How The Media Gets You To Hate Your Body Part 3

Excerpt From Not Tonight Dear, I Feel Fat

So, an older fish swims up to two younger fish and she says, “Hi girls, how’s the water?” The young fish smile, nod and the older fish swims away. About a minute later, one of the young fish turns to the other and says, “What the hell is water?”

To understand the process of how media gets you to hate your body you first have to realize, like the older fish in the story, that you’re surrounded by water– in the form of endlessly repeating images of a single form of feminine beauty; an inescapable, singularly monolithic idea of what you’re supposed to look like if you want male attention and female admiration. Once you realize the “water” you’re swimming in, it’s easier to understand the reaction so many women have to the image-overload: “There must be something wrong with me because I don’t look like that.”

Your conviction that there is something seriously wrong with your body–that it needs work, that it is not worthy of looking at and especially not worthy of having sex, is not a fact you discovered, it’s a fiction thrust upon you. You didn’t make the judgment that there’s something wrong with the way you look. The media did. You just bought into it. You did not come to the conclusion that you should be ashamed of your body. The media did. You merely accepted it.

But how is that possible? The images of thinner-than-healthy women may be inescapable, but they’re just images. Even if they’re repeated endlessly, how can they make you feel so bad about yourself? Because the singular representation of beauty isn’t just presented as an ideal but as the solution to all your problems, the path to a happy life, the road to sexual ecstasy.

If you look like the women they present, you’ll get your man. If you can fit into a size 2, you’ll get the respect you crave. If you can take the curves out of your figure you’ll put love into your life. If you can get your thighs to look like tubes you’ll be the envy of all women. If you could just look like the media-sponsored women, men would fight over you, shower you with attention, and make you feel loved and cared for. If you just looked like them sex would be something you’d deserve, look forward to, be confident about, and get pleasure from.

The media purposefully presents these skinnier-than-possible models because they’re trying to move product. They can’t sell diet books, plans and programs to women who are satisfied with their bodies. They can’t sell slimming foods or exercise regimens to women who like their form and shape. The can’t sell magazines filled with beauty makeovers to women who think they look fine. No need means no sale. Therefore they must create a need and the best way to do that is to create dissatisfaction.

Advertisers are quite literally giving you a problem so they can sell a solution. From Cosmopolitan Magazine (“Get A Banging Beach Bod In Three Days!”) to People Magazine (“Fastest Celebrity Post-Baby Slim-Downs”) to O, The Oprah Magazine (“Dress 10 Pounds Slimmer”), the messages are clear and unmistakeable: There’s a problem with the way you look and we know how to solve it.

Media To Women: Get Thin Or Get Out.

The media’s feminine ideal comes with a premise (thinness is vital to personal happiness) and a promise (thinness solves every problem, especially in bed). The playbook is clear: get thin or get out. You either get as thin as those models or you’re doomed to a lonely life without male attention or female admiration.

Now, who wants to be damned into eternal loneliness? Who wants to be invisible to men? Disrespected by women? Celibate in the bedroom? Understandably, you don’t want to be left behind. You see how everybody is constantly observing and evaluating the female form and you understand, intuitively, that you must also. In order to be loved and accepted you must be able to present your body the way the media presents bodies. You must be able to look at and evaluate your body the same way others do or you won’t know if you’re acceptable. So, you do what a lot of women in your situation do. You…

Take on the role of the observer. Slowly, gradually, without knowing it, from the time you were a little girl, you agreed to take on the role of observer of your own body. Just like so many look at you as something to be evaluated, as an object that might be worthy of desire, you slowly started observing and evaluating your body the way others do. And now you devote a great deal of your attention to self-surveillance, habitually and constantly monitoring your body’s outward appearance.

But what happens when you observe that your body doesn’t look like the media ideal? You react the way the same you react to any public rejection, like being benched in front of your teammates, being passed over for promotion or failing a college entrance or medical board. You react with shame, guilt, worthlessness, anger, and self-loathing. You call yourself stupid, lazy, incapable of discipline. You get anxious that others will see your obvious failure and judge you. You become afraid of being the butt of jokes. They’ll say you’re so dumb you got locked in a grocery store and died of starvation. They’ll say your blood type is Ragu. And if they don’t make the insults you’ll gladly do it for them. .

Every day, the media asks you to take a ‘yes or no’ test: Do you look like the women we say are beautiful? Pass the test and you get rich, handsome men to adore you over a candle-lit dinner. Fail it and you spend Saturday night alone eating cat food.

If you buy into this fiction–caviar if you pass the media’s beauty test, cat food if you don’t–you are destined to a world of hurt. It is anatomically impossible for all but the tiniest fraction of women to look like the ideal of beauty the media peddles. For example, the average fashion model has a BMI of 17.1 according to Will Lassek, M.D., a former Assistant Surgeon General, while the average American woman has a BMI of 28.1. Unless you’re already there or close to it, trying for it is a recipe for self-hatred. You’ll look at your shortcomings and have a field day with the disappointments. You’ll dislike yourself, sure, but the real hatred will be reserved for the un-cooperating body parts–the tummy that won’t go flat no matter how many crunches you do, the thighs that won’t slim down no matter how much you run.

“I avoid certain sexual positions because I’m afraid of how my partner will react when he sees parts of my body I’m ashamed of.”

But you persevere anyway. You formulate an action plan. You start investing a lot into your appearance, particularly dieting and exercise. You blast your butt, feel the burn, crunch those abs. You mainline hope into your veins. You don’t buy that bullshit about the anatomical impossibility of achieving the kind of body you see flickering on the screen or staring out at you from every page. Yes, you’re average sized for an American woman–close to 5’4 and 142 lbs. And yes, those media beauties are 5’9 and 110 lbs (the average size of models and starlets). But it can be done. You’re sure of it. Maybe you can’t grow 5 inches, but you can lose thirty pounds, drop four dress sizes and decrease your body mass index by a third if you just worked hard enough. How do you know? Because the media tells you so. Why are they telling you? Because they’ve got product to move. So they create the need, then the hope, and finally, the sale.

Every day they trot out new workouts and diets that promise eternal salvation from the mirror. They treat the body as a construction site, assuring you that with the right motivation and materials you can turn stadiums into skyscrapers.

So you go for it. Again and again. And fail again and again. Oh, sure, you have moments, true victories, but they’re temporary. The only thing you end up losing permanently is balance and self-respect. The cycle of self-loathing is set: Try, fail, shame. Try, fail, guilt. Try, fail, despair. You live out a daily pattern: Compare your body to the media ideal, constantly monitor it for flaws, spend time and money trying to fix it, then collapse into a cycle of shame, depression and despair.

But enough about the first half half of your day. Let’s move on.

How This Plays Out In The Bedroom

Now that we know how you got in this mess, let’s answer a specific question: Exactly how does a poor body image affect you in the bedroom? Studies have shown body image has a direct cause and effect relationship with almost all sexual functioning. A poor body image can choke the life out of your libido. It can make you turn down sex even when you want it. It distracts your attention from pleasurable physical feelings to your perceived imperfections.

The shame lowers or eliminates your ability to ask for the things that turn you on, reducing the overall pleasure of an experience. It forces you to emotionally disengage from what’s going on, leading to difficulty climaxing or less pleasurable orgasms. As stated before, a study in the Journal of Sex Research went as far as saying that body image has as much of an impact on sexuality as menopause.

“I want to want to have sex, but at least my lack of desire keeps me from experiencing shame and embarrassment.”

Let’s concentrate on desire for a moment, as low libido is one of the issues that women complain about most. Body anxieties can turn you into a sexual camel–somebody who can go great lengths of time without sex. A simple study was conducted a few years back that powerfully demonstrated the link between body esteem and libido. Women were asked to read aloud an erotic story and then asked about the state of their sexual desire. Women with a negative body image reported much lower arousal levels than women with positive self-judgments.

The link between body image and sexual desire does not correlate with actual body size, by the way. Studies are remarkably consistent in their conclusion that BMI (Body Mass Index–the ratio of height to weight) is not related to levels of sexual desire. In other words, your weight isn’t the problem; it’s your perception of your weight. To be clear, actually being overweight or obese increases susceptibility to a poor body image, but studies show that body image is far more important than actual body mass in predicting sexual function.

Which brings me to a refrain you’re going to hear often: Unless you are seriously overweight, losing weight is not going to improve your sex life. Let me repeat this. If you are waiting to have sex until you lose ten pounds, forget it. It’s the perception of your body, rather than your actual body size that’s affecting your experience of sex.

“I refuse to have sex unless I wear lingerie or clothing that covers up my flaws.”

Researchers have known for years that body image has a profound impact on women’s sexual functioning. They’ve examined the effects, documented them, and then replicated the results with a multitude of studies over the last twenty years. They know what it does but it’s only recently that they’ve been able to explain how it does it. While there are differing variations among academics, the critical path pretty much goes like this:

Self-Objectification

You take on the role of the observer

Self-Surveillance

You scrutinize, inspect and monitor your physical attributes for perceived imperfections

Appearance Anxiety

The self-surveillance reveals that you are not, in fact, a supermodel. So you invest a lot of time, money and energy trying to upgrade your appearance to acceptable standards, but the self judgments don’t go away. Your fear of being evaluated, scorned, and rejected results in a constant preoccupation with weight and other aspects of your appearance. You’re caught in a cycle of shame, embarrassment and anxiety.

Self Consciousness In The Bedroom

Appearance anxiety compels you to avoid sexual positions that give your partner an unflattering view of your body. You insist on lights out, and wear some type of camouflage clothing. You feel inhibited, passive and unable to articulate preferences that would make sex more enjoyable. You restrict your movements in bed to ensure limited views of your body.

Unwanted Sexual Problems

You experience a significant reduction or a complete loss of desire. You emotionally disengage from your partner. You experience reduced physical sensations because your attention is focused on your appearance. You find it difficult to climax and when you can it is less pleasurable than it used to be.

This is the typical way self-conscious women experience sex and it is no wonder that they seek relief in any way they can. But the preferred solution aggravates the problem. You don’t need to get a better body or improve your image of it to experience wonderful, shame-free sex. You can do it by activating a series of feedback loops that I’m about to introduce.