How Can Women Develop Better Self-Images?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I just want to share a little positive anecdote. My friend’s daughter, Sam, is an original. This is a 14 year old kid – you know, the age where, like, EVERYTHING is so gawdawful, like, SERIOUS, you know? Sam’s a healthy-sized girl, about 5’8" and probably 130-135 pounds. She’s a bit on the busty side, but doesn’t dress to draw attention either to or from that fact. Sam also wears her hair extremely short.

So one day at school, a perky cheerleader type approaches her, and, indicating a gigantic football player type over her shoulder asks Sam in a smarmy voice: “My friend over there? He’s like, wondering something. Are you a boy or a girl?”

Sam closes her locker, turns to the girl, looks at the football player type guy, and says, “That’s really weird. I was just going to ask the same thing about him.”

I love this kid. I wanna be just like her when I grow up.

42

I am also going to respond from the male side of the theatre, if I may. Also in a different vein than some of my other, um, colleagues. What I suggest is certainly not a general rule, but it works for me in some respects and it might work for others, too.

I believe that certain changes of this nature just can’t come from the inside out. Most of the posters to this thread seem to expect that if they can only somehow rearrange their internal body image, it will positively impact their behavior. I think this is a red herring, honestly.

I believe that for some people, myself included, body image in fact follows behavior. Or at least the feedback between the two is much stronger than some expect. All the wrangling in the world simply does not help some people. Some can wake up one day and feel liberated that they no longer care what others thing, while some dismiss that sort of thing as facile and inefffective for them.

For those people, I would suggest that you change what you actually have control over, even at the expense of deceiving yourself in the short term. Watch “attractive” people. Not their measurements or their figure, but their behavior. Think about what they actually do. And, after a fashion, imitate it.

It takes some hard work, perceptiveness, and discipline. But trust me, it’s worth it. Soon “attractive” behavior becomes routine, instinctual, easy, and dare I say normal. It will lose it’s veneer of self-consciousness. One day, you will not be able to imagine how you ever found yourself unattractive.

This ain’t a magic bullet, I’m afraid. It might work for some, it might cause pain for others, but I’m just doing the best I can. It’s an uphill battle, and I wish everyone good luck.

If these sorts of changes worked for someone like me, there’s no telling whom else they might help.

43

I’ll stick to the body here, since that seems to be what most are talking about.

It seems to me that there are two issues, one is improving your image of yourself, and the other is improving your image. I can empathize to some degree, because of a body “problem” that few women seem to appreciate. I have been too skinny all of my life. (I have met one woman who constantly ate candy because of this issue.) I have always been self conscious, and lifted weights futilely for decades. it wasn’t until I was in my mid 30’s, and all the other guys were getting fat, that I began to appreciate my body type.

I did two things to get over my poor self image. First, I started participating in activities that take advantage of my body type. In my case, running. I turned out to be good at it. Which helped my self image, and turned me into a healthier skinny, which helped my image. (I actually gained weight running.) I was also hanging out with people who either were desperately trying to lose weight, or were always too skinny themselves. Seeing that other people actaully like us beanpoles did great things for me. (I never really believed my wife. I just thought I got lucky.)

Now I’ve taken up swimming, which has actually put weight on me. I’m thrilled. Women swimmers tend to being overweight, despite the exercise, and I think there is a link between the ability to put on size and the ability to generate the power to swim well. (Any serious swimmer is faster than me, male or female.) Let me tell you, they all look good to me. I’ve never swum behind an overweight woman and thought, gosh that suit makes her butt look big. I have thought, dammit, I’m falling behind! (er, no pun intended.) I’ve also thought, she looks pretty good, what a nice stroke, which I could kick like that, etc.

Which, at last, almost brings me to my points. I think women who are actively doing things they enjoy are sexy. I think athletic women are sexy, and they come in all body types, but they are all active so there are no clinically obese women. I think it is partly because they are confident, but that is not all.

It seems to me that women look at each other, and notice the bad things. “She’d be cute, if she lost some weight.” Or “That hair makes here look awful”. My male friends tend look at what is good, even though contrary to common perception we don’t talk abou this much. “She has great ass”, “Great boobs”, or even “What a pretty smile”. Different guys like different women, which works out nicely. I had a college roommate who complained about how skinny the women on TV were. He like women who were too large for my tastes. In the end, there is at least one person for everyone.

Most men don’t want to live with someone who is dieting constantly. Surely you have heard men talk about “high maintenance” women. All models strike me as high maintenance (as does Vasyachkin). I have heard of guys who like such women, I have never met one. Living with a woman who can’t get along with her own foibles would be a nightmare, almost as bad as living with one who can’t ignore yours.

