If it weren’t for the fat thing, I’d think you were a sister I never knew about. My mother spent the first 20 years of my life telling me how I’m beautiful just as I am and should have a better self image…and the last 5 or 6 telling me how I *really * ought to be wearing some makeup. And btw, when am I going to do something about those gray roots?
Sorry about that Sam, I don’t think I had that problem. Maybe I just put the sound waaay down w/o actually muting it…
Like a guy has never felt a moment of mourning for when he had a full head of hair.
This isn’t how “women” think, it’s how one woman thinks. Indeed, it is how one woman who seems to have a long-running body image problem thinks. In any case, a woman with body-image problems has a lot more in common with a guy who has body-image problems than with a woman who does not have body image problems.
I get the “color your grey!” thing, too. I’m perfectly happy with my air, TYVM.
For another view of what women act and think like — or should we say, another view of what a male author thinks women act and think like — see Flatland (especially Chapter 4) by Edwin A. Abbott.
[QUOTE=Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland]
Not that it must be for a moment supposed that our Women are destitute of affection. But unfortunately the passion of the moment predominates, in the Frail Sex, over every other consideration. This is, of course, a necessity arising from their unfortunate conformation. For as they have no pretensions to an angle, being inferior in this respect to the very lowest of the Isosceles, they are consequently wholly devoid of brain-power, and have neither reflection, judgment nor forethought, and hardly any memory. Hence, in their fits of fury, they remember no claims and recognize no distinctions. I have actually known a case where a Woman has exterminated her whole household, and half an hour afterwards, when her rage was over and the fragments swept away, has asked what has become of her husband and her children.
Obviously then a Woman is not to be irritated as long as she is in a position where she can turn round. When you have them in their apartments - which are constructed with a view to denying them that power - you can say and do what you like; for they are then wholly impotent for mischief, and will not remember a few minutes hence the incident for which they may be at this moment threatening you with death, nor the promises which you may have found it necessary to make in order to pacify their fury.
[/quote]
ETA: (Our 3-dimensional females worry too much about whether their boobs are too big or too flat? In Flatland, the females are all line segments, as flat as flat can be. The above paragraph refers to the construction of flatland homes, where the females’ rooms are narrow, so that they cannot turn around in them.)
She made her first valid claim at 25 minutes in, and that one is thoroughly contestable. In the 35 minutes I’ve left unwatched, she may make two more.
I don’t have that much time, TYVM.
ETA: I don’t buy her argument.
Sometimes this board dissapoints me, I don’t think anyone claimed ALL women have body issues or claimed NO man has body issues. I also don’t think anyone(except maybe the OP I’ve never read MAFM WAFV) was claiming it was an innate genetic thing, I’m sure everyone knows it is cultural.
But are you really going to deny that this is predominantly female issue? REALLY?! Because guys have body issues like “wish I had a six pack, wish my dick was longer, wish I had more hair” very general shit. A lot of women have body issues like “omg is that a visible vein in my breast! Eek that has to go! My thighs are 2 inches too large and if I pull hard I can get some loose skin here that has to go and etc” They will look in a mirror and come up with HUNDREDS of “flaws” based on their own subjective idea of what perfection is, and that ideal fluctuates.
How many women have ever slept with a guy that wouldn’t get naked with the lights on? Because most guys have experienced that with a woman.
There are even TV shows focused on getting normal women to look at themselves in the mirror wearing underwear without freaking out and cringing.
I’ve never seen the UK version but the US version features only women, I have never seen a man on the show.
Body dysmorphia isn’t normal or typical, and all women aren’t “like this.” It’s true that women face a lot more societal pressure to look pretty than men do, and on average worry more about their appearance than the average male, but most women don’t develop BD. BD is practically the *definition *of a first-world problem–see the rates of anorexia in the first world vs the third world. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a real problem, for people who suffer from it.
By the way, name-calling and ragging on a woman with a mental illness is pretty low.
The OP says: “I never realized this is how Women viewed themselves before reading this.”
It sounds as if the OP thinks he has now realised how I view myself. He has evidently not.
