We hate them. Or at least (and this is for the lucky ones) only
parts of them. I grew up in Canada and so maybe this is just a Western thing
but we don’t see a lot of nudity, at least not real nudity. I can’t even
remember the last time I saw someone I actually know naked or close to naked.
(Myself and my husband being the exception.)
And the times that I do see people close to naked, like around a body of
water, all I hear from my fellow women are
1. Complaints about
their imperfect and ugly bodies that they hate
2. Slamming of the imperfect and ugly bodies of their fellow
swimmers.
Reinforcing the idea that the bodies I see around me, and by
extension my own body is ugly.
There is a movement right now, rather avant-garde, rather in
its infancy that is try to combat this.
I don’t know if there is a name for this movement yet
perhaps the Body Image Movement, but I like to call it the ‘How bodies really
look, We truly are beautiful’ movement. Myself and many of associates in this
movement have this idea that if we were to see what women’s bodies truly looked
like naked we would love our own bodies more. Personally
I have been researching art work that shows what women through the ages have looked
like and are represented to look like.
This statue is actually one of a number of similar statues
known collectively as the Venus Figurines. There is some controversy surrounding the use
of these figurines (as a historian let me tell you that there is controversy
surrounding almost every historical finding.) However that the figures were
given the nickname Venus is important; at least for me. Venus was mythologically
speaking the Roman Goddess whose defining characteristic and duties include
love, beauty, sex, sexuality, and fertility. But today we look at this work and
if we are kind say fat and if we are not, say obese and certainly never sexy or
beautiful.
The Three Graces by Rubens 1639
To the left a deer with his head up and two deer grazing
appear. The context in which these animals are presented and some pictorial
precedents indicate that we understand them as references to sexual love. In Rubens
text we can infer that the bulk of Graces is the expression of physical and
moral status of the three goddesses. (Text excerpted Vergara , A.: The Three
Graces by Rubens , 2001, pp. 73 - . 88) These women seem so comfortable in
their bodies, none are hiding or obscuring parts of their anatomy.
Frida Kahlo Self Portrait With Thorn Necklace and Humming-bird
1940
Kahlo was best known for her self-portraits and their
honesty. Although just of her face, this painting accepts and demonstrates
confidence in what she looks like, hair and all. That is inspiring.
These are just a few examples from my search. I looked
through paintings, sculptures, time periods, regions, ethnicities and national pieces
and found hundreds of examples across the board of what women look like, but I
have found that although so much exists it doesn’t pervade into everyday lives
or experiences today. I find it comforting to know that although the ideal of
beauty has constantly fluctuated throughout history, how women look has not
changed that much.
http://www.stylecaster.com/timeline-sexy-defined-through-ages/
for a loose timeline of women’s ideal beauty.
A lot of people will say that fashion models are the
problem, a quick scape goat, victim blaming. You go to a run way show and you
see this:
But we all look at this and know it isn’t quite healthy and
isn’t quite the perfection we seek either.
The problem is this
We tell ourselves, or at least I do that this is ‘perfection’.
The entire industry sets women up to fail at ‘perfect’, and sexualises almost
everything. What I hate is that I know this is photo shopped; neck, skin tone,
cleavage, hair, eyes, chin, arms, waist, legs, hip bones, but I still think ‘this
is what I want to look like’. For me it doesn’t seem to make a difference that
I know what they’ve done to this picture, I still want that, I still compare my
body to that. I can look at this image and know that that is not how bodies
look; legs do not stand like that, hips look different, breasts are not that
shape, her midsection is somehow not proportionate, her skin tone is too even
across her entire body. I see images like this every single day. Until this
project I avoided as much media as I could, I don’t buy magazine, or look at
celebrities online, I don’t watch commercials, or seek out advertisements. And
to be honest that helps a little. But not enough, I can’t walk outside without
seeing these images of ‘perfection’ I can’t turn on the TV or my computer
without seeing images whether I search for them or not.
I am not saying that this is all the industries fault, we
let this happen, we stand for this. I truly believe that knowledge is power but
for me knowing that these images are photo shopped and that these bodies do not
really exist isn’t enough knowledge. I
still succumb to this idea of ‘perfection’.
We need more knowledge, we need to know what women look like;
truly look like. I run an inner city youth group and the girls there hate themselves.
This last year I have fought to show them the truth about themselves, to prove
to them their worth as women and people, but the media is too much, the lies
are too far reaching, their mothers teach them to hate their bodies not by
telling their daughters that they are ugly but by telling their daughters that Mama
hates her own body. “Ugg I hate my stomach, I could never lose that pregnancy
weight after you, I shouldn’t eat that I am too fat already, my gray hair makes
me look ancient, look at these disgusting wrinkles, you’ve lucky your young but
this will all catch up to you one day.” It is too much to be bombarded with
every single day. It’s too much to see ads everywhere, to hear self-loathing
everywhere, to be told you are ugly outright and to think it over and over to
yourselves because you aren’t ‘perfection.’ It’s too much.
No comments:
Post a Comment