I can remember the exact moment I became self conscious of my body. I was 12 and walking home from school when a boy I knew pointed at me, laughed, and said “Look how fat your legs are!”

I looked down at them and for the first time in my life I felt that my body was inadequate.

That moment has stayed with me forever, because that comment sparked a huge complex I had about my legs, something which still bothers me today. For years I only wore trousers and when I finally began wearing skirts and dresses, I always made sure I had tights or leggings on underneath, even in the Summer.

In fact, this Summer is the first since I was 12 that I have gone completely bare legged.

This wasn’t the only cruel comment I received during my teenage years. At school the same boy and his group of friends repeatedly called me ugly, told me I looked like the moon because I was pale and had chicken pox scars, as well as picking on my clothing, hair, anything they could think of, really. Looking back, I realise that this was bullying, but at the time I just accepted it and allowed the comments to feed the negative image I had of myself.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not naive enough to think that I would have loved my body 100% if I hadn’t heard those comments. We all know that young girls are subjected to representations of what they ’should’ look like in the media and compare themselves to those around them. But I know I wouldn’t have hated my body as much as I did if I hadn’t been told on a regular basis that I was no good.

I doubt that boy has even the faintest idea of the impact he had on my self worth and body image. In fact, he’s passed me in the street more than once without so much as a second glance. Does it make me angry? In a way, yes. I’m angry that people like him get away with causing so much damage. I was lucky that I eventually learned to love myself, but there are plenty of girls who are deeply, emotionally scarred by such knocks to their self esteem. Not just girls who feel the need to wear a mask of make-up or go under the surgeon’s knife, but girls who turn to self-harm and even suicide as a result of negative body image.

It has taken me nearly all of my teenage years to even begin to love my body and appreciate it. Now, I surprise myself when I realise that I don’t care when my friends talk about how they need to lose weight, or how they wish this was smaller or that was bigger. I am in a place where I have accepted myself. I am in a place where what people think of my body is of little relevance to me anymore. I know I am short, I know I’m curvy and I know I’m pale. But above all, I know that I am a beautiful person and no negative comment from a teenage boy is going to convince me otherwise. I just wish more girls felt that way.

In honor of the summit, I’d like to take this opportunity to share some of my favorite videos on the topic of body image (and how generally fucked up it is in our society).

Fat Talk

Dove Evolution

Onslaught

airbrushing at its best (worst)

When I was nine years old, I secretly dreamed of becoming a model.

I still wanted to be a writer, of course, but hey, a girl can dream, right? My family doctor had told my parents that because of their heights (my mom is 5’6” and my dad is 6’1”), my twin brother and I were likely to grow like bean sprouts to over 6 feet. I liked being tall for my age. Being my nine-year-old-self, I thought my potential height would be the key to becoming a model. (Also being young and naïve, I succumbed to society’s spoon-fed diet of telling girls that beauty is limited to certain numerical requirements. Thanks, society.)

I also liked the way models looked so serious as they strutted down the runway. (I distinctly remember practicing my walk down the length of my walk-in closet while trying to make my non-existent hips sway with every step. Embarrassing.) Models also got to wear the coolest clothes in photo shoots. And jet-set across the world to Paris, Milan, New York and back again.

But alas, nature foiled my plans as I stopped growing at 5’8”—close, but not quite—and realized that I tend to stumble over my own feet. I wouldn’t want to trip and fall into a crowd of famous celebrities and designers with cameras flashing in my face.

My dreams did come part-way true last week when I had the opportunity to take part in a photo shoot photographed by a friend with whom I grew up. It was nothing fancy—I wore a bright red sweater, dark jeans, and my trusty black Payless zip-up boots. We trekked to an abandoned farmhouse with a barn at its side and sunlight everywhere. While I have to admit I was somewhat nervous and had no idea what I was doing while posing with my hands on my thighs (who knew modeling could be such a work-out? It felt like I was doing a long feel-the-burn wall-sit) and stepping on random benches and hugging trees, I am proud to say that some of the photographs actually turned out really well. (Many thanks to my photographer, Erika Smeltz!) It wasn’t just the sunlight—it was the confidence I had in myself to throw back my shoulders and smile at the camera.

As I write this, I have not seen the updated prints. Erika said that she would enhance the lighting and some other minor things—and that’s it. This made me think about a national—and very unfortunate—recent trend in the magazine industry, and its awful name is Airbrushing.

