On Internalized Sexism: Trying to Buy Nails at Home Depot

My husband and I were discussing hanging up some framed photos on Sunday night, and we had this (approximate) conversation:

him: I’ll have to check and make sure I have the right hardware. I have a few different kinds of hooks, but these frames need nails, and I don’t know if I have the right kind.

me: well that’s fine, you can check the storage unit tomorrow, and if we don’t have what we need, I can stop by Home Depot on Tuesday. I need to be down in that neighborhood anyway, and I can pick up a box of the right size nails.

him: oh you don’t have to get a whole box; they have them in little bins and they’ll just be cents each. We only need five.

me: oh really? I didn’t realize they had them separate.

him: yep, they do.

me: huh… I really thought last time I bought nails was at Home Depot, and they didn’t have those types of nails for sale individually… but I guess maybe I was buying them at Fred Meyer (general home/grocery store)

him: oh yeah, probably. They wouldn’t have them for sale separately at Fred Meyer.

So that was that. Last night he checked, found that we didn’t have what we need, and today I headed over to Home Depot.

And? They didn’t have nails you could buy individually. They had boxes. Gigantic boxes, with thousands of nails. Medium boxes with 500 nails. The smallest boxes had about 200 nails. So I didn’t buy any. On the way home, I stopped at Fred Meyer for a few last minute Thanksgiving things, and bought a box of 50 nails.

On the way home I reflected on this little story, and my own internalized sexism it betrayed. When we had our conversation on Sunday night, I just assumed that I was wrong about Home Depot carrying individual nails. Logically speaking, I shouldn’t have assumed I was wrong. We’d both had experience buying nails and hanging frames on walls. We disagreed about the likelihood that Home Depot would have nails for sale individually, and we should have remained agnostic about who was right and who was wrong about that fact.

What I am NOT saying: I’m not saying “oooh look! I’m a girl who knows boy stuff! That makes me cool!” I am not saying that, because that perpetuates the sexism that claims there is “boy stuff” in the first place.

What I AM saying: I am saying that I assumed that he was right about a topic involving hardware and pounding things into walls for no other reason than because he was a he and because society has labeled hardware and pounding things into walls as “he things.” That, folks, was my internalized sexism. And even if he had been right, it still would have been a sexist assumption for me to make initially.

It seems like a “small thing,” but I am not really convinced that that means it’s unimportant. After all, it’s in the small ways that we show our love for one another (e.g. do we argue over the remote or find things on TV we both like? Do we call each other if plans change or we’re running late or do we leave someone waiting or worried? Do we try to be quiet while the other is asleep or make as much noise as we feel like?). The “small things” are our daily reality. They make up the glue that binds us together. This is true in marriage and in any other human relationship. It is relatively easy to feel loving and generous at the big times; holidays, weddings, births of children. But it is in those day-in-and-day-out interactions that we truly live out our love (or, sadly, lack of love in some cases).

So where to go from here? Obviously I can’t just promise myself that my internalized sexism will never rear her head again, but I think being able to notice it, and be aware of it, is a gigantic first step. Because maybe next time, even if I make the assumption, I’ll notice it a little earlier than I did this time.

Gratitude

It’s that time of year; the (American) Thanksgiving Holiday is approaching in just a few days. And as I’m looking forward to sharing dinner with my family on Thursday, I’ve also been reflecting about what I’m grateful for.

It started a few weeks ago, at the gym, sitting in the sauna after a jaunt on the elliptical machine and a few laps in the pool. My whole body felt the perfect combination of relaxed and energized, and I felt so immensely grateful for the body that allows me to experience these things that feel so good. I love the sort of “floaty jogging” feel of the elliptical (at least that’s what being on the machine feels like to me!). I love the way the water feels on my body, providing both resistance and support, and so soft. I love the instant relaxation of the heat from the steam in the sauna.

In that moment I was awash with the realization of just how much I’m grateful for my body.

