One Size Fits All

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One Size Fits All

                                       (Image of a normal looking woman)

 WE women of the world have to free ourselves from the body self image corruption that the patriarchal system has impressed upon us. At first glance we feel the need to blame the patriarchal system for prompting the ideology of what a woman should be. Yet we have to recognize that women destroy each other instead of uniting against the patriarchal system. 

   Taking a closer look at The Social Construction of Reality (Berger & Luckman, 1966) we understand that persons and groups interacting in a social system, form, over time, concepts or mental representations of each other's actions, and that these concepts eventually become habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other. When these roles are made available to other members of society to enter into and play out, the reciprocal interactions are said to be institutionalized. In the process of this institutionalization, meaning is embedded in society. Knowledge and people's conception (and belief) of what reality is becomes embedded in the institutional fabric of society. Social reality is, therefore said to be socially constructed (Berger & Luckman, pp 50-62). Therefore we agree that the way the bodies of women have been portrayed or idealized by institutions as being of a specific body type (e.g. slim, slender, toned, skinny, malnourished) is a social construct imbedded in the process of institutionalizing the alteration of the concept of what a woman should appear to be physically.  

                                         (If this was Eve)

    For centuries women have been socially constructed in order to fit a package, and serve the needs of what others expect of them. We can read in the Bible (Genesis 1:30) that women were created from the ribs of a man and that they were to blame for eating the forbidden fruit form the tree of knowledge. Perhaps it was a wise decision to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge in order to escape the claws of their so called creator. Women’s role in society has changed indubitably, yet why do women still struggle at home, at work and in relationships? Women were to be wives centuries ago, wives with no rights, no participation, and no choices. Women were to be machines of procreation, nothing more was expected of them, no sexual expressionism, no desires, and absolutely no independence.

                                                                         (Full figure models on New York City Fashion Week, 2010)

   We can see in Anglo-Saxon culture that women have rights, they have choices, they can lead, yet they still are insecure, unhappy and submit themselves to procedures they should not. Divorced women are the norm in conjunction with the feminization of poverty: while men seek cheap thrills and deny their responsibilities towards their family, women work harder than men, earn less money than men, raise their children alone without men, and have less time to enjoy their bodies than men. 

                                     (A real woman)

                              

  Can a woman truly say out loud how much she loves herself, and her body? Body self image is one of the most powerful issues that women have to struggle with. I often ask myself: why do women hate themselves so much? A body is a body, and every body has the same organs, the same circulatory system, the same endocrine system, the same reproduction system and the same brain. But why do women still feel like they have nothing if they have not the body image a man wants to see in them?

                                       (A normal woman in a two piece bathing suit)

                                    

   Once a woman has been tainted by the institutionalization of body image is very hard for her to see herself the way she wants to see herself. She will often go into many metamorphoses in order to please the social construct of body image and what a woman should be physically. Women are easily influenced by institutions into believing they have to fit a certain standard of beauty. This century has socially constructed the image of women to be slim, slender, fat-free, skinny and malnourished, with breasts that do not belong to them: fake body parts in order to make them feel special.

                            (Full figure model in vintage clothing) 

     Beauty is a competition for women, they compete for the attention of men and men love it. But most of all they compete for the attention and admiration of other women. At times there can be men (a minuscule percent) that enjoy women as they are, and there are other instances where men refuse to be with a women who is not the stereotype that has been institutionalized and socially constructed for them. Yet women are the worse critics of themselves, they destroy their bodies in order to achieve what has been socially constructed for them.

                                     (Full figure model for Gauthier)

 

    Women often ask themselves: what is the price one has to pay in order to please others? At first glance women can say that they do not have to please others, but again they are wrong. Women please others everyday. It starts as soon as the sun rises, women have to attend their family, prepare their meals, and get them ready to go into the world, all the while they get ready to join their workforce, or stay at home to care for the little younglings, the home or the elders. Do we know if women really love doing those things? We only know they have to do it because it is their responsibility, and if they do not do it who will? Women have to be alert 24-7 be it by answering calls, messages, letters, tending to sick children, sick husbands, and sick in-laws, studying to better themselves and working extra hours; though they really don’t want to. Women please others by agreeing to meet them at engagements, because it is expected of them, ultimately resulting in others obtaining something from the women: attention, time robbing, sexual harassment or date rape and so called consensual sex with no strings attached. 

   Yet the most important topic of all is that women please others sexually in order to avoid the loneliness that comes from being outcast or rejected by society; the same society that has socially constructed for them the role they truly hate. A woman is not free until she has accepted herself for what she is. She must neglect the social construction of women perpetuated by the patriarchal system in order to feel herself as a real woman and not an impostor in her own body. But how can she achieve that state of mind? With great difficulty women have tried to please themselves, but have failed after falling on the jaws of judgmental hate mongers. It is a downward spiral into chaos, and is hurting women and little girls, married mothers who are not happy, sexually repressed, single mothers who have many suitors and find themselves to be just as sexually repressed as the married women, single women who are sexually repressed and do not even realize it until it is too late for them.  

    Women must detach themselves from the social construct of what they should be physically. It seems at first glance an impossible task to accomplish. Yet there is nothing impossible about loving a woman’s body for what it is, beautiful and perfect. Who has this responsibility? Certainly not men, it is not their duty to love women if they do not love themselves, the same goes for a woman. It is her solely duty to love herself the way she is, to look at herself in the mirror and not be disgusted by her image, to know that if she is not willing to love herself no one else will, for no one truly loves one another, only oneself. Once a woman realizes that the love she has for herself is real she will feel different, she will feel truly in love, not with a man, but with her, which is far more important in the long run.    

      But what about the women who have already successfully detached themselves from the social construct of what a woman should be? What next? Not many women can honestly say they are free of the social construct of female and body image, the minuscule percent that have achieve this successfully still have to endure many situations where they are judged by their physical attributes, rejected by the way they portray themselves with confidence, neglected by others and regarded as pretentious if they refuse to accommodate to mandated beauty standards, and ultimately discarded in intimate sexual relationships because of the way the look in the nude, to the men/women they are having sex with. Many women turn again to their starvation techniques of self hatred, not to please themselves but others sexually and socially. We women of the world have achieved many liberties, yet we cannot free ourselves from our body of misconceptions that plague us, ultimately taking from us the last shred of dignity we have.