Many magazines are guilty of airbrushing. Here is how it works: Take a photograph of a celebrity that reveals all of who she is—while she is truly gorgeous, she also has some wrinkles under her eyes, and her figure leans toward voluptuous. Now, take this photograph and run it through a Photoshop program. Smooth away those wrinkles. Lighten her skin. Take away snippets of her hips here. A removal of her waistline there. And before you know it, she looks glossy, frozen, and somewhat fake. Slap the picture onto the cover of a nationally distributed magazine, send them to readers worldwide, and that’s a wrap.

The blog Jezebel first introduced me to this concept a few years ago. The writers for this blog are livid about airbrushing, and so am I. So many women pass by magazine racks on their way out from the grocery store or take them out of their mailboxes and aspire to attain bodies just like those of the women on the covers. Little do they know that these women (and men, too!) cannot even live up to the expectations of the magazine industry in their purest form.

Society’s standard of “beautiful perfection” is so unattainable that human bodies are chopped up and reformatted to the point of no return. They no longer stay true to themselves, and unfortunately they don’t have a say, either.

Well, I would like to say this—true beauty is not found on the pages of magazines. Forget lipstick and sticky hairspray. True beauty is the confidence that people can find within themselves. I saw that on a sunny day last week. Dig deeper—it’s there.

Amanda also blogs at the Beauty Notebook

Bodies are different for a reason. Embrace it.

At some point in recent history the stance of “I Hate My Body” became a public statement encompassing an entire gender rather than a private thought held by few on particularly bad days. Somewhere along the line, women have lost control of their bodies in the name of society’s glamorization and expectation of self-deprecation. But, as I have learned over the years, loving your body is possible, even for the most self-loathing of us all.

Freshman year was a difficult one for me (a unique story, I know). Though I had been aware of my body in middle school and had brief yet unfortunate love affairs with both my hair straightener and Abercrombie and Fitch in attempts to make my body look the way I thought it should, I had ultimately accepted it for what it was. It wasn’t until I hit high school that I began to spiral into self-hatred. I gained weight (thanks, puberty) and reached a point where I refused to look at myself in the mirror unless absolutely necessary. I was torn between feeling miserable, obsessed with my flaws, and self-loathing because I realized how self-absorbed I was being and how insignificant my problems were in comparison to the rest of the world. Incidentally, this mix of emotions was the perfect gateway to becoming a self-identifying feminist.

Feminism was the way that I gained control after feeling as though society had sucked me into feeling like I had to hate myself. Losing control over the way I felt about my body truly felt like I was being sucked into a state of  being without my consent. Even while I looked at the mirror and loathed my reflection, it was an emotion I knew I had to rid myself of because it had occurred without my consent. My feelings of self-hate held me back, as my complete lack of self-confidence made putting myself out into the world in any way a serious challenge – something I in no way felt comfortable with.

Reading books like Full Frontal Feminism and Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters helped me realize that I wasn’t alone. In fact, though I didn’t know this until later, body issues (eating disorders in general) are not a western, or even a white, middle-upper class issue, though that is how it’s normally portrayed. Body projects in every range of severity reach across borders of race, class and culture (how’s that for sisterhood?). With feminism on my side, and a clear and confident understanding that I was empowered and was allowed to love myself, I thought it would be a mere matter of time before I was able to look in the mirror – at any size – and love what I saw. But despite gains I made in my confidence and willingness to put myself out into the world, I still struggled with my appearance.

Eating disorders are based on patterns. They are devised as a manner of control and as such, the afflicted will develop routines in order to help maintain that control. I have never had an eating disorder, but I do believe I had a body image disorder – something I think many, many other girls suffer from as a result from simply existing in this society. During my period of body-image disorder, I had developed routines that developed and maintained my self-loathing. I avoided shopping at all costs, lest I have to try on the size 6 after having been a size 4 for years. I avoided getting too close to boys, fearing rejection because of my appearance. I even avoided looking in the mirror. Essentially, I avoided living the way anorexics avoid food. The way I viewed my body interfered with my daily life. And though feminism was a major factor in helping me overcome these patterns, the fact remains that like alcoholism, body hate seems to be something that just always stays with you to some extent: my mental battle scars. Though I’m a self-identifying and active feminist, and therefore “know better,” there are still days where I look in the mirror and inwardly groan.

Though I was able to overcome this for the most part, and though I realize this is not a universal experience amongst teen girls, I believe that this experience should not be overlooked. It points out the disturbing fact that while not all girls have eating disorders, we all live in a society that promotes such behavior. The reason the lines between living in America, and possibly many other societies, and having an eating disorder are to be determined at the discretion of a doctor rather than general understanding of what the disease entails is because we live in a society that promotes these life-interfering routines as being as normal as waking up, brushing your teeth and washing your face. Obesity and anorexia may be diseases on the opposite ends of two spectrums – the extremes of the same vein – but which is more stigmatized? The truth is an anorexic person would easily be revered while an obese person would be ostracized.

