Self-awareness

I think life as a woman is harder than that of a man.

I know – controversial statement in this day and age, where feminism is almost as much of a joke now as it was before the Suffragetes. But it’s true enough, regardless. And my reasoning behind saying so comes not from the argument that childbirth is a more painful experience than a kick to the crotch any day of the week, or because of the ever-present glass ceiling that still, after all this time, hasn’t quite been lifted.

I say so because modern women (I can’t speak for the women of any other time-period because I am, of course, not one of them) go through their whole lives experiencing a constant, almost painful self-awareness. In our culture of advertisement, there’s an ideal aesthetic standard that women are expected to achieve. Of course, any sane person would look at the size-4 models on any catwalk and say, ‘Ha! How ridiculous – surely we can’t expect our women to live up to that!’ But we do, nonetheless.

We’re generally expected (by members of both genders, the media, society as a whole and consequently ourselves) to be slim, cellulite-free, constantly bald from the neck down and with entirely unblemished skin in order to be considered attractive. This isn’t a new complaint by any means, but no matter how ridiculous we realise this situation to be, we are affected by it nonetheless. And so most of us spend our entire lives thinking things like, ‘Do I look fat in this?’ ‘Does this make me look too old?’ ‘Does this cover up my skin enough?’ and other mundane, vapid questions. Call it vanity if you like, but a lot of women are self-obsessed out of necessity. It by no means affects every woman, and I’m certainly not saying that men don’t also feel a similar pressure, but for those who do, it can really take the joy out of life. It’s not just considerations to be taken into account when looking in the mirror at the morning – worries about our own appearance can consume us, can be niggling away at the back of our minds (or even at the forefront) when we’re walking down the street, in our jobs, socialising, dating, having sex. Especially the latter.

A lot of activities and experiences that are supposed to be positive or gratifying are tainted by this self-awareness. I’m not going to get all Buddhist on your asses, or pretend that I can suggest a solution to this (if I did, I certainly wouldn’t have need to complain like this), I’m just saying that I think it’s wrong, and that the overall happiness that can be gleaned from life is dramatically lowered for many people in this kind of environment.

Size zero

Over the last couple of years there’s been a lot of controversy over the ’size zero’ debate. That’s stating the obvious quite a bit to those who have even been near the news in the last year or so, let alone someone who’s read the ridiculous amount of trashy gossip rags that I have during my lunch breaks.

It doesn’t need to be summarised for me to make my point. Controversy has arisen over the related rise in eating disorders amongst we, the impressionable, body-conscious teenage girls. However, the psychology behind the fashion industry’s current obsession with very skinny women has yet to be properly addressed in the media.

It also doesn’t need to be said that the fashion industry is an overwhelmingly male-controlled business venture – apart from the models, of course. The majority of managers, designers, photographers, agents etc. are men.

In an article from The Independent in 2005, Johann Hari explains the common male attraction to the average model-sized woman:

But it’s important to understand that no particular type of beauty is programmed into our brains at birth. Your attraction to one type over another – anorexic women over normal women, say – is a complex product of advertising, culture and social conditions. The beauties of Rubens’ paintings would be considered grade-A mingers today.

Beauty is an elastic concept; it is vulnerable to being hijacked by (in the 17th century) great artists, or (today) by particular industries with creepy agendas and massive marketing budgets. Men do not “naturally” fancy anorexic women; they are made to.

So the problem isn’t that some people are more attractive than others. It’s that the particular form of Western female beauty created and policed by a small minority of people in “trend-setting” industries today is a bizarrely unhealthy one. The people involved should not be allowed to escape their responsibility. The glossy offices of Vogue are built on the bodies of thousands of self-starved young girls. Every catwalk model walks over a tide of bulimic bile.

So we can safely establish that the average man is influenced by the media and the fashion industry. But why does the industry push this “creepy agenda”? The attraction has to come from somewhere, and this is the issue that I think hasn’t quite been addressed.

What is the attraction for androgynous, de-feminised women? I use the term ‘de-feminised’ loosely, because I’m aware that it is not, in fact, a real term – but you get my point. A typical size-zero women lacks the physical assets which are classically characterised as feminine – breasts and hips. Today’s ideal of beauty seems to be symbolic of either that which is aesthetically male, or that which is aesthetically young, i.e. pre-pubescent, at which point those aesthetic features which commonly characterise a mature woman are still absent.

So, my question is – does the current obsession with very thin women stem from repressed homosexuality, or repressed paedophilia? I’ll leave you to decide.