When I was in seventh grade, I wore a size 3 jeans and all I could think about was how ugly and fat I was (I read too much Cosmogirl). I feel better about my body now in a size 24 than I ever did back then, but it took a lot of introspection and removing negative people/advertising from my life to get here.
Quoted for truth.
I find this really difficult to navigate. I hate shopping, absolutely hate it. But I feel compelled to own clothes that conform to certain expectations of me. My SO so often remarks things about the amount of shoes I own or how long I take in front of the mirror (which on the scale of “women getting ready” is absolutely nothing, never ever longer than 15 mins), saying that it is all so unlike my character. That’s true: owning lots of shoes and spending ages getting my eyeliner right is not like me. But it is expected of me. I need certain shoes for certain outfits, I need certain outfits for certain situations. And all this I need to navigate, constantly thinking: how sexy am I meant to look for this?
For teaching (and many other slightly professional situations) though, I’ve found my thing: flowery granny dresses. I look pretty, but slightly stern and respectable, my shape is visible and yet I’m not showing any flesh. With a cool pair of boots to make sure it doesn’t look like I’m actually 90 years old. Done.
Mitchell and Webb cut to the heart of commercials aimed at women versus commercials aimed at men.
AMAZING! Thanks for that 
To expand on what even sven posted, you are constantly monitoring, evaluating, and putting down your own body. I’m sitting here on my sofa, nobody else in the house but the cat and the toddler (who both love me madly), and about 10% of my consciousness is taken up by the fact that I’ve got a spare tire spilling over the band of my jeans. Every time I look in the mirror it’s for freckles, pimples, hair out of place, how white are my teeth, how clear are my eyes, am I showing cleavage, am I showing spare tire, etc etc. Life involves constantly arranging my clothes–pulling up my belt to minimize the spare tire, trying to adjust my bra to get rid of bulges, etc. My clothes are reasonable quality and fit as well as off the rack stuff can, I’m just pudgy and I’m constantly trying to mitigate it.
Oh ah, I have been a member of Weight Watchers for a couple years now, and don’t feel up some personal introspection at the moment, but here something twisted I see in the community of women on the WW boards and at the meetings:
Many many women have spent their adult lives weighing themselves every single day, sometimes a few times a day. Women admit to weighing themselves every bloody time they’re in the bathroom.
The number rules their lives. It can determine the outlook on the entire day going forward. It’s not recommended by WW, because daily fluctuations of several pounds are completely normal and drive so many people gonzo, but they do it anyway.
Women come forward and say know about normal fluctuations, but they need to know where they stand. All this time spent dwelling/micromanaging on this has to be warping, and time that could be spent on other parts of life.
Women were pissed when the boards updated the public weight display option to display whole numbers only. Everyone knew their weight was a moving average, but damn, they wanted to show every 0.2 they could.
How many men weigh themselves every single day of their lives?
I don’t have a lot to add, but I just wanted to say I agree with a lot of people here, especially the cattiness of women and the fat thing. I’m not saying I’m never catty, but sometimes I do cringe when I hear the things women say. The nasty things…anyway. Me too, basically.
When your are young, if you are attractive, you worry about not being taken seriously due to being pretty…or maybe you are only seeing your career grow under one sort of positive discrimination…later in life, your looks start to go, and if you built self esteem around the idea that you ae attractive and sexy, you have to redefine attractive and sexy or you can have a self esteem crisis. This may, or may not be, completely internal and it may, or may not be true for any individual woman.
When does that usually start?
How do women usually deal with that, in terms of redefining attractive and sexy? Can they not care less about attractive and sexy and build their self esteem on something else?
It’s not like I have first hand knowledge of this, but it seems that if a woman is below a certain level of attractiveness, she’ll get very little attention, especially when it comes to relationships.
If she’s at least at a certain level of attractiveness, for a decade and in some cases two she’ll get far more attention than she could possibly want and then very little for the rest of her life.
[raises hand]
I’m a guy, I have been a WW member for years and I step on a scale every single day. I don’t want to derail the thread so I’ll stop there but I can go into the reasons (which are not unhealthy or manic or anything) if you like.