So what’s the solution? How do we gain control? I do believe that feminism, or else really, truly coming to the conclusion that we are allowed to love ourselves and that self-love encourages other people to love us as well, is a solid first step. But it’s not a magical solution. We need to combat the societal norm of self-loathing. The media always seems to be the scapegoat for promoting terrible body standards, and while it is massively culpable, there are other roots. Girls use their body projects as a mode of competition with each other; we need to end such volatile comparisons and realize that bodies are an individual experience. Mothers need to stop weighing their daughters and forcing their own insecurities onto their offspring.

All of these are lofty goals, yet necessary ones. Just combating them in our own lives – rather than waging war against Vogue and all of its glossy mag friends – is a huge step. Take it from someone who knows.

The Cover Girl Culture website describes the movie:

Cover Girl Culture: Awakening the Media Generation is an award winning feature length documentary. From posing in pages of magazines to exposing magazines comes documentary filmmaker Nicole Clark. A former Elite International fashion model turned champion for young girls and their self-esteem, Nicole gets in the face of the media and advertisers calling for responsible media for our youth! We must act now to save an endangered species – empowered girls and young women!

Cover Girl Culture explores how the worlds of fashion, modeling, advertising and celebrity impact our teens and young women. Who sets today’s standards for beauty and how are these standards affecting individuals and society? Who is responsible? Are there ways this can be changed? If so, who can/will change it?

Shocking interviews with fashion editors from major NY magazines. Eye opening interviews with top agents, designers, models, advertisers and many more. An important issue addressed is the sexualization of young girls in the media/advertising. Most importantly it focuses on SOLUTIONS. (this film took 4 yrs to complete)

A hempless Leighton Meester: Comfortable?

I was perusing the September issue of Teen Vogue and came across an article about hair, featuring Leighton Meester, one of the stars of Gossip Girl. The piece seemed inoffensive…until the second sentence:

“But ask [Meester] about her own high school days, and she readily admits she wasn’t exactly an upper-East side sophisticate. ‘I had glasses, unplucked eyebrows, and I wore hemp necklaces!’ she confesses. ‘It’s only recently that I’ve gotten comfortable in my own skin.’”

Does this make anyone else a little bit mad?

What was the most aggravating to me was that the author implied strongly that Meester dressed like that BECAUSE she had no self-confidence. She wore glasses, hemp necklaces, and didn’t pluck her eyebrows because she wasn’t confident. Apparently, everyone who wears glasses hasn’t “gotten comfortable in [their] own skin” yet… such as totally amazing women like Tina Fey or Lisa Loeb? Also conversely to her statement, people who are particularly confident might wear hemp necklaces because it’s an unpopular style, as opposed to less self-assured people being afraid to take a fashion risk. And the eyebrows… it’s a person’s choice, to pluck or not to pluck. There are people out there blessed with natural, no-pluck-needed eyebrows. Maybe Meester is one of the lucky few.

You can be as unconfident as anything and wear the hottest, most popular clothes, contacts, pluck (or even wax!) your eyebrows, and wear, uh, un-hemp necklaces and you STILL won’t be comfortable in your own skin. Or, you can wear all of those things and feel great about yourself!

I rarely look through Teen Vogue, but I know girls who revere it as a Bible of sorts. Will they stop wearing their glasses because Leighton Meester thinks that it makes them seem unconfident? I really hope not.

January Jones / Betty Draper - not allowed to work out?

A few weeks ago various entertainment blogs and news sites were running a series of stories about Mad Men‘s Producer Matthew Weiner. Feminist bloggers and health writers soon joined the conversation. Now Mad Men is no bastion of feminist drama and critical theory, but these bloggers were veritably showering praise on Weiner. Why? Because, reportedly, he doesn’t allow his actresses to exercise and encourages them to eat plenty in order to look “soft and voluptuous” like “healthy women.”

F-A-I-L.

I’m going to make this as coherent a criticism as possible, but Weiner’s comments and the subsequent feedback from bloggers anger me as symptoms of much broader problematic conversations. So I’ll break the issues down systematically:

The idea of fattening up or slimming down for a role is nothing new in the acting world. But to imply that gaining weight to ensure continued acting success is somehow amenable to healthy living as well is ludicrous. These actresses have been asked to gain weight because doing so will allow them to better embody the aesthetic that predominated in the mid-20th century, one which favored hourglass shapes (the word “ample” comes to mind) over androgynous or boyish figures. Keep in mind that this was a body ideal of that era, not a standard everyone met by any means.