I dunno. Does any of this help?

44

Recovering anorexic, here, just adding my own thoughts on the matter… The most damaging to my own self-image was my peers, and the way I got beyond that was my parents’ convincing me that no matter whether I was “fat” or “thin”, my brains were my ticket to college and the life I wanted.

My anorexia was all about my need to be perfect. At 79 pounds, I still wasn’t “perfect.” Now, at 130-ish pounds, I’m still not, but I’m ok with that. And I look WAY sexier than I did as a walking skeleton (exactly what I looked like, when I look back at photos of that time). I hit 79 lbs just over 16 years ago, and I’ve maintained a relatively normal eating and lifestyle ever since.

At some point, I looked around at my friends, and I realized their looks weren’t exactly gaining them the life they wanted. So I embraced a more intellectual approach, even to the point where I was called the “brainy girl that no guy wanted to date” in high school. But that stereo-type didn’t hold true, and it turned out that high school boys DID like smart girls, after all; they just weren’t so into girls obsessed with their looks, or their weight, or their figures.

So, at least in my case, my parents helped with their perspective, and I got a good, strong idea of my goals and values. I don’t know that this would work for everyone, but it wasn’t such a bad way to go. Now I’m… oh, maybe 80% happy on a bad day, 99% on a good day, with the way I am.

45

I think one thing that would help would be teaching us what a proper weight on us should be, and I don’t just mean figuring up BMI or a height/weight chart. Neither of those account for extra muscle mass or body frame very well.

In my case, I’m 5’3". I lift weights, which put quite a bit of extra muscle on my frame. I’m also medium-framed. I’m pretty sure that my teenage weight of 125 would be too low on me now. I think 150 is the weight I should be at, but all of the charts I’ve seen consider 150 to be slightly above the minimum weight for my height, because they don’t account for weight-lifting or body frame.

When attractiveness is based on a specific weight range, with no regards for body frame, muscle mass, or body structure, is it any wonder people have such low self-esteem?

And vasy, you might do a little research into anabolic steroids before you continue taking them. From WebMD:

46

Feather, I don’t have much time to post, but I wanted to tell you about this awsome site a friend of mine sent me to:

About-Face

Also, LifeonWry – great name and I love that story. What a cool kid! :slight_smile:

47

I basically feel that self-image is a hell of a lot of comparisons… at least that’s what made me have a miserable self-image. I don’t have this, I don’t have that, so-and-so looks better/thinner/prettier etc. than me… I’ll never be like that… Vogue says I should weigh 80 lbs. at 6’3" and then men will fall all over me… especially if my ribs poke out of my skin and I don’t speak the fuck up.

Anyway, in all seriousness - you know what I did? Put those crappy-ass magazines AWAY for good, quit watching cheesy TV that is a waste of my time with generic-plastic women on there, and took up an interest in Psychology magazines and biking… you know what? I feel a lot better because I’m not comparing myself to something that is not even REAL. Basically, find new interests, hobbies, friends, whatever! If I keep my mind pre-occupied on something that makes me happy - I look and feel much better about myself. That’s just my 2 cents :slight_smile:

You must change your environment to change behaviors…

48

I wish I had something more conclusive to say.
I don’t know… validation, I think, helps. But I think it has to be the right source. (Unlike some people on this thread, my parents are not at all responsible for any part of my low self-image. I’m not quite sure what is. I think part of it comes from some of the things mentioned in this article. But I’m not sure if that’s right, nor from where the rest might stem.) But without some validation, I don’t know if it’s possible for me, at least, to turn around the image I have of myself.
I’m not sure how to weed out the negative half of my internal dialogue… for example, with LifeOnWry’s story. I zeroed in on the measurements 5’8" and 130lbs. Which would give her an underweight BMI, right on the edge of “normal” but still underweight. And still she’s called a “healthy-sized girl.” And my most prominent thoughts are that if she’s “healthy sized” I must be a cow and about how people must think so awfully of me. I can barely access the rational part of my brain is that does guess that the measurements might have been misestimated. And I’m nowhere near the mentally healthy person who wouldn’t have noticed the numbers at all.
I’m sure part of the key to developing better a better self-image is to merely focus on the good half, but I don’t know how to do that.

49

Go ahead and embrace the mass media – just make sure you embrace ALL the mass media from the last 100+ years. Look at the ads and you’ll see that the ideal woman’s shape seems to change about every 10-20 years. From voluptuous to skinny, long hair to short hair, big on the top, big on the bottom, blond, brunette, light-skinned, dark-skinned. All these and more have been popularized, glamorized and eventually replaced.

