UPDATE: This is now also posted at Jezebel, where the comments section is much more active.
In last Friday’s Guardian piece on sexualized rebellion, I briefly touched on the media-driven discourse of “compulsory individuality”. As contradictory — and as familiar — as it sounds, compulsory individuality requires women (and teen girls in particular) to navigate the paradoxical demands to “fit in” while “standing out”. This isn’t novel — but as I wrote last week (following Marjorie Jolles), the ever-more-sexualized nature of compulsory individuality is transforming young women’s self-image, not necessarily in helpful ways.
A related point can be made, of course, about skinniness. It is not new to point out that “thin is in.” The longing to be slender and the obsession with dieting goes back to the 1920s, and is due in part to radical changes in fashion and culture brought on both by World War One and pre-war innovations in style. In the USA, five generations of young women have now come of age surrounded by diet books, and what were once considered problems for middle-class white girls only (poor body-image and eating disorders) are now found in every racial and class demographic.
The key change in the past decade around skinniness is the explicit recognition of thinness as a marker not only of status, but of proud isolation from other women. Adolescent girls whose bodies come close to the fashion ideal have long been aware that they are, at least at times, the object of other young women’s resentment. “You’re so thin… I hate you!” is a phrase that many slender women have heard, with the only variation being the degree to which the second part of the statement is said with genuine loathing as opposed to mild, teasing envy. Lots of thin girls grow up being called “anorexic”, regardless of the presence or absence of an eating disorder. The mix of jealousy and resentment and pity often includes the refusal to believe tha a “skinny girl” has any problems about which to complain. (Think about what often happens when the most slender young woman in a room remarks that she “feels fat”.)
In the past decade, we’ve seen the appearance of what we might call the “mean girl narrative”. In addition to the now canonical (for millenials, anyway) Lindsay Lohan film, books like Queen Bees and Wannabees, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, and the newest media darling, Twisted Sisterhood: Unraveling the Dark Legacy of Female Friendships all make the popular case that girls are, well, mean — meaner, certainly, in ways that boys simply could never be. It seems likely that this “discourse of female cruelty” works in tandem with the narrative of compulsory individuality to suggest to young women that theirs is a hyper-competitive world where success is a solitary and sexualized pursuit. Whether it’s chasing grades or getting guys, even your sisters are nothing more than “frenemies” at best.
The positing of thinness as a competitive tactic shows up in books like Rory Freedman’s Skinny Bitch. Freedman’s title reflects (or, one suspects, subtly reinforces) the reality that achieving the ideal body will invariably invite animosity from other women. It is taken for granted that it is better to be envied than to be liked. One imagines that the subtitle could have been this brutal but unmistakably powerful false dichotomy: “Would you rather be fat and liked or skinny and hated? Is that even a question?” Freedman uses this discourse of inter-female hostility to market a plan for success in this brutal, mean-girl world. (I like Freedman’s emphasis on a plant-based diet. But as a vegan, I’m not interested in using women’s fear of fat in order to transition people away from animal protein.)
The latest manifestation of the marriage of women’s enforced competitiveness and the cruel dictates of fashion comes from Bethenny Frankel, like Freedman a chef and animal-rights advocate and now a reality-tv sensation. Frankel, whose marketing term is “Skinny Girl” (slightly less confrontational than Freedman’s) just introduced a onesie for infants with the slogan “Future Skinny Girl” emblazoned across it. Frankel wanted it for her own daughter, and in a statement, insisted that she was motivated by concern for her little Bryn’s health. The pushback has been obvious and expected, and all of it drives attention to Frankel’s books and merchandise.
Leaving aside the false notion that healthy and skinny are always synonyms, one of the key problems with the onesie is that it introduces female competitiveness to the not-yet-toilet-trained set. Other little girls won’t be able to read little Bryn Frankel’s onesie — but their mothers will, and their various reactions of scorn or shock or admiration will quickly be transmitted to their daughters. Their daughters will grow up unaware that the much-ballyhooed competitiveness of girls with one is socially conditioned, and that this relentless social jostling over sexiness and slenderness and status doesn’t come automatically with double XX chromosomes.
Research on girls with eating disorders has shown that those who are perceived as very slender often tend to suffer from social isolation. This is due in part to their own choices (some anorexics tend to have an off-putting grandiosity in their belief that they have more self-control than their classmates who eat regularly and to satiety), but more so to the socially reinforced envy of and hostility towards girls whose bodies come closest to the unhealthy fashion ideal. Again, this isn’t new. What’s new is that rather than seeking to strengthen young women’s bonds with each other, the dominant cultural message seems determined to fray them further. The relentless reminder that other girls are mean and manipulative combines with the suggestion that success (good colleges, good boyfriends, good jobs, good praise) is scarcer than ever and requires ever more competitive effort.
If you’re gonna make it, the discourse of competition says, you’re gonna have to make it on your own. Who cares, the discourse says, if other girls call you “selfish”, or a “slut”, or a”skinny bitch”? The point is, you’re hot and you’re thin. And for those titles, no price is too high.
Re: Rory Freedman’s Skinny Bitch, if you scroll through the reviews on Amazon, a number of people (including plenty of vegans) point out that the book is rife with inaccuracies about vegan diets and has a nasty, abusive tone that sounds remarkably like the mental script of an anorexic. This woman is not a good advocate for veganism.
I, too, am concerned about the competition and hostility that exists between women regarding looks. How are we supposed to move women’s rights forward if women are not united together for the cause? I believe that women must support and educate each other about the fact that this competition is created by our patriarchal society to maintain power over women.
I could be a skinny-bitch if I were willing to devote a good chunk of my time and a great deal of my energy to the project. But the plain truth is that I am way too busy these days trying to make a positive impact on our world to worry about how my ass looks. I still exercise, try to eat healthy, wear relatively fashionable clothing and many of the other trappings. But I just don’t have time to obsess about what someone else thinks of how I look. I am too busy worrying if they are hearing what I am saying or reading what I am writing.
Donna Brazil in her “Rules to Live By†writes, “Men don’t wear high heels, and they don’t make allowances for women who do. Tottering down the corridors of power in beautiful but crippling stilettos telegraphs your preference for style over substance†And I would say much the same thing for prioritizing thinness over accomplishing something of substance, it telegraphs a preference for style over substance.
I assume that people like Bethenny Frankel or Simon Cowel have profited materially based on their or someone else’s appearance and have concluded, rightly, that attractiveness equals power in a society that is increasingly disempowering. I try to remember that, but more often I give into the temptation to view them as vapid, as having nothing more important in their lives than their appearances. So that, not any jealousy, forms the basis for my feelings of separation.
I wonder if our media’s obsession with thinness and beauty reflects a desire to keep women very busy and focused on things of little or no consequence rather than on revolutionary ideas like gender equality or social justice.
I caught a CBC interview with the author last year. She claims it wasn’t her intention to come off as condescending or catty, and that that’s just how people in “Joisey” talk to each other.
I’m not buying it. I don’t like the b-word since GenY hijacked it. It used to describe a snarling powerful creature with teeth. Now it describes a relationship where the creature is owned, bred and sold for some guy’s gain.
Kinda like what happens when women starve off all their muscle tone so they can’t fight back, wear skinny clothes so they can’t run away, and reject their friends so they lose the safety of the group. Sounds like a hunting strategy to me. Distract them with some bait to get them pecking and squabbling and then pick off the slow ones.
I think one of the reasons anorexics get socially isolated is that eating together is a basic of a lot of socializing, and it’s harder if you’re starving yourself.
Xena…being from Jersey I can attest to the word bitch being used often by women who would normally be branded a bitch for their loudmouthed ways… Most of them take ownership of their bitchiness… for instance in Jersey if a man calls a woman a bitch, she says Damn right…got a problem with it?
Whether or not that actually screens potential mates is up for debate…the women who are “bitches” often are paired with men who are total assholes…or sometimes on the opposite end of the spectrum, men who are subservient…neither makes for a good relationship…
Gah…I missed the point Xena… yeah… it is basically a way to pick off the weak…and the best/worst part…is it does the work for the guys…they know to pick from a certain “crowd” based on what “crowd” they belong in… interesting…
This is something I’ve certainly experienced.
I’m a skinny woman. Actually, I have difficulty writing “woman” because I don’t perceive myself as a woman, even though I am 38 years old. I try to but it’s tough.
Somehow I’ve internalised the belief that to be a woman, you have to have a certain type of body. You have to be curvy. If you are thin and flat chested, you are not really a woman.
I know this is irrational.
Whenever I see an article about “loving your body” or “be happy with who you are” it has been written for people with curves. Curves are normal, see? And if you dont have them, you are not only lucky, but pathetic as well, a waif.
I’ve had people shout “anorexic” at me in the street, although I have a healthy and normally muscled body – not wasted as an anorexic would be. I’ve fairly often had people give me kind advice about my non existent eating disorder. I’ve even had a woman try to force me to get on a scale to face my “problem”.
People who would never comment on somebody who has gained weight, have no problem in telling me that I am too thin – in public, in front of other people.
I know I’m lucky to be able to indulge my love for food without having to worry about what other people think, because I wont gain weight. I’m not sure that I would have the strength of mind to love myself despite disapproval, if I did gain weight.
I like what I see in the mirror, but I also dont.
I have been, ironically, both anorexic and overweight in my adult life. And I have to say that both states are particularly hellish. What is most sad is that the lack of sense of worth that one feels from being overweight in this society is so strong, so shameful, and thinness is so highly valued that it has now become more painful, at least in my own opinion, to be overweight than it is to be starving yourself.
I applaud people like Portia de Rossi for coming forward with their stories about overcoming eating disorders but she is still a very thin person and I feel that somehow it perpetuates the value of thinness when someone that beautiful and successful that has overcome an eating disorder still finds the need to be so thin. She discusses in her book the time during her recovery when she weighed 168 pounds and there’s such an undercurrent there of shame, bemusement, and embarrassment of ever being 168 pounds that I feel she both gives those with eating disorders hope and at the shame time perpetuates the value of thinness in our society.
The issues surrounding food, weight, and worth are so complex, so multi-layered that it is almost impossible for me to sound rational when I talk about it. But one thing is for sure, our society is incredibly out of control with this issue. There is no better sign to point to just how out of control we are than a baby onesie that proudly markets the value of future thinness. If this isn’t a huge indication for just how far off-kilter we have become than I don’t know what is.
I’m curious to know to what extent you consider anorexia and other eating disorders to be socially conditioned, and to what extent do you consider them to be biological? My understanding is that unlike alcoholism, anorexia is mostly a response to the culture, or to family dynamics, but not something that has a genetic cause. Your thoughts? Have you covered this in another post?
Though I agree with everything in this post, I do wished you had also pointed out that while skinny girls have it hard, getting called “anorexic” every once in a while is not quite the same as the fat-shaming that heavier girls experience.
the combination of grandiosity and envy that you cite is hardly responsible for most of the isolation experienced by sufferers of eating disorders. it’s more to do with crippling anxiety or depression, self-loathing, and the impulse to shield disordered behaviors from outside eyes.
@Holly, having listened to Hugo lecture on eating disorders, and knowing that he relies a lot on Joan Brumberg’s ‘Fasting Girls’ for his work on the history of anorexia and other eating disorders, I feel pretty strongly that he isn’t saying that grandiosity and judgment are the only things that cause pain to anorexics.
I used to visit a lot of pro-ana websites, and there was definitely a lot of grandiosity there . Lots of girls boasting about how little they’d eaten and how proud they felt. I think that is part of what Hugo is referring to here.
Hugo, the ENTIRE POINT of Skinny Bitch is to push a vegan diet, using misogynistic body-hatred as the club. It’s not pushing a “plant-based” diet that includes some animal products. The authors have been entirely blunt about the fact that their real goal in writing Skinny Bitch was to persuade women that they should become vegans.
The book isn’t simply about fat-shaming, by the way, but has some incredibly fucked-up and awful language about how the reader is a “pussy” if she drinks coffee, or takes painkillers for menstrual cramps, because (they say) cramps are the body’s way of preparing women for the pain of childbirth.
It’s no wonder this level of woman-hating crazy was embraced by PETA.
I can relate to Not Anorexic. I too am, naturally, quite slender. In my late teens, though, I was very nearly pushed into anorexia by all the people around me (men and women) who obsessed about everything I ate or didn’t eat. I started to feel embarrassed to eat or share meals with other people, because I was always worried that someone was going to pick on any and all choices that I made. It took a long while to make peace with myself, and blow off the social noise that insisted that if I wasn’t ashamed of my body or myself, I should be.