Delightful treat or Distraction from progress?

I was just in Hawaii for vacation last week. It was a beautiful time for me to rest and enjoy the unbelievable sunshine and landscape of Lanai Island. I got time to recharge and to re-set myself in hopes of resting and coming back to work with fresh insight and a more centered sense of self and a more clarified vision of purpose.

The time was incredibly valuable. I got to enjoy my friend Megan for several days and remember pieces of myself that I have been too busy to entertain lately. I also got time to reflect on myself as just myself (and not as a therapist, or a roommate, or a girlfriend, or a daughter), and to simply be and rest. I found myself overwhelmed with gratitude for the people in my life and the person that I have fought to become. (Also I got a lot of sleep, ate a lot of pineapple, read inspiring literature, and swam with wild dolphins. Boo Ya.)

On our third day, we were at the pool and I was reading the global updates section in Ms. Magazine and reveling in more gratitude in regards to the privilege that I hold as a woman in the U. S. The updates told of countries all over the world where women are still oppressed in shockingly overt and violent ways. (One update in particular highlighted the young girl who was stoned to death at a sporting event in Somalia because she was considered an adulteress for having been gang raped by three men earlier in the week.) I was humbled by the incredible freedom that I have had as a Caucasian American woman to find my voice, choose my partners, leave unsafe situations, access birth control and health care, and have a community of women who are free to openly meet and encourage one another. (Thank you Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, and Heinrick Ibsen and Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Eve Ensler, and Virginia Woolf, and and and and and and and and and and)…

And just as I was about to share the sentiment with Megan, irony caught us by the earlobes and we were distracted by the conversation next to us. (Poolside eaves dropping is one of our favorite vacation hobbies). There were two younger girls, who appeared to be around eighteen (they were in their first year of college), and a mother, who appeared to be forty five going on thirty. All three women met the prototypical beauty archetype: they were thin, white, had striking facial features, were without goiters, and wearing designer labels. I felt like we were watching an episode of “The Hills”.

I am not sure how the conversation began but these women were talking about dieting. The younger girls were saying that they wanted to lose weight so the mother started giving them tips about how to drop pounds. She whipped out her portion controlled low calorie snacks and talked about the ways that she avoids “bad food”. One of the younger women asked the question, “so, is it better to eat one Oreo everyday in a week, or seven Oreos in one day?” Megan and I laughed audibly. Was she serious? Was this question really plaguing her? The sad part was that it was. This young woman was obviously dealing with body dysmorphia and some form of eating disorder. The mother replied with confidence, “all seven Oreos in one day”. What?

And the conversation only got worse, at one point the two younger women were stating that they really preferred the look of “disgusting skinny”, and the mother agreed, except of course when the “knees start to look knobby”.

Snap-Just like that I was sobered into remembering that the battle for women’s progress in the United States is still going strong, it is just being fought on a different kind of playing field. Women in America are not being massacred by men throwing stones on soccer fields as is the case in Somalia, but they are being massacred by their self-contempt towards their bodies and the psychotic standard of beauty that promotes self violence in the form of starvation, self-induced vomiting, maxed out credit cards, and distraction from greater purpose.

The extreme level of self-disgust and self-hatred that women experience towards their bodies is a result of a beauty standard that promotes FRAILTY as the holy grail for female achievement. Women are taught to be aroused by their own demise, and to desire their position in the world to be that of a thin waif standing next to a man with substance. I have personally known this violent oppressor, and I have had to wage an incredibly long and tiresome war to learn to love my body. Regardless of the work that I have done to grow into a woman who believes in her self-worth, I was aware that as I was pitying these young women for their self-hatred and food obsession, I was also envying their itsy bitsy bodies. Some part of me still instinctively moves towards self-deprivation and starvation as a way to be “beautiful”, and therefore a legitimate and desireable woman.

And I know intellectually this this is hogwash. I know intellectually that my beauty lies within, and my sense of self is my move towards progress and influence. But it is buried deep in my blood to lust for a lie that steals my power away from me. Because the idea that my value is in my ability to allure a man, is something that has been embedded in my unconscious and is more powerful than mere thoughts. The beauty obsession runs deep in western women and does its work to divide us from each other and distract us from our progress as people.

So as I left the poolside, I was reminded of the complexity of gender oppression and the many faces that patriarchy holds. I may not be in danger of being stoned death for being raped, but my body is in danger of starvation at the hands of a sexual beauty standard that promotes emaciation as a desired outcome. And as a woman who has stood up to an abusive man, I know that rocks are not always necessary for a stoning to take place. The war to be free, to be equal, to valued, is still raging around me, and in me, and I can only hope, through me.

I find myself again, at a sort of beginning, humbled by my humanity, grateful for the many privileges I have, and hungry to continue to grow more roots and more trunk and more branches to reach out to women around me and share the good news, that we are already valuable beyond measure. So what do you think? Would it be more effective to spend one hour a day every day dreaming for equality and justice, or all seven hours in one day? I’m thinking one hour every day and at least a couple of Oreos to boot. (With milk of course)