Or putting it another way, EVERYONE is fashionable at some point.

50

Thanks for the reminder that everyone should have positive self-image, ava, not just overweight people. I’ve been struggling with being too heavy all my adult life, so I forget that thin people can have as big a problem with self-image.

There’s some great advice in here, guys. I want to say that while I’m working on my own body image and trying to get and stay realistic about myself, I also wanted to start this thread for all the young girls out there who are facing a lifetime of agonizing about their bodies. When I think about all the time and mental energy I have wasted obsessing about 30 pounds of fat, I could just kick myself. But I won’t, cause I’m trying to be good to me. :smiley:

51

Oh, I forgot to say thanks for the link, Mishka. What a great site.

52

I say abandon the idea that everyone should love herself exactly the way she is. What a Ricki Lake-ish piece of feel-good crap. If you don’t feel good about yourself, there’s probably a reason. Examine it. Fix it.

It’s the twenty-first century and little girls are still brought up on the idea that they won’t ever need to get a real job, that college is for finding a husband, that the importance of physical fitness is to look sexy for men, etc.

Personally, I don’t understand the anger directed towards Vasyachkin. I believe physical health and strength are probably the major determining factors of self image. Girls particularly benefit from developing upper-body strength. I’ve heard many a grown woman say that she can’t french braid her own hair because her arms get too tired!

Reading “women’s” magazines is about the worst thing a girl can do. They’re full of insidious messages: mainly that the absolute most important thing in life for a woman is looking sexy. Looking good isn’t enough; you must be the best looking woman everywhere you go, and all heads must turn to look at you.

I recommend to all women out there who want better self-esteem to do what I did: join the Army. Standing in front of a platoon of mostly men and having them follow your orders is a most excellent feeling.

53

Reading through this thread, I’m impressed with lots of good, thoughtful advice and depressed by some boorish behavior. You raised a good issue, Featherlou.
As for Vasyachkin, all I can say is that I wish there were someway on this board that I could be sure that I wouldn’t have to view any of your posts again. I dunno, maybe I should just erongi them. If that were an option, you can bet that I would avail myself of it.

On preview, it seems that I got something backwards. Maybe you can figure it out, with some help, V.

54

Body image isn’t always about the number of your weight or the number on the tag of your pants. Sometimes it’s about your surroundings and your peer group and their attitudes.

Case in point, me. I am very much not prone to weight fluctuations. I’ve been the same size (for reference, ~150 lbs, 5’7", size 10-12 depending on the maker) ever since I was about 14. I’m now almost 20.

When I was 14, I lived in a town whose high school had one of the highest rates of eating disorders in the nation. My friends used to joke about “the town name diet,” which consisted of a plain bagel with no topping and a can of Diet Coke. My little sister had a classmate who was normal-sized in every way, but went on a diet by fifth grade. The girl would pinch the babyfat on her upper arms and moan about how she needed to lose weight.

I could go on and on, but I think this example really captures the essence of that high school: The perenially most popular brand of jeans was a tight black pair of stretchy jeans that had the number of the waistband size stamped on the back of the waistband in inch-high white letters. To some extent, a girl’s physical beauty was determined by how small the waistband size was. If you could get it below 25, you were smoking hot. (Insert corset reference here.) I have clear memories of uncomfortable babyfat poking out of the waistband and developing reddened stripes.

Not surprisingly, I thought I was the fattest, ugliest girl ever. But from an outsider’s position, I saw “beauty” tied up so tightly with unhealthiness and obsessions that I ended up rejecting it in any form. I gave up on looking attractive entirely and turned into a greasy-haired suburban goth. Hey, worked for me.

Several years later, I moved. I ended up living in a building full of girls who had all sorts of “fuck your sexist beauty standards” paraphernalia and stuff taped to their doors. The other kids at the first college I went to had a very relaxed idea of what was attractive. Nobody was on a diet, nobody exercised twice a day, and nobody was actively unhappy with the way they looked.

Now I think of myself as being skinny. Remember, physically nothing about me has changed. And once it crossed my mind that I wasn’t a land whale after all, I started developing an interest in stuff I’d previously looked down my nose at - like skirts and heels, makeup, perfume, shaving and the like.

(Don’t get me wrong - that stuff can all be misused as a way to conform. Although I think this (paraphrased) motto, as seen printed on a department store makeup counter, is a good attitude to have: “We sell cosmetics to enhance individual beauty - not to conceal.”)