You don’t have to. Her work is quite widely accepted though, I think the only person currently really contesting what she ways is Simon Baron-Cohen, whose work she fiercely criticises. Her work and that of Rebecca Jordan-Young are being widely discussed at the moment in gender related topics at my university. They both mainly discuss the flaws in research and reasoning found in current (& sometimes popular) works relating to gender and they put up for discussion our current (mis)conceptions of the gender binary. They actually make fairly little claims, mainly sticking to pointing out the flaws in what we think we know. It’s interesting stuff (and certainly more valid than anything John Gray ever wrote) but you don’t have to engage with it. Just seems unwise to dismiss it without investigating properly. If you don’t want to watch the video I’d recommend their books.
I’ve posted pictures of myself at Photobucket and have linked to them here. Several posters here took that opportunity to start a thread on another board, which must not be named, and then sent me a PM linking me to that thread. In it, I learned of all the physical traits that I have that make me a fugly troll. Nobody cared about my feelings because I am not a real person to them, so they laid it alllll out there. My friends and BF can’t understand why I won’t perform in public, even though I could probably make a little money. It’s because for every one person who thinks I’m attractive or “okay for [insert qualifier here],” I have actual data to show there are at least four people who think I’m a nasty, ugly troll who should hide under a burka for the rest of my life.
Do those opinions matter to me? Only to the point where I won’t perform on stage because I know that approximately 3/4 of the audience will be thinking these ugly thoughts out there. I do what I do because it boosts my self-esteem and makes me feel better about myself. If I put it out there in the public eye, all that hard work to love myself and my body will be for nothing. All I would be able to think about is the 75% of audience members out there thinking, “What the hell is she doing up there on stage? Gah!”
In reality, I am probably not all that unattractive. But nobody ever really tells me that, so I don’t really have any feedback other than the negative. What am I supposed to think? That I’m hella hot? At the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter. Apparently, there are people who don’t mind associating with me despite my hideous countenance. ETA: And I do have a BF. After spending a year hearing about how much he hates fatties and how ugly they are, I’m quite sure that, if I gained 20-25 pounds or so, he’d dump me so fast on my fat ass that my head would spin. IME, most guys talk like this, not “I would like you no matter what you weighed,” but “ugh, no fatties [or whatever physicality that turns a dude off].” Maybe it’s just me that I attract shallow narcissistic jerks to myself and can’t recognize people who like me for me. No matter how you slice it, I’m going to turn everything back around on myself which just feeds the self-loathing.
FWIW, they called me ugly, too. And I’m not. So I very much doubt they have the capacity to make such judgments.
Well, we have no way of knowing that, do we? And, while I might be talking about a bunch of high schoolers with too much time on their hands, I think I am talking about adults. And these adults have set up websites where they can be as nasty and mean and hateful as they want, all shrouded under anonymity, and no one can hold them accountable for this behavior. And there’s no where to go and no one to complain to because adults have every right to set up hateful websites telling women how ugly they are. And I don’t even have to be specially referring to certain SDMB offshoot forums to find examples of this, i.e. hot or not. There’s hundreds of sites set up just for people to take potshots at other people.
My point is the purpose of these sites is to give these creeps a forum to say the things that are on their minds, but which are unacceptable in polite society to say out loud. So how can we know that they aren’t right and the people who say nice things to us are just being polite?
It’s kind of like telling a bullying victim to just nevermind, ignore the bully and it will go away. We all know that rarely works. So with this sort of negative feedback, nevermind the catty crap we all catch from other women (which is based probably mostly in sexual competition and fight for status), how does one learn to shut out all the bullshit static and think you’re attractive anyway? What if you’re not and you’re the douche who’s walking around thinking she’s all hot and shit, but everyone she sees walks away mumbling ugly shit about her overdeveloped ego behind her back?
I don’t know what the answer here is, but my entire adult life, I’ve been told by other people that I’m not enough in some way or another. After some time, that tends to do a number on ya. I think the point of my posts has been, “Well, yeah, have you walked around out there in the Real World? Women view themselves as less than quite frequently because for most of us, that’s all the feedback we ever get.”
Dogzilla, I just wanted to say I am really sorry this happened to you. This sounds awful. It must be hard to try to see how ridiculous and immature these people are, and how this has no bearing on you. It doesn’t, but me saying that won’t help.
It sounds like the guy you are with is not making you feel good about yourself. You seem very unhappy and he doesn’t seem to be helping.
I’m just sorry you feel this way about yourself.
