by
Dr. Lili Pintea-Reed, PhD.
Dr. Lili Pintea-Reed, PhD.
It is very possible that the type of self hatred women have had used against them for many years around body image is now being used to mask racist and class hated particularly in professional settings.
Some time ago there was a wonderful book written by Susan Orbach called FAT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE . This was one of many feminist tracts to outline how most adult women's natural body contours are used by the dominant culture to make her feel bad about herself. Woman are made to feel inadequate about something natural ---their curvy shape --- in order to control and manipulate their behavior. On the surface, this is often seen as merely the ploy of "evil advertisers" to sell more and more "beauty" products by making women feel bad about their natural appearance. But I think it has deeper ramifications.
Women who come to hate the very sight of themselves can become prey to various depression based mental health problems. Depressed women are ineffective women. Depressed women are too tired, or too sad to fight back. Depressed women don't only spend tons of money to try to look like androgynous pre-adolescent children, but they are easily manipulated in other ways as they simply lack the mental energy to contend with much above the daily grind. They don't speak up. They aren't political. They don't demand equal work for equal pay. They are targets of abuse and violence.
Most rapes occur on female children aged 14 years or younger. Most rape is actually pedophilia (Greenfield, 1997; Craven, 1996; Ringel, 1996)
And our culture feeds this abuse and violence against very young women by agreeing that pre-adolescent female appearance is an acceptable focus of carnal attention -- or in a word lust. Instead of people being outraged that young girls are lust objects --women are told, and buy into the notion, that they should all try to look like they are 13 years old -- instead of grown women. This has becoome so pervasive a notion that eating disorders are a growing national problem. Perfectly healthy grown women diet themselves down to the point where like ballet dancers and gymnasts, they stop having menstrual periods as their fat/muscle ratio has gotten so low.
And now that the notion that "ugliness resides in bosoms and hips" has taken on such monstrous life, the dominant culture has spread the tactic to a greater population --those of ethnic and lower class back ground. Fat is a racist issue.
For a while it had become illegal and very politically incorrect to make demeaning racist or social class comments about people, particularly in the work place. To be that direct would land one in the manager's office, no less possibly in court. To make issue of some basically unchangeable aspect of oneself like skin color can no longer be subject for comment in proper society. But old attitudes die hard. They seek modes of expression that haven't been cause for legal complaint. People who feel racism and class hatred seething inside themselves are always looking for a way to express their hateful beliefs.
I think that recently this has come to be expressed under the mask of "health consciousness." The thinking expressed is on the surface reasonable for example "My goodness who could be opposed to good health? Who wants to have heart attacks?" and so forth. But in action much of the focus seems to be on both poor and ethnic people. These are groups the complainers know perfectly well have natural body types that are adapted to the hard labor that was the only means of employment for many groups before either assimilation or civil rights laws. They are naturally sturdy, large boned, and strong.
SO is this weight consciousness really racism in disguise? At first it hadn't occurred to me. I just though some 'those people" who were naturally intolerant had simply found another hobby horse to pound on, and marketers always seeking an extra buck, had found new prey. People who were never going to be "thin" no matter how "skinny" they got. They were simply naturally broad shouldered wide hipped sturdy people with large bones and muscle mass. They are never going to "thin." They were certainly a market for diet products, and plastic surgery like breast reductions until Hades freezes over. Oprah is never going to look like Twiggy and Twiggy is never going to look like Oprah. Advertisers love this fact, but is it more?
I think so. Recently my consciousness was awakened by a person who made some comment about my "ethnic build" and how it was a "dead giveaway." This was one of those weird conversations where the speaker (who thinks they are picture of liberalism) does not even realize they have expressed some very racist values. Since I felt they were telling me something people don't usually say in open conversation, I let them wax on about the subject for some time. In essence, they felt they were expressing a pretty common viewpoint that in our increasingly multi-ethnic society that "race" could be determined by build, if not by color. My own ancestry is Peasant European and American Indian --hardly people known for a delicacy of build. I'm probably 20 (twenty) pounds over an ideal weight with a naturally curvy figure. Before I had my kid and got a figure, I was so skinny when I performed a part where I played a child I was mistaken by some people for a teen aged boy. While I have blue eyes and mouse brown hair and am relatively light skinned I've never passed for white -- or wanted to. I'm very proud to be Native American and have always said so. But the speaker of the enlightening tirade felt "certainly" with those blue eyes I'd try and give "passing for white" a try. They told me not to bother "as with your build everyone will know you are not white anyway."
Now I was very offended by all this commentary. But it was a wake up call. Build is race? Had racism found another hiding hole in the name of "Health?"
I now suspect this is so. Its simply too good a tool. make a person hate some unchangeable normal aspect of themselves, and then control them with this irrational process. I don't think you have to Freud, Jung, or Ellis to see the distorted thinking this represents. The opportunity for racists to expand on this theme to the level the pedophiles in the culture have with women and body hatred just boggles the mind.
Do we want a country where people can mask ethnic slurs as health commentary? Where body build becomes just another tool of subjugation? I suggest we watch this carefully to see if the person I talked to the other day was just one, or many. I suspect the latter.
REFERENCES
Craven, Diane:Female Victims of Violent Crime, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1996.
Greenfield, Lawrence: Sex Offenses and Offenders, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1997.
Greenfield, Lawrence:Child Victimizers: violent offenders and their victims, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1996.
Ringel, Cheryl: Criminal Victimization 1996, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1996
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