Growing up, being a girl meant I could make forts and collect worms when it was raining. When I asked for a toy tool set for christmas, I felt entitled to talk back if the person in question thought it would be more appropriate for me to have a "nice dolly." It also meant that I could still have teaparties and wear a lot of pink simply because it was my favorite color. It was easy being a girl because I had a firm sense that it didn't matter. I knew who I was and I liked myself that way.
But somewhere along my trajectory toward womanhood, something flickered inside me and went out. I began feeling profoundly dull, especially by the time I got to high school. A large part of my sense of mediocrity ended up nestled in my perception of my appearance. When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t see what I saw, but what I thought other people saw: In that mirror, I was painfully unremarkable.
Although I had a vague sense that I was betraying myself, I ended up focussing more and more of my value the judgement of my physical appearance. In the end, I totally lacked an identity. I harbored a nasty inferiority complex, and a disbelief that my intellect was even minimally involved in the esteem of others. Struggling to be valued for my mind seemed so unrealistic to me, and when all was said and done, I deemed it a lost cause.
By the end of high school I had completely stopped trying academically, but I had rationalized that college was my chance to apply myself again; to take back my mind. So I entered my freshman year bent on becoming better, smarter, more competent.
While my professors surely appreciated my initial commitment to their classes, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t off the hook; I still had all of the same old insecurities. So when my heightened awareness of my deficiencies accelerated into a borderline eating disorder, it wasn’t long before perfectionism caught up with me. Toward the end of freshman year, I was flushing both my grades and my anxieties down the toilet.
The entire time that I had been struggling with my feelings of inferiority, and trying to fend off a full-blown eating disorder, I felt like I was fighting a one-woman battle despite knowing that I was coping with the same things that many, many other girls were. But I did a lot of rationalizing (“It’s just part of being a woman”) and I did a lot of othering (“I’m not as bad as them”) so the combination of the two ended up being very isolating. It was purgatory; I couldn’t relate to the others who were struggling around me because I assumed that they were all going to eating-disorder hell. I thought, “At least I’m half-way to healthy”. At the time, I couldn’t see that the difference didn’t mean we weren’t coming from a similar place.
Going into the following summer, I was beginning to doubt my assumptions. I somehow began to feel a tingling of righteous anger, but I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.
Then one day the beginning of that summer, I was browsing a local bookstore and stumbled upon the tiny women’s studies section. And there, scanning the titles on the spines of those books and seeing how many were about body-hatred, eating disorders, and self-esteem, I came to a conclusion that left me feeling like I had been hit by a train: there is a distinct correlation between my feelings of “not [fill-in-the-blank] enough” and my sex.
This was the missing link; the one that connected myself with the “scary-thin” ghost-girl who used to drift through the halls of my high school, the “morbidly obese” girl nick-named ogre down the hall in my dorm, my best friend’s dogged pursuit of razor hip bones, wide-spread terror of the freshman fifteen, and the sentiment, “I’d rather be dead than fat.”
My struggle wasn’t unique at all. And I wasn’t alone. I felt very angry, but also overwhelmed by a sense of solidarity…of…what did they call it in the 70s? Oh yeah, sisterhood.
That summer, I buried myself in books, starting with Full Frontal Feminism, which transformed my newfound sense of solidarity into a deeper understanding of sexism and my own feminism. Then I read Grassroots by Jennifer Baumgardner and learned how to apply it. I read Sex Wars by Marge Piercy and learned about the women of the first wave for the first time.* Then I read the Feminine Mystique, I read Feminism is For Everybody, I read Women, Race, and Class, Against Our Will, Reviving Ophelia, Cunt, and Backlash, and I read each one in total earnest. When I emerged from my cocoon of pages upon pages of these womens’ words, I saw that they had given me the ability to look around and see my world in a new way.
Growing up, I was privileged in that I was told on occasion I was bright and “gifted.” As a child, it seemed so weird when they would tell me that; it made me feel bashful and I really didn’t feel like I needed to hear it. But when my self-esteem plummeted as I started to grow up, I started feeling like I needed that affirmation more and more and eventually I relinquished my own judgment of myself in exchange for what I perceived as the better judgment of others.
My feminism has given me back my judgment and in turn it has given me back the power to define my own value. Because of this, now when I look inward, I see myself as I truly am.
I see is a person who finally loves herself.
* Despite the fact that I had U.S history countless times over the course of my education, I graduated from high school thinking Susan B. Anthony sewed the American flag. No joke.
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Wow. I didn't find that cheesy at all. I thought it was really compelling. Maybe I'll post my own soon. Congrats on your self-discovery.
Puberty is such a challenging time for most people.
Sounds like you made your way through it pretty well.
This is so scary for the parents of little girls. You always have this sense that no matter what you do now, no matter how you talk to them or encourage them to try whatever they want and develop in a way that works for them rather than following some gender script, no matter how much you try to prevent them from absorbing harmful gender attitudes through the media, when they hit puberty it will be completely out of your hands. They will suddenly become very conscious of the messages in our culture and the judgment of their peers. It's the kind of thing that keeps you awake at night.
That was beautiful. Thank you for that. I needed to hear that.
Is there any particular book about weight and eating you can suggest? I'm looking for something for my mom. I keep thinking she is becoming more accepting of her body and then she'll tell me she needs to lose weight. I suppose there is something scary about gaining weight when you haven't for a long time, you might wonder at what point you will stop, but of course it's exercise and healthy eating that really matter for health. I don't know if you read or saw anything kinda academic more than "self-help" but pretty easy reading, just about body image, our society and culture, the media, and weight.
Thanks everyone =D
Lyndorr--The Beauty Myth is what really put the nail in the coffin of my eating disorder. But it's kind of dense...
I'm reading Minding the Body right now, and it's turning out to be pretty good. Plus, if she's busy, she can just read it in bits and pieces since it's an anthology. The stories are really compelling, and cover a wide range of things, mostly on bodyhatred, but they include aging, breast cancer, and other things that touch women's bodies. The stories are really accessible and engaging. Actually, it's probably a good starting place!
Oh, and I've also heard that Lying in Weight by Trisha Gura is really good, I haven't read it but it's about adult women's borderline eating disorders, so maybe that would be your best bet!
Whatever you do, don't read Wasted. It's super triggering...in my opinion. It's really amazingly well-written, but for someone on the verge, it's almost glamourous in a sick way that it's potentially triggering.
Hope that helps...
Thanks everyone =D
Lyndorr--The Beauty Myth is what really put the nail in the coffin of my eating disorder. But it's kind of dense...
I'm reading Minding the Body right now, and it's turning out to be pretty good. Plus, if she's busy, she can just read it in bits and pieces since it's an anthology. The stories are really compelling, and cover a wide range of things, mostly on bodyhatred, but they include aging, breast cancer, and other things that touch women's bodies. The stories are really accessible and engaging. Actually, it's probably a good starting place!
Oh, and I've also heard that Lying in Weight by Trisha Gura is really good, I haven't read it but it's about adult women's borderline eating disorders, so maybe that would be your best bet!
Whatever you do, don't read Wasted. It's super triggering...in my opinion. It's really amazingly well-written, but for someone on the verge, it's almost glamourous in a sick way that it's potentially triggering.
Hope that helps...