I’m not even going to pretend I know how the culture of that high school got started. And contrary to what some people think, making the effort to lose 15 pounds or wearing form-fitting clothes will not lead to self-esteem - it’s entirely possible to look beautiful but not feel beautiful. The dozens of beautiful but miserable girls from my hometown prove that point.

I will say, though, from what I saw, one of the things that continues the cycle is teenage girls’ magazines - even though they’ve supposedly improved in recent years, they present articles to 13- and 14-year-olds about other girls their age going on dates, going on diets, making the head of the cheerleading team, and doing a lot of cool-seeming “adult” things like shaving their legs and wearing full makeup (which is why I initially started doing those last two things - in fifth grade, might I add - because from what I saw, other girls my age were already into it, and it was just something teenage girls did.) Holy run-on sentence, Batman. This kind of stuff starts young, and in some cases it lasts for the rest of your life.

I’m a bit of a cynic when it comes to body image - I don’t necessarily think parading the kids into a gym and having someone stand at a podium and tell them how important it is to love their bodies will do anything. I think if we’re going to be committed to building healthier self-images among women, and especially teenage girls, we’re going to need to start unleashing some media images and impressions of our own. How about somebody start up a magazine - not just a photocopied 'zine that gets passed out on corners, but a real glossy - aimed towards teenage girls that promotes a much less narrow idea of beauty and maturity? (And not something touchy-feely saccharine or co-written by a panel of 40-year-old men either, but something cool that teenage girls will actually read?)

5 years ago I’d have ended that paragraph with “Oh, but it wouldn’t sell. The advertisers have got to find a way to bully teens into buying their crap.” I hope someone proves me wrong on this.

55

OK, this might sound kinda lame, but…
Really, how often do you think about other people, and about what you think of them? Pick anybody that you know, even just a bit. Seriously, even if you hate their guts, if you think that they’re the most hideous thing imaginable, how much time do you actually spend thinking about them? A few seconds here and there? Does it in anyway affect their life at all?
What I’m saying is, I see so many people getting so hung up on what other people *might * think of them, when really, chances are they barely register on other people’s conciousness (sp???). So I’d recommend not thinking about it in terms of how others see you, because:
A) You probably agonize over things that no one else has ever noticed.
B) other people obsess over their own thing that they think makes them ugly/stupid/uncoordinated/whatever, and are too busy to notice much about the things that you think qualify you for circus life.

Go easy on yourself, my dear!

56

Well put.

I do think we perpetuate a lot of it ourselves.

The media is putting out whatever we’ll buy/watch/read - we as consumers need to demand better, and take our business elsewhere, so to speak. I stopped reading Cosmo & its ilk long ago in favor of Mode (now sadly gone), O Magazine and Jane. They’re more in touch with reality and have a “love yourself as you are” theme instead of the all too frequent “Lose 10 pounds this weekend - Wow him in bed” crap that most women’s magazines are pushing.

I echo FairyChatMom’s sentiments. We need to teach our daughters differently than we were taught. Therein lies the future - teach them to be comfortable in who they are before magazines or TV convince them that they aren’t quite good enough.

Read the lyrics to this song while you’re at it.

57

Moderator’s note:

Okay, time for a reminder on guidelines and protocol.
vasyashkin, please employ some tact and judgement here. Crowing about how easily you lose weight in a serious discussion about damaging body image isn’t exactly trolling, but it 's inappropriate enough to skirt the edges. Mentioning your steroid use just compounded the fracture. We take a very dim view of anyone promoting illicit drug use. Do not do it again.

To all others reacting to vasy’s posts, please remember than in IMHO discussions center on the idea, not the poster.

Pablito, from your post I’m pretty sure you aren’t aware there is an actual “ignore” feature on the board. Your post may have just inadvertantly highlighted it. So…General reminder to all: if you have set someone to “ignore”, we ask that you not advertise the fact. If you wanna ignore someone, by feature or just general reading, go for it. (Heck, there a few posters whose dreck I read only for stern duty.) But 1.) if you are using the formal “ignore” feature, just use it; don’t post to that effect and 2.) if you’ve just written someone off generally, fair enough (really) but please don’t bring it into IMHO.

Not intending to suck the air out of an excellent thread, but some general house-keeping seemed in order.

TVeblen,
IMHO mod

58

And since I’ve not yet mastering linking, and I don’t KNOW any lyrics sites, while you’re out there look for the lyrics to a song called “Who I Am (Rosemary’s Granddaughter” by Jessica Andrews. Not about body image per se, but a nice song about accepting the “you” you happen to be, and aimed at teenage girls.

59

For LifeOnWry :slight_smile:

60

Oh thank you :slight_smile: