexualised dolls, sexualised lyrics on CDs marketed to little girls and highly sexualised music video clips in kids’ viewing times on TV to name a few. Over the next two years I talked with many parents, collected personal anecdotes and began to formulate ideas for the show. I became aware that while most parents expressed concerns, they felt powerless to change anything. Others were reluctant to express concern at all, in case they’d be labelled ‘prudes.’
A billboard appeared at the end of my street which read ‘SEX FOR LIFE.’ I stood there looking at it thinking ‘what the…?’ Do my kids really need to be reading this on the way to the park? What a conversation starter! ‘What’s sex for life, mum?’ ‘Well, darling, it’s about all those men out there who can’t get it up anymore.’ Yeah right! This billboard was eventually replaced with ‘For a Star Performance…Premature Ejaculation and Erection Problems.’ The text itself was graphic enough, but the ‘woman’ featured in the ad looked about fourteen-years-old.
I was angry that my kids were involuntarily forced to ask questions about male sexual dysfunction before they had even a chance to ask about their own naturally emerging sexuality. This time I thought, ‘you guys have picked the wrong street!’
Around the same time The Australia Institute released its Corporate Paedophilia report (see Rush, this volume). The report said there had been ‘no sustained public debate’ about the issue in Australia. So I scrapped the one-woman show and started raising awareness.
I formed Kids Free 2B Kids (KF2BK) in February 2007 and set up an alliance with Young Media Australia (now the Australian Council on Children and the Media).
I was contacted by journalist Deborah Gough who had heard about my idea to organise a meeting between child development experts and politicians in Canberra. The following week an article about KF2BK and an image of the ‘Premature Ejaculation’ billboard appeared in The Sunday Age (Gough, 2007a). I was taken by surprise to be contacted by so many people—both in Australia and internationally—who were eager to voice concerns and share personal stories. A segment about the campaign aired on Today Tonight (March 29, 2007) and after that I was literally inundated. And, strike one: the premature ejaculation billboard disappeared!
The Sunday Age ran a series of articles over the following weeks which really helped to move the debate along. The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) announced it would review the advertising to children codes.1
* * *
1 ‘Sexual imagery in advertising may be toned down following a Melbourne mother’s campaign for higher standards. The Australia Association of National Advertisers, which sets the ethical codes for advertising, said it wa
s concerned about the public outcry against the sexualisation of children in advertising. The association’s executive officer, Collin Segelov, said the subject had been raised this week by its board at an industry meeting. Mr Segelov said it was a direct result of the Kids Free 2B Kids campaign led by Elsternwick mother Julie Gale, which was first revealed in The Sunday Age’ (Gough, 2007b, p. 5).
* * *
In the early days of the campaign, there was opposition from a couple of media academics who were adamant that the sexualisation of children was not an issue. Any concerns voiced were condescendingly dismissed as ‘moral panic.’ Similarly, certain advertisers suggested that people who had a problem with sexualised imagery on billboards were ‘a very small minority who are uncomfortable discussing the subject of sex with their children.’2
It was obvious to me from the start that many of these opposing views focussed on adults. For example, parents who can’t talk about sex with their children, parents who are prudes or wowsers, parents who are religious, or adults who don’t have a sense of humour. A common and tiresome excuse from the advertising industry is that ads are ‘humorous and irreverent’ and that the ‘target audience’ gets it—what they don’t say is ‘bugger the rest of you!’ While a minority of parents may fall into the above categories, in my experience most do not.
Getting Real Page 18
