Good women of the blogosphere. This week has indeed been a momentous one. This week will, in future years, come to represent a turning point in the way in which we view our very worth. This week has seen us encouraged to throw off our shackles and unite in striking a significant victory blow for females everywhere struggling with issues around body image and low self esteem. And it is all thanks to our Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone who has taken it upon herself to declare that from now on there should be no more need for endless fruitless quests to achieve the ‘supermodel on the verge of collapse’ look with starvation diets and laxatives. Oh no. Because apparently – according to her – the ‘ideal shape’ for us all to now aspire to is that of the perfect hourglass (as modelled by the lovely Christina Hendricks on our left.) Any treacherous woman seen to be lacking in the correct amount of flesh can now consider themselves to be a fake. They will no longer be classed as a ‘real’ woman.
Phew, what a relief eh girls? Don’t we all just feel so much better about ourselves now! Sorry, what did you say? What’s that noise? Oh, dear me, please excuse me. It was just me… banging my head repeatedly against my desk.
I mean how could a woman who is the government minister for equality have got this so badly wrong?
How exactly did she arrive at the conclusion that simply swapping one unachievable ideal body type for another might engender some sort of progress in the very real battle for the improvement of women’s self-esteem? Oh I know what some will say: perhaps if Hendricks’ purportedly size 14 figure comes to be seen as the new ideal, we will have less young women starving themselves in an effort to look like Kate Moss. Perhaps. But we will have just as many young women unhappy and dissatisfied – saving up their money to buy cosmetic surgery so that they can finally look like ‘real’ women – money that could have been spent on getting them through university, or travelling around the world, or setting up their own businesses.
Out of interest, and in order to do some basic research for this post, I took the liberty of typing Christina Hendricks’ name into google. There have been many articles written about her recently and I read a lot of them. She’s an actor in case you didn’t know – that’s her job. But I have no idea whether she is any good at her job or not because not one of the articles I read even briefly mentioned her acting ability. Of course, who would wish to dwell on such irrelevant trivia as a womans actual merit when the dimensions of her hips and breasts are up for discussion?
And there we have the crux of the matter in my opinion. It matters not a jot whether the ‘ideal figure’ that we should all be aspiring to is larger or smaller, curvier or flatter. It is an irrelevance; a red herring, because the real point is that as long as there is a supposedly ‘ideal’ figure, there will always be a majority of women who do not have it, who have no realistic chance of attaining it, and who are made to feel less than beautiful – and less than worthy – because of that.
Womens self-esteem will improve when we cease to be judged on the basis of what we look like, and start to be given proper credit for what we do.
Pretty basic stuff for an equalities minister, you would have thought.
“Womens self-esteem will improve when we cease to be judged on the basis of what we look like” – part of me worries that this will never happen.
I know. A part of me worries the same. It just seems so completely ingrained into our culture. All we can do is just keep kicking against it. But even that’s sometimes easier said than done. I’m a product of the same culture as everyone else and I’m not immune myself to anxiety about my figure.
Surely a woman’s ideal figure is the one that she herself is healthiest and happiest in? And that goes for men’s ideal figures too. The only shackles we need to throw off are the ones that make us listen to other people’s opinions about what the ideal body shape should be. Equalities Minister? Should be sacked for misrepresenting her post!
Yes, but the problem is that many women are deeply unhappy with bodies that are already perfectly healthy and fit because they don’t quite match up to these impossible images of ideal womanhood that we are constantly being bombarded with.
Well said! ‘Real’ women come in all shapes and sizes, the sooner the world’s media come to realise that the better and stop beating us around the head with unachievable ideals.
Indeed. I do sometimes think that there’s an element of divide and rule there as well, with bigger women being labelled as ‘fat’ and smaller women being told that they are not ‘real women’. We should all of us be coming together to reject absolutely the notion that our worth can be defined by our figures. Full stop.
Is there any way you can email her?
I like to think that my intelligence and my warm heart are much more attractive than anything on my outside.
Again you wrote a wonderful post and it is important to all of us women.
Thank you Technobabe. Featherstone has already received criticism for her comments from much smarter people than me, and is now apparently backtracking like crazy, saying they were taken out of context e.c.t. e.c.t. Politician speak for ‘oops, I fucked up.’ You’re right though, this issue is important for all women, and girls too who will soon grow to be women. It makes me afraid for my beautiful and clever little daughter. I pray that her confidence will not be sucked out of her by this culture that continually tells women and girls that they are not good enough.
Too right. I can’t stand it when, in order to kick back at the impossibly thin beauty standards we have now, skinny and/or small-breasted girls are told they’re not ‘real’ women if they don’t have curves and enormous chests. And what about women who are size 14 but don’t have that ‘tiny waist, curvy hips, big breasts’ figure like Hendricks? We’re just labelled fat. Holding up ANY body shape as the ideal, whether it’s 110 pounds with 34Cs or 140 lbs with 36DDs, is harmful. I just don’t get why we’re so obsessed with body types/shapes/ideals anyway — who bleedin’ cares?! Stop buying the magazines, stop watching the ‘So you’re ugly and fat, let’s give you a makeover and get you some self-esteem’ shows and stop reading the celebrity gossip that perpetuates all of this in the first place. If we’re not buying into it, they’ll eventually stop selling it. A lofty aspiration, I know, but one can dream…
Well people may say you’re a dreamer FertileFem,
But you’re not the only one….
extremely well said, and quite obviously spot on, though not so spot on that our politicians get it.
Not only should we not be judged on aesthetics, but we should also be taught just to accept what we have been given. By all means make the best ofwhat we have been given, without resorting to plastic surgery of course. I suppose it was an easy shot for her. Much easier to point at a slightly larger, very beautiful model as a source of aspiration, then to teach the world, and individuals to start valuing outside of looks.
M2M
I think she just thought that it would be a popular thing to say. She’s a conservative minister after all – she’s hardly going to be interested in seriously challenging the status quo is she
OO I’m glad you wrote this because I was fuming about this! I thought you might.
What an idiotic thing for Lynne Featherstone to say, even if she is now backtracking. Why on earth did she pick on Christina Hendricks anyway? (who is a very good actress from Mad Men by the way but as you point out, the press couldn’t have mentioned this could they?). It doesn’t really matter who she picked anyway I suppose – anyone with a curvy figure. What was she thinking?
I try not to buy into any of that stuff – I don’t look at the gossip magazines or any of that celebrity fodder but it is there, everywhere you look, seeping in and poisoning and affecting young minds. If I ever, ever go on the Daily Mail online (which usually gives me a coronary) it makes me so mad I can hardly breathe with the discussions of women’s weight and figures.
I try hard not to buy into it too. I know intellectually that it’s rubbish, but still it somehow manages to creep inside my brain and lay its rotten little eggs. I hate it.
Hmm, I can see where you’re coming from but I disagree. Every culture on earth has an “ideal” body shape for women, they may all be different, but they all have them. It’s nature, in my opinion, women are judged on their looks because they are a sign of their fertility, that’s life.
Having said that, I’m really not a women’s rights kinda girl so I sense we’ll disagree on this!
We do disagree, but that’s o.k.
I don’t think your argument makes sense though as women whose body weight goes below a certain level stop having periods and become infertile. So how does the very thin body ideal have anything to do with signs of fertility?
Aaaaargh….
Quite.