Fair and Lonely

“She’s beautiful because she’s fair.”

The words were almost convincing after seeing a commercial of a woman applying cream to her face and miraculously turning many shades lighter. Her brown skin had been edited to a pale white and suddenly she was beautiful. Suddenly, she was fair and lovely. 

I was only a child when I saw the ‘Fair and Lovely’ cosmetic product advertised on South Asian TV channels and plastered on the walls of South Asian grocery stores. The product claims to lighten your skin and in turn, enhance your beauty. Of course, anyone with common sense knows it’s impossible to rid yourself of the melanin in your skin with a fragrant cream. But after all these years, the product continues to be purchased. As an adult I never thought I’d be classified beautiful just for the color of my skin—and the idea disgusts me completely.

Domestication of Food and the Body 🍚

Rice.

Rice is life.

Scooping freshly cooked, steaming white rice into bowl

Grains are the very foundation of human existence. It was only through farming and breeding these grains did civilization come about. These foods shaped us. Then we bred each other. Rice has domesticated us. As the saying goes, “you are what you eat.”

Intergenerational Body Shaming

(Trigger warning: disordered eating/weight)

One of the first instances I remember being concerned about my weight was sixth grade, after the dreaded FitnessGram assessment in gym class. The FitnessGram consists of a series of different physical tests, ranging from the PACER, push-ups, sit-ups, and measuring body mass index (BMI). This was the first time I became aware of the weights of other girls my age, and naturally my adolescent brain had to compare mine to theirs. When I got home from school, I distinctly remember Googling “is it ok for a 12 year old girl to weigh 112 pounds?”

My relationship with my weight only got worse with age. My family would sometimes make comments about it, which of course made me upset; I would cry to my friends about it and they would insist I had nothing to worry about, that I was pretty, that I wasn’t fat (as if you can’t be both-but that’s another conversation). I didn’t know who to believe. I felt especially ostracized because I come from an extremely health-conscious family- my dad is a physical education teacher, my mom is a nurse, and my sister is personal trainer. Being surrounded by such fit people all the time definitely made me feel worse, and they didn’t hide their feelings about my weight, eating habits, physical activity, etc. I wanted nothing more than to shed a few pounds and be as skinny as my friends. My weight fluctuated some over the years, as I was using the LoseIt and My Fitness Pal apps on and off while being trapped in the binge-restrict cycle.

Despite all of this, I have never been medically classified as overweight. My BMI has always been in the normal range. But I was convinced I needed to lose weight, because my friends were still skinnier than me, women on TV and social media looked better than me, and my family still made comments. This past year, I lost 25 pounds and finally reached my “goal weight”.  Honestly, my biggest motivation was to finally make my family shut up. Now, the comments have switched from “you look like you put on some weight” and “are you sure you should be eating that?” to “you’ve slimmed down” and “what are your weight-loss tips?” And yet, I still feel the same about my body. I still look in the mirror and see fat that needs to go.

My weight loss has made me realize that I may never be satisfied with how I look if I continue to view myself so negatively. I am slowly getting to a place of self-acceptance, and I am in a much better mental state than I have been in years. I have very supportive friends, a loving boyfriend, and a great therapist. I am actively trying to unlearn years of my family’s toxic dynamic with weight, but so much of it was directed towards me in my formative years that it has had a huge impact on my self-esteem and confidence. My grandmother has made similar comments to me that my mom has, so I can only assume that my mom was raised in a similar way, and that many of the things she had to say to me were just projections of how she felt about herself. In both my family and society, women are viewed more favorably the smaller they are. But this is a socially constructed, patriarchal standard of beauty that has taken up too much of my life. I know now that my weight has not, does not, and will never define me, no matter what anyone says. I know that I deserve to treat my body with kindness and love. I know that am more than my physical appearance. This intergenerational trend of body shaming ends with me.

Being in Pain in Public

A person where “pain spots” are highlighted.
The joints, head, back, etc.

Lately, I have been having trouble with back pain and have always struggled with sporadic headaches and migraines at times. As I have been taking this course I have been paying more attention to how I feel in my body or, in this case, how I hide or joke about how I feel.

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“The Body I Wear Is Not Perfect”

Photo by Chris Mitchell on Pexels.com

When thinking about the beauty standards of today it’s hard to ignore that bodies within magazines and television are rarely realistic goals for the general public. With bodies that range from what some may consider skinny to what others may consider thick, it’s important that we acknowledge all bodies contain a life within them. Looking at myself in the mirror can be difficult sometimes as I don’t believe my body is what society deems as attractive. Attractiveness is different for each gender as what is subscribed for males and females are different though this is changing it still holds today that men should be muscular and that women should be small and hairless. Focusing on the physical aspect of the

Bodybook™

If you spend time sifting through the hundreds of shitposting meme pages that have monopolized Facebook content, you may be able to find the occasional gem. Facebook groups have established online communities that often foster emotional support, validation, and advice from online strangers and internet friends. Many of these groups have “secret” security settings, meaning the group can only be accessed if one is personally invited, allowing for a sense of trust and community among its members. These groups exist in many different forms that fulfill a variety of purposes, one group being a place for members to share photos and stories that all pertain to their bodies.

