Women and Body Obsession: A Feminist And Cultural Perspective

By Judy Scheel, PhD, Director                                                               

“I look at Elle (magazine) or Elsa (magazine) and I think, that is the kind of woman men want.  I flip through Shape (magazine) and think, bikini abs, perfect thighs, that is the route to desirability, oh s—t, I ate too much lunch.” (Caroline Knapp, Appetites)

Given what we know about the ill and ineffective consequences of dieting—that diets don’t work, that food restriction slows down the body’s metabolism, and when an increase in food intake occurs after dieting, weight gain is rapid—why do women, healthy women continue to drive themselves toward achieving bodies that are unrealistic at best, and more than likely impossible to attain?  Why is the voice that lives within many women’s minds one of the self-criticism, inadequacy and never quite feeling good enough?  Why do women continue to ridicule one body part or another—or worse denounce their entire body?

These women are not suffering from anorexia nervosa, bulimia, or binge eating disorder.  They are women who are living in the world with healthy relationships, careers, and children, but who maintain the belief that their bodies are fatally flawed, imperfect and therefore they can never rest, or ever feel satisfied.  The fact is that this attitude represents the norm among many women.

Knapp continues, “But it’s worth recalling that all of this—the ratcheted-up emphasis on thinness, the aesthetic shift from Marilyn Monroe to Kate Moss, the concomitant rise in eating disorders—is relatively recent, that the emphasis on diminishing one’s size, on miniaturizing the very self, didn’t really heat up until women began making gains in other areas of their lives.”

From a feminist perspective, the increase in dieting, obsession over body size and shape, and the skyrocketing episodes of eating disorders is the consequence of patriarchal control and domination of women.  Whereas women have been traditionally oppressed through discrimination in the work force, less pay for equal work, and pressure to remain at home,  the more recent focus over the last thirty years has been to control women by controlling women’s body size and shape.  Fashion magazines tell women constantly how to lose weight, why they should want to look like a fashion model, what is the “perfect” body size or shape and more importantly, why they should want a particular body shape as the means to please their man.

Eating disorders proper are complicated and complex.  They are housed within the social and cultural milieu, but their root cause deals with intra and interpsychic and relational issues.  Objectification of women, and the social, political and economic oppression of women, is the milieu in which the disorders develop.  Other theoretical perspectives maintain, however, that the social and cultural milieu serves to facilitate, but do not cause eating disorders; other causal factors are at work, including relational issues, depression, and abuse.  If the social and cultural messages were the only culprits for the development of eating disorders, then many more women would have an eating disorder, since so many women obsess about their body and their size.  Indeed, root causes of eating disorders go significantly deeper.  Some feminists rebut, however, and believe that, in fact, most every woman does have an eating disorder because; from their perspective preoccupation and chronic dissatisfaction with weight and body size are seen within a lens of disordered thinking.

Carol Bloom writes, “Thinness, exploited by advertising, became a bogeyman, a judge, an accuser, an impossible standard, a dream of women’s emancipatory goals.” She discusses how thinness is associated with beauty and health, and these qualities are associated with being a good woman. Advertisers’ lure that thin women can have it all (work, freedom, family).  Yet the covert messages remains that women are still judged on the basis of their body.  “They must take up less space, fit into prescribed molds of standardized beauty, and restrain their desires by disciplining their hungry bodies.  No one wants a fat woman, someone out of control.”  Slenderness symbolizes greater parody with men; a thin woman has a greater chance of being heard in the boardroom if she is thin.

So within this context, how can any woman ever feel o.k.—forget beautiful! Feminists and on-feminists alike tend to agree that women remain destined to suit the needs of others—to nurture others often and usually at the expense of themselves.  Those women whose appetites are full and rich are destined for criticism and control of another sort.

Women who are assertive, take charge, driven, determined, competitive, and competent and who love to eat continue in the 21st century to be subject to ridicule.  Carol Knapp discusses this duality.  She highlights the prevailing view that the hardworking, self-oriented man is praised in our culture, while a hardworking, self-oriented woman is vilified.“…if you need a single example of the double standard at work here, think about Bill and Hillary Clinton.  Bill’s pudginess and fondness for McDonald’s was seen as endearing, his sexual appetite criticized, but ultimately forgiven by most Americans, or at least considered irrelevant to his abilities on the job; Hillary got no such latitude, the focus on her appearance (hairstyle, wardrobe, legs) was relentless, the hostility released toward her ambition venomous.”

To live against the grain is the risk woman take - by this, I mean to live as your body is destined to be.  Eating too little as a means to find acceptance in the social and cultural norm is as conflicted as eating too much as the means to rally against the societal dictum.

What if women were to listen to the voice within their own body?  What if they listened to their internal cue, which told them what they needed, how much, when they had enough?  Within a feminist context, women have never had their own voice.  Feminist writers within a psychoanalytic frame suggest that women are doomed from birth, because the messages they get from their mothers and fathers is to be subservient, to suppress their voice, to not be too angry, too assertive, too determined or too competitive.  Girls learn how to be women by observing their mothers.  They learn about the rules for their bodies from a very young age.  Little girls hear the mantra from parents, television, and other little girls to not eat too much.  Prepubescent girls, whose bodies are supposed to be fuller and rounder until puberty sets in and the body naturally redistributes weight, are put on diets because parents are panicked that their child is fat or will become fat if they don’t take action now.

It is difficult, some say impossible, to shift the prevailing thinking en masse.  It may be too late to significantly change the public mindset for women of this generation, but perhaps the messages to our daughters and sons can be different.  In an effort in the 1990s to help young African-American males to better care for, respect and not objectify their female counterparts, a slogan was introduced - “Don’t diss your sis.” The focus was not primarily on changing the young women to become more empowered, but on helping to change the thinking and behavior of the young men.  We have this same opportunity at our fingertips in changing the messages that we as adults deliver to our children, all children - that weight, body size and shape is not dictated by our culture, but rather by our genetics and how we feed and take care of our bodies.  And, in using body image as the metaphor, we can deliver the message that the right of assertiveness, competitiveness, motivation, competency and determination ought not to be dictated by a cultural or societal view that is gender biased against women.  We can teach girls and boys that - just like our bodies - our minds, opinions, qualities and creativity come in different shapes, sizes and genders.

Knapp, Caroline. Appetities. Counterpoint Books, 2002.

Bloom, Carol. Eating Problems: A feminist psychoanalytic treatment model. Basic Books, NY. 1994.