Furthermore, it is unclear to me what Weiner and these actresses mean by “healthy women.” Are we to understand that women whose figures do not fill out a 1960s girdle are ill? That women with curvy bodies cannot have eating disorders or exercise fixations? That women who rest up and do not engage in any activity–because of their obviously delicate constitutions–are somehow better off? This has all the tinges of old school sexism, 1960s style, appropriately enough. I say call a spade a spade, and say the actresses in Mad Men are being told to gain weight in order to appear like June Cleavers (albeit sexier ones), not that they are models for natural health.

Which brings me to my next point: the strong show of support for Weiner among women’s and feminist blogs. I can understand why–don’t get me wrong. I don’t have to rehash how the thin aesthetic endangers womens’ health. Sometimes, anyone who breaks away from such rhetoric seems a godsend. But why should it be the case that the feminist reponse to media filled with women who are unnaturally thin due to compromised physical and mental well-being should be a call for women to embrace being overweight to the extent that they are at increased risk of chronic disease? What happened to moderation?

Yes, moderation. Where we eat healthy, plant-based diets. Where we make ourselves tired (but not crazy or dead) through regular exercise. Where we enjoy peaceful time to ourselves and joyous time with those around us as a balance to busy lives.

I don’t mean to imply that everyone should start policing every lifestyle decision they make. I don’t think we should start analyzing each morsel, each epushup, each unchiseled ab. Instead, I simply feel that we should be careful not to conflate dialog on body image with medical advice. Greta Christina, on her atheist/feminist/sex blog, discussed this subject back in March. She wrote about some of the internalized backlash she felt as a feminist trying to lose weight, and the particular difficulties in negotiating this position without feeling she had to defend herself against fat-positive advocates. She offers steps for those looking to pursue weight loss in an image-obsessed society from an anti-establishment perspective. Similar guidelines would apply to weight gain or any other type of body transformation:

(a) Doing an honest, non-denialist, reality-based assessment of the costs and benefits of weight loss (including, and especially, the health costs and benefits);
and (b) Pursuing weight loss in a reality-based way if you think it would be right for you.

Simple but not simplistic, and worthwhile considerations, I think.

I have often found it uncomfortable and difficult to bring up this critique of feminist-grounded “fat acceptance” movements. Mine is not an easy view to articulate without fear of being misrepresented. Yet, I think this very questioning within the feminist arena, moving beyond the hackneyed “love your body” to a “love your body and seek ways to honor it, feel more vibrant, and pursue healthy longevity” is well worth our while. After all, do not fit and thriving bodies in themselves make it possible for us to be better feminists and activists?

Janani also writes for Who’s On Third Wave where this article was originally posted.

dieting = healthy?

I’ve had a theory brewing in my head recently: if all the women in the United States were a size 2 yet as a society we still struggled with heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers then the “health” argument would be very different. After watching the recent Nightline segment “Is it Okay to be fat” my theory was confirmed. The title should’ve read, “Is it okay for women to be fat?”; and then at least it would have been more honest.

It’s hard to debate health when what you’re really debating aesthetics. A serious debate on health would’ve seen men on the panel, since this issue is a societal problem and not something women should have to shoulder alone (though we often do).

I struggle with body image. I’m in my mid twenties and I haven’t yet found that balance of looking in the mirror and liking what I see. I think others would consider me  “healthy”: my body functions properly and I have what the CDC would consider a “correct” BMI number however I got that way eating highly processed “health” foods and the battle of body image rages inside of me all the time. I look in the mirror and dream of my pre-pubescent body when my boobs were higher and my thighs were leaner, when I more closely resembled the 16 year old fashion models that grace every women’s magazine.

I really do want to be truly healthy, so recently I’ve made a serious effort to integrate it into my life(rather than before where being healthy was admittedly, a by-product of wanting to be skinny.) Now I eat with a consciousness of being part of a food chain: eating locally grown whole foods that were raised and farmed sustainably. I cook more and enjoy my food with my husband rather than eating a separate highly processed dinner than him because it only had 400 calories.

As a consequence, I now have a different relationship with food: a relationship dictated by how healthy and happy I feel from eating it-not how skinny it makes me.

For women “healthy” has become interchangeable with “beauty” and a lot of products are marketed and sold to women this way. The blurring of those lines lends itself to misdirected debates like this Nightline one, where we find ourselves dissecting two separate issues the same way. I’m all for a healthy society that has a positive relationship to food… just not at the expense of women’s self esteem.