In my body I can dance, playfully shaking my hips or intimately swaying with a partner. In my body I can kiss, caress, and make love to my husband. In my body I can hug my sisters, touch the arm of a troubled friend, take the hand of a small child. In my body I can squeal or laugh when I’m happy and cry precious tears when I’m sad. In my body I can savor the delicious taste of just-barely-undercooked fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies and savor the juicy goodness of crisp, cold, fresh cucumbers. In my body I can close my eyes and listen to music or open my eyes to gaze at art, both of which inspire and transform me. In my body I get to feel the world around me—the wind on my face, the temperature of the air, the feeling and texture of my steering wheel or the crosswalk button or the straps of my purse. In this wonderful body I get to move throughout the world in a sensual way, experiencing both pure delight and transformative pain that challenges, teaches, and matures me.

And the cool thing? That my body size has no bearing whatsoever on my ability to delight in my body’s ability to do these amazing things.

So this Thanksgiving, I am grateful for my body, exactly as it is.

What are you grateful for?

Are you really going to eat that?

Despite multiple studies that show that there is no difference between how fat people eat and how thin people eat, society still continues to vastly overestimate what fat people eat, and underestimate what thin people eat. Fat people are assumed to all be over-eaters, and thin people are assumed to be “healthy eaters.” (Unless they’re considered too thin, in which they’re assumed to be anorexic). And of course, this scrutiny is far more pronounced for women, but men experience it too.

When I was meeting a boyfriend’s parents for the first time, they took us out for Chinese food and we chose several dishes that we all shared family style. Later this boyfriend told me that his mother had asked him about my weight, saying that she was surprised to see that I hadn’t eaten “too much” at dinner, and wondered if I had another health problem causing me to be fat. It felt like quite a violation to me, because the relationship was still relatively new, and it was the first time I had met his parents. Why were my habits being scrutinized? Why was my body being discussed without me present? What business of hers was my medical history, only months after meeting him and hours after meeting her?

I’m used to people noticing what I eat. In some cases, it’s because I have some strange eating habits. I spent three years in a graduate theological program and eating during class or breaks was very common with the three-hour classes. Once I was in a classroom with 3 or 4 other students waiting for class to start, finishing up my lunch. I took out half a cucumber and began eating it, and almost like an SNL skit, everyone stopped talking and looked right at me, transfixed on me chomping into a cucumber like an apple. I admitted to having some quirky eating habits, and we all laughed about it. Another time, the Methodist students were having an advising session with our liturgical coordinator, and I bit into a whole kiwi in the same way, and the professor was so surprised to see me do it that she sputtered a bit and lost her train of thought. And it’s not just the food I eat (and the way I eat it) that people notice—I have a set of these cool wrap-n-mat sandwich wraps that people often notice for how convenient (as soon as you open it it turns into a lunch mat!) and environmentally friendly they are.

It’s these kind of instances of people noticing what I eat that don’t bother me. I realize my penchant for eating kiwi and cucumber this way is strange. And I like it when people say, “hey where did you get those things?” because if they decide to buy a couple wrap-n-mats, that’s less zip-lock bags in the landfill.

But there were other times I didn’t appreciate being noticed for what I was eating. The example of my boyfriend’s mother making judgments about my food intake just because of my body size was by no means an isolated instance, though often it’s not so blatant. I took an evening class one quarter that went from 5:45-8:35, and my normal dinner time is between 6:30-7. So I would usually bring some substantial food—a cold cut or peanut butter and jelly sandwich, some yogurt, some carrots or celery, maybe an apple or a baggie of whole wheat goldfish crackers (why do the whole wheat ones taste SO much better??). On the last day of class, I had been rushing to finish my final paper, so on the way to class I stopped and bought a bean and rice wrap and a chocolate muffin at the bookstore. I was eating the food in the hallway outside the classroom when the professor walked by. I had finished the wrap so all I was eating was the muffin, and he gave it—and me—a “look.” He didn’t say anything, but trust me, I’ve lived 28 years, and in 22 of which I realized I was fat, and I know that look.

Another professor, who would list “overweight” as a “symptom” when we were practicing diagnosis of mental illnesses in case studies (it was a counseling course) would always notice when I bought a brownie from the cafe as a mid-morning snack. There were times I bought yogurt and granola, or tea and banana bread, but whenever I bought a brownie, he would give it a “look.” The same one the other professor gave me when I was eating a chocolate muffin.

This irritates the hell out of me. Not only does it irritate the hell out of me to have my food choices scrutinized and judged simply because I’m fat, I also hate being treated as the “stereotypical fat person” rather than as “Katie.” It is dehumanizing and extremely frustrating, because it feels like a wall that has to be torn down for people to get to know the real me. This doesn’t matter so much with strangers, but it does matter with professors responsible for grading my assignments and potential in-laws who may be family someday.

This morning I’ve been wondering: When we judge food choices of others, what are the theological implications of that? Usually when thinking about food and theology, the first thing that comes to my mind is how Jesus referred to himself as the bread of life; he used bread to symbolize his body in the last supper. Food here is used as an example of something that is nourishing, life-sustaining. Jesus compares himself to food, making himself the spiritual equivalent—while we eat actual food to nourish and sustain our bodies, God becomes our spiritually nourishing and life-sustaining “food.”

Additionally, throughout the Bible we see folks eating in community with each other, with the focus on relationship with one another. It’s the same thing when we get together for church potlucks or family dinners or make a lunch date with a friend—the act of eating together is a vehicle for the strengthening of relationships, not to police the details of what and how much our meal companions are eating.

There is something so fundamental, so primal, about the act of eating. When it is violated on a regular basis, sometimes daily or even hourly, by people with whom we are trying to build relationships, it really tears at the fabric of those relationships themselves. How can I have any trust in a person who can’t get over the fact that I’m a fat woman eating a brownie in public (oh the horror!)? How can I have any trust in a person who passive-aggressively whispers about my eating habits to others? This may seem like it’s not a big deal, because eating is such a mundane, everyday occurrence. But I think it’s the opposite; it’s an even bigger deal because eating is such a fundamental part of our life. It serves so many functions, not least of which is survival, and in a close second, nurturing and sustaining relationships with one another.

There’s no easy answer here, especially because it is so hard to respond to passive-aggressive behavior (the “looks” or when people talk about us rather than to us). But while we may not be able to confront the passive-aggressive behavior, we can confront more blatant food-based shaming, and we can also take refuge in the fact that we have the truth on our side. Nothing about being fat itself should limit our food choices, and all of us as sentient persons ultimately do have the right to make choices about something as fundamental and necessary as eating without being judged and violated by those we should be able to trust.

I have a problem with overeating… but not the kind you’re thinking of

I have a problem. There is a food I can’t stop eating. And it’s not cake, or cookies, or donuts, or Starbars, or ice cream, or any of the other so-called “bad foods.”

My problem food, that has recently become an issue, is hummus and rice crackers.

It’s not that I’m binging, and I certainly can’t even remember the last time I felt over-full (I think it was when I had Indian food early last summer with some friends and ate too much rice too quickly). But it’s a problem because every time I’m hungry—seriously every time—I want hummus and rice crackers. And if I give in to the temptation, I often eat so much of it that I don’t have appetite left for the other good foods I want to be eating, like fresh fruits and veggies, fish, etc.

I know how to fix this problem and the words “diet” and “willpower” have nothing to do with it. In fact, I’m going to use a different word I like much better: intentionality.

I’m going to be more intentional about eating hummus and rice crackers.

I’m not going to grab the whole container of rice crackers, I’m going to get a dish and just take a handful of what I want to eat.

I’m going to plan out what my meal will look like before starting to eat the hummus and crackers. That is, I’m going to have in mind all the other good things I’ll be eating rather than just get caught up in the deliciousness that is the hummus and rice crackers.

I’m going to eat more slowly. I’m going to wait until a few seconds after I swallow to reach for the next cracker.

Honestly, I am aware that this whole post probably sounds like a joke. I assure you, it’s not. I’m completely serious. I have a problem with hummus and rice crackers.

But the problem is not binging, as I’ve already said.

And the problem is not emotional. I’m not “eating my pain.” I’m not stuffing some big feelings down by eating too much. I’m not avoiding anything. I just happen to freaking LOVE the taste of hummus and rice crackers so much that I don’t want to stop!

And the problem doesn’t require a diet, willpower, or an Overeaters Anonymous group (in fact I’d actually love to see the reactions of the folks at one if I went and said my problem was hummus and rice crackers!)

So this post isn’t a joke. I’m serious—I’m going to be a lot more intentional about eating hummus and rice crackers starting today.

The real joke is that we’d treat cookies, or cake, or Starbars, or any of the “bad foods” differently. The assumption that if I couldn’t stop eating ice cream, it would be a different problem than that I can’t stop eating hummus and rice crackers.

Or another real joke here is the assumption that overeating a particular item is a bigger deal because I’m fat than if I was thin. That if I was thin, obviously my metabolism would be taking care of it, but if I’m fat, I’m obviously fat because I can’t stop eating hummus and crackers (which, just in case you missed it, is ridiculous because I’m not overeating in the sense that I’m over-full, I’m overeating in the sense that I’m not getting a good variety of other foods).

Now, I really don’t want to downplay the fact that some people really do struggle with emotional over-eating. It’s a real problem in the real world. And often different groups and plans may help with that; since I don’t have experience with it, I’m really not an expert on that and I’m not trying to define anyone else’s experience.

All I want to do with this post is point out that our beliefs about fat people and overeating have become a joke. Fat people do not all overeat, and even when we do, sometimes it’s not the “bad foods.” And diets don’t work, and willpower is a buzzword. But as long as there isn’t truly an underlying, unresolved emotional issue at play, we can all choose, each day, to be intentional about how we eat.

My body is not your Halloween costume

I’ve always kind of hated Halloween. Okay, not “always.” But ever since I was old enough to be conscious of the fact that other people thought my body took up too much space and was the wrong shape. Having to dress up meant drawing attention to my body in some way, and I started feeling very uncomfortable with that around 10 years old.

When I was in college I went through a brief phase where I enjoyed dressing up and while I never went for “sexy” particularly, I did go for “cute.” I’d go as a kitten or butterfly and enjoyed putting glitter on my face and cutesying myself up.

The last few years though, I’ve just felt a general distain for the the idea of dressing up and partying and was glad my spouse has no desire to engage in these social rituals himself. Last year we made pumpkin bread from scratch (like, literally completely from scratch—starting with a whole, fresh pumpkin and going from there). We roasted the seeds and watched So I Married An Axe Murderer and savored the delicious smells and tastes of the fresh pumpkin bread. This year we’re continuing the tradition.

Over the last few days, I have been reflecting on the general distain I have for the ritual of getting dressed up in costume. I wondered, is it because of the sexism in how all women’s costumes are prefaced with the word “sexy”? You’re not just a nurse, you’re a sexy nurse; you’re not just a librarian, you’re a sexy librarian. Well sure, that’s part of it, but it’s not all of it.

In this reflection I think I may have come to a new understanding of what else is bugging me. When people dress up—kids or adults—it’s an opportunity to try on a different way of being. To be “other” than one’s self, most often in ways that would normally be socially unacceptable (e.g. elementary school kids are not allowed to paint fake bloody scabs on their faces every day).

Kids trying on different identities and figuring out who they are is a normal process of growing up. And even with adults, to some extent the same is true as we continue to evolve and change, but it’s not quite the same as for kids, because to us the awareness of opportunities and limitations afforded to us socially based on our abilities, our body shape and size, our age, our height, the color of our skin, the perception of our gender, etc. have begun to take more solid shape in our consciousness. And it occurs to me that when your body is considered “normal” (thin, white, able-bodied, straight, cisgender upper-middle class young adults) then dressing up and being different can be a completely new experience. But what about those of us whose daily reality is that our bodies are considered “other”? All the time? Without respite?

My body is sold as a costume. People can dress up like me, pretending. Playing. Trying out what it’s like to be fat; getting a laugh out of it. How crazy and disgusting their body would be if they really looked like me. And then at the end of the evening they can take it off. My body is a costume for thin people.

My body isn’t the only body that’s a costume for privileged people.

The bodies and cultures of many persons of color are costumes for white people.

The bodies of “illegal” immigrants are a costume for American citizens.