The Not-So-Chubby Inquisitor

In almost all of the video games I play, especially role-playing games (rpg) and action adventure games, there are almost no fat people. Even in games where you can create your own character, there are very limited options. But, these fat bodies are still rather “fit.” They’re just big and beefy if they’re male or big and curvy if they’re female. While these bodies do deviate a little from idealized Western bodies, they are still acceptable. In other words, they are larger bodies that “normal” people could still find attractive. In addition, most games that have fat people in them, like The Sims and Saints Row IV, cast those characters, as ugly and/or comical. In all of these cases, fatness is not something to be desired.

Alright, Let’s Be Honest America: Black Women’s Bodies Are “Inappropriate”

I know what you’re thinking.

“Oh my god, how could to title your post that?”

You Must Be This Tall to Ride

Content Warning: Height dysphoria, transphobia

I recently joined the millions of users on Tinder, a social networking app that allows for mutually interested individuals to communicate if they are within a predetermined distance. Tinder functions simply. Users are presented one-by-one with other profiles—which include up to six photos, age, distance, and a brief text description—and are given two options: swipe left to “dislike” and thereby remove the profile as a potential match, or swipe right to “like.” If both users have mutually swiped right, the application allows for text communication between the two profiles to occur.

While the app can be used to find friends, Tinder is most frequently used as a dating services app. As I have swiped through profiles and read their short descriptions over the past few weeks, I have picked up on certain trends in the information users present to potential romantic and/or sexual partners. One of the most frequent descriptors used is height, revealing what many view as an important physical factor. This mark of importance ranges from implicit, such as simply listing one’s height, to extremely explicit, in which I’ve seen a profile’s description read, “Do not swipe right if you are under 5’10”.”

A recent national study showed that 48.9% of the heterosexual women surveyed wanted to only date men taller than them (Yancey & Emerson 62). Height preference was important to the heterosexual men surveyed as well, but not as important, with 1.3% wanting to only date women taller than them and 13.5% wanting to only date women shorter than them.

Height is clearly an important characteristic when it comes to choosing a partner, yet there has been some debate as to whether this is due to biological tendencies (evolutionary perspective) or social expectations. Ultimately, these gendered-height expectations are rooted in patriarchy. The women surveyed in the study often listed protection and security as reasons to why they prefer taller men (Yancey & Emerson 62). Others stated that a taller man made them feel more “feminine.” The men surveyed in the study who set upper limits for height were “not considering physical or sexual difficulties but societal expectations” (Yancey & Emerson 66). These men did not explicitly speak on traditional gender roles, but they did convey a desire to avoid possible stigma. Men were “reinforcing societal expectations with their higher height limit just as women reinforced those expectations with their lower height limit” (Yancey & Emerson 66).

Like many gender norms, height expectations have the harshest impact on the transgender community. Height dysphoria, an invasive dissatisfaction and discomfort with one’s height, is a frequently seen dilemma among online transgender support forums. Height is very difficult to amend, and because it is wrongfully associated with masculinity and femininity, transgender individuals suffer greatly. Posts in these online forums express a sense of futility. While it can be achievable to possess societally-deemed masculine traits such as hair growth, muscular strength, and body parts, height is nearly impossible to change. Some responders recommend shoes with platforms or boosters. Others simply recommend an attitude adjustment.

This attitude adjustment should not be the responsibility of the trans community, but rather those who have the privilege to actively challenge gender norms free from danger, particularly white, cis, and heterosexual individuals. It is human and understandable to have height expectations, as patriarchy is deeply embedded and can be difficult to unearth, but I ask the reader to truly consider their own expectations and from where they have been created. Just as we work to untangle the mess of patriarchy in our coursework, conversation, and minds, we must also work to distance ourselves from harmful gendered-height expectations.

Works Cited

Yancey, George, and Michael O. Emerson. “Does Height Matter? An Examination Of Height

Preferences In Romantic Coupling.” Journal Of Family Issues 37.1 (2016): 53. Publisher

Provided Full Text Searching File. Web. 29 Sept. 2016.

You want a piece of me?

Every day I question my appearance. I ask myself, what makes me ……. me? If I lose a part of me will I still be me? These questions may not make sense to you but these are some things that I ask myself.