the personal is political

Courtney Martin is in Athens for the night to talk about her book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters and open up discussion about one of the most prevalent issues facing the modern woman: body image, eating disorders, and the ever constant pressure to do and be everything.

You can do anything you want to, says our current-day patriarchy, that is, if you can do everything, everyday, every minute, while maintaining perfect hetero normative relationships, planning on a perfect hetero normative family, and keeping up the appearance of a (perfect hetero normative) super model by buying into the corporate, falling obediently into the mass of American consumerism, and telling your sisters that feminism is out-dated.

Wow, Patriarchy. I know you're all for parallelism, but I just about choked on that run-on sentence. Not to mention its mouth full of bullshit.

Courtney Martin emphasized the ever-familiar feminist refrain, the personal is political by relating all-too familiar stories of girls who spend an average of six months out of their lives thinking about how much they hate their bodies. How many girls feel ugly? How many girls feel like they will never live up to cultural expectations of beauty? How many girls see that failure to live up to impossible, ridiculous standards (I forget the exact number and the source, but I think somewhere around 3-5% of women have the body shape sported by an overwhelming number of models and actresses) as their fault? How many girls tell themselves that if they just follow "these rules" and only eat "these foods," they will magically become thin and, in being thin, perfect?

After Courtney Martin spoke, a girl in the audience asked the question: Why is it that, the more successful the modern woman, the thinner the ideological standards for her body? Courtney said she didn't understand this phenomenon anymore than the girl asking the question, and then added that it doesn't matter what the impossible image for beauty is, the fact that there IS an impossible image for beauty is the problem and what needs to be changed. On one hand, I agree with her. On the other hand, I can't help but wonder if (and this may be the paranoid bitch that resides deep inside of my soul, but it might also be a logical voice in the back of my head, it's hard to tell the difference sometimes) the ideological modern woman is getting ideologically thinner because of the ever-increasing fear and discomfort with her position of power.

Think about it: as women become larger and bigger and more important in the political, corporate, and activist spheres, our images of them get physically smaller and our images of men grow physically larger. As if to make up for their "loss" of power (if masculinity could only accept that it's not losing power or control just because others are gaining it, maybe we wouldn't have this issue, but that also might be a gross oversimplification), the patriarchy reacts by creating impossible images for women to follow that preoccupy their time and, in an almost sickeningly literal sense, cause them to take up less and less space, become easier to control, and coming closer to disappearing altogether.

As Courtney said, I don't think that there is some group of old white men somewhere huddled over a conference table, scheming, "How can we make women hate themselves more?!" with evil lip-less laughs.

But, somehow, these notions are ingrained into our culture, and on some level, there are figures in control who seem to be reacting out of fear. "These women are getting out of control," I can almost hear a collective conscience murmuring, fear lacing its unspoken (but not unsaid, and not unheard) words. "What can we do to reign them in, to preoccupy them, to make them just a little bit subservient?" I do believe that whatever this collective conscience is, it's not entirely middle-aged rich white men. It's the very nature of capitalism itself, for the producers to exploit their consumers so that they become more ardent consumers. Women are not the only victims.

However, when it comes to women, we have done a remarkable job of victimizing them... us... ourselves. We undermine the political, the economic, the corporate power by emphasizing their (our) lack of physical power. Our control in other realms lies in keeping up appearances. There is no iconic image of a larger woman, or a pear-shaped woman, or a masculine woman, as a figure of power - none that I can think of. Not in the media and not in politics. Do these women exist? Yes. I am sure of it. Then why don't we see them? Because of the power compromise that women are making. "We want a voice!" we cry, and the patriarchy says, "Then you must adhere to our rules and buy our products and be subservient to our ideological picture of you!"

I came home tonight and looked in the mirror for a good long minute. I'm pretty thin, but I don't have a flat stomach - flat stomachs being another one of those ideological myths that most women hate themselves for not possessing (a flat stomach is RARELY natural, even for thin women). My nose is large. My hair is chopped pretty unevenly and my skin is grayish pale with the occasional red splotch. I have freckles, and glasses, and short eyelashes. I have fairly straight teeth, a square-shaped face, and shapely legs.

My thinness comes from my mom's family, as well as the non-flat stomach. My nose is my dad's family's. I chopped off my hair myself a few days ago out of a need to do something drastic and show control over my own body. I don't go to tanning booths; I wear sun block in the sun or burn horribly. My freckles are my dad's, my poor eyesight is a double whammy from pretty much all sides of my family, and my eyelashes? Well, they're mine. My teeth are typical British teeth (the stereotype that British people have bad teeth is false - they just don't obsess over bleaching them the same way we do, and so their smiles are naturally colored, which is, of course, unacceptable to Americans). I can hear, speak, laugh, see, smile, cry, breathe, and smell. I can walk; my legs are capable of walking long distances without complaint (they just hate to run), and they obey me when my feet try to trip me up and my brain yelps, "Don't fall!"

When I look at myself and think, "I want a flatter stomach," it is deeply personal. However, it is also political. It is proof that the patriarchy has been ingrained in my system. It is proof that I have been affected by the advertisements, the ideologies, the female icons of power. When I go against the natural messages my body sends me - when I don't eat when I'm hungry or, adversely, when I eat when I'm not hungry, when I shave my legs even though I don't want to (but not when I shave them because I want to), when I think, "People might like me more if I got a nose job..." the patriarchy is winning its battles.

I will admit, it wins battles against me on a regular basis. But I win battles, too, and I am determined to win the war. I am determined to give voice to the personal in order to reckon with the political. I am beautiful. I am an activist. I love to learn, to rule over myself, and to help others achieve greatness. These are all things the patriarchy is threatened by. These are all things that make me a wonderful human being, an independent woman who will date whomever she pleases, whenever she pleases, or not date, or not worry about dating, who will eat whatever she likes, whenever she likes, and will listen to her body, not the media, even if that Coke ad did make me crave some soda.

The message I got from Courtney Martin: a refrain I have recently been introduced to in feminist circles. The personal is political.