The bodies of the mentally ill are costumes for the neurotypical.

The bodies of the old are costumes for the young.

The bodies of the poor and homeless are costumes for the wealthy (or at least middle class).

Not only, then, do the oppressed become costumes for the privileged, but it’s worse—these costumes are caricatures of us, designed to be shocking, ugly, “exotic” or otherwise striking in some way. Not only are we othered by the fact that our bodies are used as a costume, we are further othered in the way these costumes make us appear even less “normal” … less human.

And I am sure I only scratched the surface. But what’s happening here is that privileged people are trying on the identities of marginalized groups and it’s passed off as some sort of innocuous party ritual. It’s not. It is not okay when a thin person dresses up as a fat person; it is not okay when a white person wears a “Kung Fu Fighter” costume.

Now I do have a lot of respect for people who do like to dress up and get creative about it. My friend Jasie just posted pictures of some awesome costumes (most of which were hand made!) that she, her partner, and her son have worn over the years. A Jeopardy contestant? Brilliant! Animals and cartoon characters? Right on. If you do choose to dress up for Halloween tomorrow, please be awesome like Jasie and her family, or my sister Kim who is going as a “forest fairy.” Please don’t be a privileged ass and dress up as someone else’s lived experience. Please choose a costume that doesn’t purpetuate oppressive systems.

As for me and my family, we’ll be savoring salty roasted pumpkin seeds and sweet chocolate chip pumpkin bread fresh out of the oven, sipping on glasses of wine and watching The Ring Two.

Happy Halloween :)

My oppression is worse than your oppression!

Trigger Warning

I was recently in a dialogue in a feminist forum about beauty standards. My conversation partner was a woman of color who was calling into question my goal of trying to “smash beauty standards.” She said that some people, particularly women of color and transgender folks, have to perform beauty in order to survive. I replied that I didn’t have the option to perform beauty because I’m fat. I can put makeup on, I can dress up, but at the end of the day I’m still fat and in many people’s minds, ugly by default because I don’t fit the cultural beauty standard. At that point the woman of color stopped replying to me and another one chimed in, telling me it was ridiculous for me to be talking about smashing beauty standards as a “survival strategy” when others in the world are actually worried about being assaulted and potentially killed on the street just for being black, transgender, etc. Thus ensued a long argument over what “survival strategy” actually means. I never felt like it went anywhere productive, I only felt chastized for daring to assert that my experience of abuse is worthy of discussion, that I should stop sniveling because there are other people in the world who have it worse.

I don’t think this is how we should have these dialogues. Do I have to worry about my physical safety when leaving the house, due to the color of my skin or my gender presentation? No. Do I have to worry about my physical safety when leaving the house, due to the size of my body? Not really. (Though it does happen sometimes). But do I have to worry about emotional abuse, physical abuse, and being treated as invisible? Yes. Every second of every day.

In the quarter of my 18-month internship class where we focused on human sexuality, our professor, Eldon Olson, discussed his work with survivors of childhood sexual abuse. He said that sometimes the most difficult form to heal from is when nothing “obvious” happened. Not when the little girl was molested by her grandfather, but when grandma constantly called her “princess.” Not when the little girl was shown pornography by her aunt, but when her father said that she sure looked “sexy” in that little dress. Healing from this kind of abuse can be extremely difficult—there is an ambiguity about the situation, a tendency to ask, “was what happened really wrong?” There is more room to make excuses for the perpetrators, saying that they didn’t know better and, really, aren’t we just supposed to love our families, faults and all? Dr. Olson said that healing from that insidious kind of sexual abuse could be a lifetime process, whereas other forms of abuse, that seem much “worse” to us, such as an older male neighbor assaulting a teenage girl, may be less complicated and time-consuming healing processes because there is such an obvious and socially acceptable “wrongness” about them.

So at the end of the day, what I’m saying here is that it’s just pointless to argue about who has it worse, and who needs to shut up and sit down. I’m not saying that people who experience more subtle forms of abuse have it worse than people who experience physical violence, I’m just saying that all of us are oppressed and experience abuse in unique ways, and I think asking who has it better or worse is divisive and counter-productive. As a friend of mine on LiveJournal, Belenen, points out:

I am convinced that the only meaningful way to measure suffering is by how much it affects a person, and the only meaningful reason to measure suffering is to learn how much support that person needs in that situation.

All of us who experience oppression are suffering. Some of us experience similar types of suffering and some are very different. Some of us literally fear for our lives walking down the street; others of us can’t turn on the television without exposing ourselves to abusive language about our bodies. Some of us are prevented from participating in all areas of public life because no accommodation has been made for a visible or invisible disability. Some of us experience physical violence in our families; others experience physical safety but emotional or spiritual violence. And through all of these things, the unique chemistry of our personalities, our tenacity, and our tolerance and endurance levels will make each of our experiences of these oppressions totally unique to us.

All of us are suffering. So the question is, how will we react to the suffering of others?

Will we insist that we have it worse? Will we insist that there is some objective measure of suffering that doesn’t take into account the person’s lived experience? Or will we, through our own suffering, find compassion for the unique suffering of others… not judging or evaluating it but listening, acknowledging the areas we might have privilege that exacerbates their suffering, and finding ways to work together to make the world a more just place?

I think I’d rather live in a world where more people are doing the latter, myself.

Fat-Talk Free Week

This week is Fat-Talk Free week. It’s a week to stop saying, “I’m too fat” or “look at my rolls!” or “I really need to lose 10 pounds.” Here’s the official video:

I think this is great, but my only issue here is, again, the focus on health as if that, instead of the perfect body size, is the holy grail. What does this do to people who aren’t healthy, can’t be healthy, or just don’t choose to have that be their main goal in life? I’m also concerned that it opens the doors to the idea of, “well, of course many of the people that society calls fat are really okay just as they are, but there is still SOME level of fat that’s too fat! I mean, just look at that guy who weighed 600 pounds and they had to air lift him from his bed!”

So anyway. I love the idea of encouraging people to abstain from “fat talk” for a week and see how life might be different. And at the same time, let’s be careful about elevating health too high, or thinking that there is still a level of fat that is still unacceptable.

Self-Care

I’ve been thinking a lot about self-care lately, and wanted to share a couple of experiences I’ve had recently regarding self-care.

About a month ago I was at my church’s yearly women’s retreat at a beautiful camp across Puget Sound from Seattle. I was in charge of leading the worship on Sunday morning and had a love feast planned, complete with opportunities for folks to share what God was doing in their lives. We had invited the women from another church who were also at camp at the same time, and whose pastor couldn’t make it at the last minute, so many of them were unknown to me.

On Saturday I was feeling very nervous, because the next time I’ll be at that camp will be President’s Day weekend, in a weekend-long interview with the Committee on Commissioning that is my next step in the candidacy process. It’s a big step, because if they do decide that I’m ready, I’ll be recommended to the Annual Conference in June for commissioning as a probationary Deacon.

My nervousness led to a desire to have the women pray for me. And not just a quick prayer, but an extended, laying-on-of-hands prayer time. I wanted to ask for it during the worship service Sunday morning. And these other internal voices said, “but you’re supposed to be leading it, is it okay to ask for this?” and “is this selfish? there will even be women there who who don’t know me!” I ended up not making a decision until Sunday morning, during the worship. Finally I gave in and felt like it was the right thing to do. After we shared the cinnamon bread and apple juice of the love feast, I asked them to pray for me, and it was a truly beautiful moment. After we were done, I looked up and saw tears in the eyes of some of the women from my own church. And that’s when I realized, sometimes asking for what we need isn’t just selfish, sometimes the people we ask to serve us are blessed in the service. I wasn’t the only one for whom that was a holy moment.

Another thing that’s been going on recently is that I’m really moving toward my counseling practice slowly. I painted the office way back in August, but have really been taking my time with creating my website, creating and posting flyers in the community, sending emails, and ordering business cards. It’s not that it’s not getting done, it’s that I’m letting myself do it slowly. I’m savoring taking some downtime, to allow myself to sleep in till 8:30 or 9:00, take the time to cook delicious and healthy food for myself, spend an hour at the gym and finish it off with a soak in the hot tub, rather than dashing from place to place. I’m not even able to really articulate why I’m doing it like this except to say that somehow I know I need it. Self-care for ministers and counselors is so important, because our bodies, our spirits, our souls are the tools of healing in the lives of our clients and church members. If we’re unhealthy spiritually or emotionally, we can’t be a healing, calming, Spirit-bearing presence in their lives. So I’m taking my time, learning to listen to my body’s cues about what it needs to do and when. And it’s an amazing process.

Through these two experiences I’ve been reflecting on some of the barriers that we set up to self-care. One is fear of being selfish, which is interesting because it’s actually quite counter-productive. Not only do the people that love us often find blessing in helping us, but if we never ask for the help we need, we may end up unconsciously behaving in needy ways that end up draining others around us anyway. We need to be able to recognize when we need to care for ourselves, and actually ask for what we need, so that we will be fulfilled in the way that allows us to help others when they need us.

Another barrier to self-care is externally-based expectations we set up for ourselves. My externally-based expectation of myself that I’d be up and running in a full time counseling practice by September wasn’t coming from any internal sense of that being right from me, it was all about my image to others. It came from a sense of wanting to conform to a hard-working, independent American ethic.

I think this second barrier is the one that’s most relevant to discussions about fat liberation. How often are we motivated by external expectations about what our body size should be, how much exercise we should engage in, what types and amounts of food we should eat? How many of us want a plan laid out for us that tells us exactly how many calories we should be eating, exactly how many minutes we should spend on the elliptical machine, exactly what number should come up when we step on the scale?

Fat liberation can free us from those external expectations. We don’t need to be a slave to a culture that has such a messed-up view of women’s bodies that Barbie’s ankles are too fat. We don’t need to be a slave to a multi-billion dollar diet industry that tries to dictate exactly what foods we should eat (and what dangerous medications we should take). We can learn to slow down, get quiet, and listen to our body about what it needs, to let the talons of social expectations relax their grip on our goals and attitudes.

Our bodies are the most precious gift we have been given in this lifetime, and they deserve to be cared for and loved, not held to superficial and impossible standards.

Barbie has cankles

Yes, really. In this Broadsheet article about fatphobia in the fashion industry we read:

Shoe designer Christian Louboutin, meanwhile, has of late been grappling with the nightmare of creating something special for perennial fashionista Barbie. A spokesman for Louboutin told WWD yesterday that when designing for the doll, whose ankles measure under a quarter of an inch, “He found her ankles were too fat.”

So, apparently Barbie has cankles.

This leads to an interesting question: is it even possible for women to meet cultural beauty standards? I think that the answer is quite clearly a resounding “no.”

Good thing some of us have chosen to aspire to other standards of beauty.

Beauty and Vanity

This is an old video but it seems to be making a resurfacing on Facebook, so many of you will have probably seen it:

I’ve been thinking a lot about beauty lately, and I do have three thoughts that I’d like to share with you.

1. You are beautiful

I’ve heard people say, “God made me, and God don’t make junk!” as kind of a playful way to say that their body is beautiful, and they are right. God created us in God’s image, and I doubt any of us would disagree that one of the many things God is is beautiful. We have a bit of God’s nature in us—God’s goodness, God’s love, God’s creativity, God’s passion, God’s beauty, etc. So at this fundamental level, we are creations of The Beautiful One, and therefore by definition we are beautiful.

And yet, the harsh reality is that we do live in a fallen world. We live in a world that is less than perfect, and one of the myriad ways that it is so is that people in general do not see the true beauty created into each of us. Socially we have set up standards to measure what is beautiful. In America that tends to be youth, clear skin, vibrant hair, a look of “whiteness” (though not TOO white—tanned white is best). And of course, a certain waist/hip ratio and all the right bones showing through the skin (but again not TOO many, otherwise you’re TOO skinny).

The video above shows how a whole team of people take an average-looking woman and make her up in a variety of ways, including digital manipulation of the image, to make her more like the cultural beauty ideal. I’m glad the video is out there, because it shows that no one, not even the supermodels, look like the cultural image of beauty all the time. But I thought she was beautiful at the beginning of the video—didn’t you? Because all of us are beautiful. All of us, whether we always, sometimes, or never fit that cultural ideal.

2. Beauty is not tied to your worthiness of love

Beauty is subjective, of course. We often say, “it’s in the eye of the beholder.” I may find a particular person aesthetically pleasing while you may not, and you may look at me and think I am more or less beautiful than I think I am when I look in the mirror. This is all even within that social paradigm of “ideal beauty,” which some people buy into and others don’t. So, given the subjective nature of what is beautiful, what are we really afraid of when we are worried that people don’t think we are beautiful?

We are afraid of being rejected. That somehow our worth as human beings is tied into how beautiful we are. This is much more pronounced for women; for men you could substitute things like wealth or ambition. But women are taught from a very early age that their worth is tied up in their beauty. I received the message loud and clear that it is beautiful (by culture’s definition) women who get jobs, who have friends, who attract husbands,* and who are ultimately happy.

What does it mean if someone doesn’t think you’re beautiful? My deepest fear is that if someone doesn’t think I’m beautiful it means they are not interested in who I am as a person. They don’t care to listen to what I have to say, they don’t want to look at me or engage me at all. It means they won’t love me.

So many of my friends confide in me that they can’t see themselves as beautiful, they can’t accept their bodies, they just aren’t satisfied. They feel ugly, too fat, etc. I’m often lost for words, because invariably I think this woman sharing this with me is nothing short of stunningly gorgeous. And I don’t care that Elle wouldn’t put her on the cover of their magazine or that she isn’t a size 0. My heart breaks hearing her talk about her body—about God’s one-of-a-kind work of art—like this. And while I do think she’s gorgeous, my deep love for her is not contingent upon it.

And this might sound like one of those feel-good cliches, but I really believe it: if someone doesn’t love you because you don’t meet cultural standards of beauty, it is their loss. Truly. All of us are beautiful, and true love will see that. People who judge your personal worth based on whether you meet cultural beauty standards, and people who are unable to see your own unique, intrinsic beauty, are not people who are truly loving you.

3. What is socially defined as beauty is not true beauty.

I’ve gotta be honest, the more I think about this stuff, the less I find the “perfected” images of supermodels beautiful. What do I find beautiful? The embodiment (through facial expressions, body language, etc.) of love. Expressions of joy, laughter, empathy, genuine sadness. For example, I find this much more beautiful than the final image in that Dove video above.

I can’t provide some ultimate definition of “true beauty” because all of us are going to have different views of what that is, and all of us will be right. But what I’m saying is that beauty as a concept, as a characteristic of God, is different from the culturally defined so-called “ideal” physical appearance.

I read Irene Hunt’s Across Five Aprils several years ago and was struck by a quote, a thought had by the main character’s mother after having noticed how beautiful her eldest daughter is getting, and thinking back to the beauty of her own youth. “Even if she had been concerned [about her fading beauty], there were reverberations of Calvinism strong within her which would have protested against the vanity of the regret of her passing beauty.”

We don’t talk much about vanity, or how ugly it is. Vanity gives us an over-exaggerated sense of self-importance when we fit the beauty standards of the world, or it allows us to waste precious time obsessing over how beautiful we wish we were. Ever since I have read this book I can’t get the thought out of my head—I have better things to do than worrying that I could never win a beauty competition! I have better ways to relate to people than hiding my head in case I can see in their eyes that they don’t find me attractive. I have better uses of energy than worrying in the back of my mind what my hair looks like.

Now I do want to say that some people have fun “beautifying” themselves. If you enjoy spending time putting together a fabulous outfit, experimenting with makeup and hair, shopping for the perfect accessories, more power to you. Others of you may feel you have to do these things in order to get (or keep) a job, to avoid discrimination, or other social reasons. I’m not trying to say that none of us should ever put on make-up or spend time beautifying ourselves. But know the reasons you are doing it. And please, just don’t confuse it with your worth as a human being. Don’t confuse it with your worthiness of love. Don’t confuse it with your true, unique, inner beauty.

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* yes this is heterocentric—my world as a child was, unfortunately.