Sorry for the hijack.
Re: people siniping at photobucket pics: if rape isn’t about sex, then is denigration really about evaluation? It’s just for the sadistic power.
Dogzilla, I’m pretty sure that how people react to you in real life is a much more reliable indicator of your attractiveness than the comments of a group of people on the internet who have gathered in that particular little cyberspot for the stated purpose of anonymously making fun of people who post here.
I’m just throwin’ that out there.
Listen, I do understand how ridiculous and immature the photobucket snipers are, but what I’m suggesting is this behavior is indicative of how people filter their comments for polite society. What people say to my face is generally complimentary. What they are thinking in their heads may be something completely different and the photobucket snipers scare me, only because this tells me there’s a significant proportion of people out there who don’t say their ugly thoughts out loud to other people, but those thoughts still exist.
Obviously, you can’t please everybody all the time and I wouldn’t expect ALL people to tell me how beautiful I am. There’s no accounting for taste. But I’m not putting myself out there onstage knowing that probably half the crowd is thinking, “ew.”
What I’m trying to say is: this is just one source of that message to women that you aren’t good enough, and if you keep looking, you’ll find a lot more. It’s very difficult to keep your head about you with more negative feedback than positive coming at you from all directions.
And as to my BF: I don’t lay the responsibility for me feeling good about myself on him. It’s not his job to make me feel anything. That’s 100% on me.
I don’t think troll behavior is indicative of what normal people are thinking.
But you have no real reason to believe that half of any crowd are nasty trolls.
You are assuming that what the trolls said is indicative of what “normal” people are “really” thinking. What is your evidence that this is even close to true?
If you are saying “there are assholes everywhere”, sure, I think you are right. If you are saying “everyone is an asshole if they would say what they really think”, no, I don’t think that is true.
Sammy Davis Jr. (of all people) wrote about something he learned about himself in his first autobiography Yes I Can. What he claimed to realise after a suicide attempt, was that when he performed, and ninety-nine people applauded and one called him names, he only heard the names. It sounds like you are taking this one step further, and assuming that most people would call you names to your face if they said what they are thinking.
I doubt that.
Regards,
Shodan
My evidence: I just gave one example. I can think of other examples in my personal experience where I thought people were flirting, or showing interest, or simply offering sincere, genuine compliments, only to learn later that there were a lot of ugly things being said behind my back, thus negating all the compliments. So what I am saying is “there are assholes everywhere” and where I take the next step is "I don’t know how you people can learn to filter whom to trust for sincerity and who is a trollish asshole. Because both types say nice shit to your face. I have very little sense for who might also be talking shit behind my back. I’ve been burned so many times…
And this isn’t the only source of negative feedback. Also, I want to point out that I’m not saying men are immune to this same sort of negative feedback loop; I think that, in general, it’s more about ability and/or income/earning power than physicality, but certainly, men feel this pressure too. Just maybe in a different way.
It’s just that it doesn’t only come from some internet trolls/haters and it doesn’t just come from magazines, and it doesn’t just come from your harpy mother (which I do not have one of those, thank all the gods), and it doesn’t just come from the mean girls in your dorm or your PE class or from your coworkers. It comes at you from all sides, from all sources. Some of us are better at strengthening our emotional armor than others and those of us who are not that great at it, tend to think we are worthless pieces of shit… because that’s what we hear. Doesn’t mean that’s 100% of all the feedback we get about ourselves, but like the Sammy Davis Jr. quote, some of us will fixate on the negative feedback for myriad reasons.
It all boils down to: everyone just wants to be loved and accepted for who we are. But the facts of life are such that people make snap judgments based on appearances. What each of us does with that information is up to us, obviously. Some of us internalize the negatives and can’t see the positives because the feedback is overwhelmingly in the negative category. Some of us shake off the negatives and wander the earth thinking we are all that and a bag of chips. We tend to call those people vain, shallow, and arrogant… behind their backs, of course. 
Erm…
I’m standing RIGHT HERE.
Precisely. That’s exactly what I was talking about when I said that kind of stuff barely even registers any more. It’s like the wind blowing through the trees in springtime, or the smell of exhaust in a city–I hear it just fine, and I know it’s there, but it’s so omnipresent that my conscious mind just kind of filters it out.