It is depressing how losing weight or not gaining weight is the most important thing in the world to many women. It seems like there’s many women who are unable to eat unhealthy food without self flagellation. When I’m at a party or at a restaurant and there’s cake or something else unhealthy, it seems most men are able to eat it, and if they discuss the cake it’s only to say how good it is. While women have to say “oh I shouldn’t” or “I’m so bad” or “I’m not going to each anything tomorrow and run 10 miles” or other things like that. I don’t blame women for it, since there’s things like every popular women’s magazine having multiple articles about how you are fat and should lose weight and often ridiculous advice regarding food. And that’s only one source of it. But it is frustrating.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think being healthy and eating healthy is important, and that many (if not most) Americans should eat less junk and more fruits and vegetables. If a friend does lose weight then that’s a good accomplishment and I’m happy for them. But it seems like so many women feel compelled to spend at least half of their time and energy focused on their weight, what they’re eating, if they are exercising enough, and other appearance related things. And I think most of those women would be much happier if they could spend a much smaller percentage of their time on their appearance, and spend more time on learning a language or doing a hobby or just relaxing or any number of other things.
Since you’re Dutch (right?), I’m guessing King Louie. 
Or at least that’s my favourite source of flowery granny dresses.
Running thru minds of women browsing fashion magazines. A thread I’m proud of.
I’ll bite (not to hijack): why?
I work with a guy who complains about any woman who won’t eat like a “regular” person when he takes her out on a date. He expects them to be able to hold their liquor too.
But the horrible thing is that he’s the first to talk about how fat a woman is. Or which one has gained weight and isn’t as “hot” anymore. Or he’ll give me a compliment about my figure–which could stand some more pounds–while slamming all the other women on the floor.
He absolutely doesn’t see the connection. He’d be the first to call himself a liberal, feminist, new-age sensitive guy, but he’s one of the most chauvinistic people I know.
I think the biggest effect is that we tend to think our value as people is based on our appearance. I remember thinking in my 30s that I would trade 20 IQ points to be prettier. Now I just think that is sad. Screw being pretty. I do the best I can to dress nicely and keep clean, but the huge majority of my self-esteem is about who I am, not what I look like, and that’s what I spend my time on. Insides, not outsides, are what matter.
A client told me recently that whenever someone compliments her daughter for being pretty, she adds “and she is a good friend, too” or “and she is smart, too.” I love that. It is ridiculous that the huge majority of our compliments for girls/women are based on appearance.
That is really awesome. I hereby resolve to do that for my (someday, hypothetical) daughters.
Oh I really really would! Unfortunately I’m too poor…
Mine are real, honest-to-goodness granny dresses, from charity shops (you’re right, I grew up in the Netherlands, but I live in the UK right now and they have charity shops).
The wedding thing is really doing a number on me, frankly. I mean, of course there’s always the background noise about all this stuff buzzing around, but when you’re planning a wedding it gets turned up to 11. I cannot really explain to you what the bitchy bridal salon was like. I am not a particularly big girl. I’ve lost some weight for the wedding, but even at my fattest I was more “getting a bit chubby there” than anything else.
So when I went to this salon I was 5’7" (well, still am) and about 165. Size 14 pants, size 10 shirts. They made me feel absolutely like the fattest person in the whole world.
So at the expensive places, there aren’t multiple sizes in each dress. There’s one. And it’s an 8, maybe. And that’s a “designer 8” so let’s call it a 6. Sometimes the dresses aren’t orderable, either - sometimes that’s the only one you can have, and they tell you “oh they build in a lot of seam allowance, you can alter it!” They wrestle you into these dresses whether you like it or not (I tried to stop them halfway through the worst one and they ignored me and kept stuffing.) They tie you in with rubber bands and clamps, then they shove you out onto the floor and there were several which were so tight I couldn’t get up the step to the podium they make you stand on. I had to hold the salon girl’s hand and hop.
And that’s just one part of it. There’s this huge Wedding Industrial Complex which tells you that brides look a certain way, that weddings look a certain way, and that you’re a big fat ugly failure if you don’t look like that. And obviously you know better, but it’s everywhere, it’s inescapable, and there are huge expectations put on you not just by the culture but more personally by your family and friends. So you want to shrug it off, but honestly it’s hard.
I suspect it varies a lot - but I think that hitting that pre-menopause state - where you retain weight easier and your skin isn’t as supple and you start getting grey and everything drops an inch is probably a common point. So is the realizations that “I’m never getting that body back” after kids. But the thing you are talking about happens earlier - its the rare 35 year old who can pull off 24. And its the rare guy who gives a lot of attention to a woman once she hits 30, so if you’ve been the “hot girl” at the bar, that doesn’t last twenty years.
Can you redefine yourself? Sure. And a lot of women have simply redefined themselves without having to go through the “crisis.” Becoming assimilated into being “Mom.” Gaining respect in a career. And you can always redefine sexy as well. You start to realize that Diane Keaton and Helen Mirren are still good looking women - maybe they aren’t terribly attractive to 22 year old guys - but what in the hell would you do with a 22 year old guy.