The Larger Issue

Negative body talk is something that I have been working on privately for about a year now. I am slowly learning to view my body through “different eyes” where I do not have disproportionately large hips and thighs, but where I am a healthy human being. This assignment was the first concrete exercise I’ve done in this area, but many of the concepts (if not the names) were already familiar to me. I suffer most from “unfair-to-compare” against an internalized “perfect woman” (as I discussed in a previous assignment), magnifying glass distortion, beauty bound distortion, and moody mirror distortion as described in this exercise. In writing out the individual helpsheets I recognized both the progress I have made and the road I have left to travel.

I couple of years ago I read an interesting article in Cosmopolitan magazine. It said that in our current society women are encouraged to be negative about their own body image by other women. In a social group of women, one woman will say something negative about her appearance, and the rest of the women are under a social obligation to say something negative about themselves in return. Someone making a positive statement about their appearance is ostracized from the group, further encouraging the negative statements as almost a “right of passage.” One of the clearest examples I can think of to demonstrate this is a scene in the movie Mean Girls where Lindsay Lohan’s character is first introduced to this concept. Her inner voice says that she had previously always thought there was nothing wrong with the way she looked, but she gave into the peer pressure of the “plastics” (the popular “perfect” girls) to make negative statements about herself. I remember in high school being surrounded by girls vocalizing negative statements about their appearance. In this type of social atmosphere it is no wonder that women and girls today have such distorted personal body images.

I think there are two big things that can be done to discourage this type of negative body talk among others (and indeed, for ourselves). The first and most important step to take is to not encourage such type of talk. This can be done most effectively by not participating in “pity parties” such as the type I described in the above chapter. If someone makes a negative body comment in such a situation, counter with both a positive statement about that person and about yourself. When people hear positive comments on a regular basis, it is more difficult to allow the negative to have hold of our thoughts and feelings.


The second thing that can be done is not dismiss the negative comments out of hand. If a friend or family member routinely makes negative comments about their own bodies, it may be a cry for help. The thought changes discussed in this exercise are difficult to follow through with, so help received from an outside source can be invaluable. Start by picking a relaxing setting and begin perhaps with the observation “I notice that you often make negative comments about your appearance. Is there something deeper that you might need to talk about?” Sticking up for the unconditional worth of others in addition to yourself can be a powerful force that gives them the help and support they need to effect positive changes in their internal perceptions of their appearance.

Strengths

One of the classes I'm taking this term for my minor is "Women and Leadership." For this class we were required to take the StrengthsQuest evaluation, which is run by Gallup, to determine where our individual strengths lie. The idea behind this is to focus on building your strengths instead of focusing on weaknesses, which can often lead to less success or even failure. The evaluation consisted of a series of paired descriptors, and I had to choose which one best described me. After 35 minutes, I was done and assigned my top five strengths. They were, in order:

Intellection
Learner
Ideation
Empathy
Input

At first I was leary of descriptors consisting of made-up words (intellection?), but after reading the descriptions I feel that I was well categorized.

In short, what my five strengths say about me is that I am a constant thinker, I love to learn and come up with new ideas, I can empathize well with others, and I seek input to further my goals. It did not surprise me in the least that I did not have any of the strengths related to connecting well with other people. I've know almost my entire life that this is an area of weakness for me.

I have often been plauged by feelings of guilt over the amount of time I spend by myself just thinking. I usually feel like there are other things I "should" be doing, such as being out in the world and meeting people. But when I give up my thinking alone time I quickly become miserable and frustrated. Now I have a better idea of why that is, and why my alone time is so important to me. I'm not going to become a hermit, and I am going to continue working on overcoming my fear of meeting new people, but I won't feel guilty when I just want me time to think things over.