Women: What are the psychological effects of overemphasis on women's looks and sexuality?

In My Humble Opinion
61

“What are the psychological effects of overemphasis on women’s looks and sexuality?”

Back for some self analysis.
I was large newborn, chubby toddler, fat kid and so on. Turned into 300 lb woman.
Told when I was young I had ‘baby fat’ and would grow out of it. Heard as a teenager I had pretty eyes, shame about the rest of me. Random guys in cars would hurl out insults as they drove by, some would spit in my direction, was that on purpose?, I kinda thought so.

And that made me the outsider in school, this was just before obesity rates really took off in America. I do feel weirdly a bit better seeing more heavy kids in school, hope they won’t be so much outsiders.

I was the only really truly fat kid at my school growing up. Tormented, didn’t start dating until I was in my late 20’s.

Always felt ‘outside’ the realms in which normal women operated. After a brief teenage experimentation gave up on makeup, nail polish, well styled hair. Just thought why even bother it will never make a difference. Didn’t worry overmuch about being in a bad urban neighborhood or in an isolated area, believed in my invisibility. I put myself in places pretty women would prob never venture alone or without mace. I’d hear from people “Aren’t you afraid to do that” No, no one’s gonna touch me.

Concentrated on education and being the ‘smart one’.

The utter outsiderness is disturbing to me, can’t articulate it well, but I understand the Columbine and the other school shooters. Never had a violent episode myself but I get it. Once joked in a not so joking way that a la Ren and Stimpy I should never be in charge of the big red button. Could I/would I snuff the human race if I had the power? I thinkle so.

So here I am in middle age and figured out that I did have the ability to lose the weight. Lost a hundred pounds.
And what do?
Go girly nuts, get my ears pierced, bought tons of clothes and makeup.
Shoes! Some shoe switch turned on in my brain! I get the shoe thing now!

For the first time I’m noticing men checking me out! Freaky, have no idea what response/non-response I should be making. Now I’m wondering if I should be jogging in isolated areas.

And ya know, it’s turning out to be not such a boon to my marriage and sex life. Sheesh.

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I was a skinny flat chested teenager, and as such was the subject of many a school yard ‘jest’ about my gender and sexuality (this was in the days when you were allowed to call other kids names).

I was ridiculed on a daily basis for oh I dunno 5 years? for my failure to conform to the standardised norm of what a heterosexual woman is supposed to look like. Because of my height I couldn’t buy girl clothes to fit me and had to live in boys/mens jeans and t-shirts; further exacerbating the perception that I was either a man, a lesbian or a shemale.

I couldn’t get a date to save my life in High School. We didn’t have Prom or anything, but any school discos saw me sitting on the sidelines, or having boys daring each other to ask me to dance, or one would come over ask me to dance, I’d say “no thanks” and he’d run back to his mates yelling “oh thank fuck, she said ‘no’!!”
Now I’m an adult and I have access to online shops for tall women, so I can dress more in keeping with the public perception of what a woman should be wearing, but a lifetime of jeans and t-shirts means I have no fashion sense whatsoever, and I’m very self conscious. Where once I fetched a clean t-shirt and which ever pair of jeans was handy I can now stand in front of a mirror holding things up to me and discarding them for whatever reason I feel they won’t look right on me because I think everything makes me look like a man in drag.

Oh and I still can’t get a date, a good few years ago someone (and I know who it was) spread a rumour that I was a lesbian and had nearly attacked a girl in the changing rooms at a local swimming pool (or some variation on that theme - I’m not sure what she said, but I do know she was telling people I was a lesbian and I had a crush on her, and it grew from there). Given my height and dress, well obviously there must be something to the story, mustn’t there…?

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Thank you for this. It’s the most perceptive and best written post I can remember reading on ANY subject. I understand that this is about an aspect of being a woman and not about the whole experience, and yet I have more of a sense about half of humanity now. Just, thank you.

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I think I definitely took the message that a woman should be pretty to heart. I wish I didn’t care so much. I was a fat teenager and a fat young adult but even after losing 40 lbs I’m not really good-looking. I’m ok looking and I should be happy with that but a part of me will always be sad that I’m not prettier/beautiful. For me this doesn’t translate to dressing really well or wearing a lot of make-up because I feel like it’s just putting lipstick on a pig and if I were really pretty I wouldn’t have to do that kind of stuff! So I’m essentially shooting myself in the foot because everyone looks better with well-suited clothes and there’s nothing wrong with having a sense of style. Does anyone have any tips on how to get over it? I saw a couple people mention avoiding media, I’m sure this is a huge factor in why I feel the way I do but it seems really tough.

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This is an excellent example of why this issue is so frustrating. By which I mean: I am 100% sure you posted this with great intentions and sincerity, truly hoping that this could be reassuring.

But it plays right into the very problem we’re talking about. It still assumes that a woman should base their self esteem (confidence, happiness, etc) on whether a man finds her attractive. What about her wicked sharp wit, or empathy, or her great puzzle-solving skills, or the fact she could survive in the woods for a week with no provisions if she needed to?

And people may reply to this saying that of course those are important, too… But no one mentions them unless someone says, “hey, what about—”; 99% of the time a woman’s value will be tied to her sexual attractiveness.

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Oh, I could write a book about this. I mean, it’d be a book full of unqualified kvetching and unfounded assumptions, since I’m not exactly a psychologist or a sociologist, but it’d be a book nonetheless.

It’s ridiculously, stupidly important. More frustrating, it’s stupidly important despite the fact that everyone insists that it isn’t important. Seriously. If you watch children’s television, or certain talk-type shows, there’s this message that how you look doesn’t matter as much as who you are. That a winning personality can trump physical shortcomings to the point where said shortcomings no longer matter.

This totally isn’t the case. It’s not the case for either men or women, and it’s especially not the case for women.

I’ll stay away from the subject of professional dress, because you could make a valid argument for either side having it harder than the other. Men have much more strict rules, whereas women have more nebulous rules. However, outside clothing…I’ve been called onto the carpet for not wearing makeup to work before. And I worked in a call center. It’s not considered professional.

Now, makeup is generally used to enhance one’s appearance. It’s meant to make you more attractive to a potential mate, and to make you look younger. So, in modern America, it’s okay to tell a woman in the workplace something that essentially amounts to, “well, you’d look more professional if you dolled yourself up a bit.”

The media also sends conflicting messages about weight. A woman is supposed to cook and appreciate good food. Picking at food is seen as a sign of bitchiness. Being overweight is seen as a sign of laziness. Men talk about wanting women who have curves, but with the way things have been going, the women they’re talking about are usually slimmer than the average–a result of the media’s portrayal getting skinner and the reality getting fatter.

The threshold for being fat is set much lower, both by society and by one’s self. A man who is just barely considered “fat” probably has a higher BMI than a woman who’s just barely considered “fat.” And women who aren’t fat by any objective measure still call themselves fat. It is incredibly demoralizing, when you have a real and legitimate weight problem, to watch someone who weighs less than half what you do bitch because they have to wear a size 8 or 10. But they can, and do, and will, because every woman is supposed to be watching their weight.

Pretty is considered part of being professional for women, whereas with men it generally stops at “clean and neat.” Pretty–not knockout, but pretty and feminine–women have it much easier when it comes to the professional realm. The knockouts have problems being taken seriously.

Also, breasts. Seriously. Just…breasts. They’re on our chests–you know, just right out there!–and we constantly have to be watching to make sure that they’re attractively shaped and displayed, but not too attractively shaped and displayed. And this isn’t just limited to the hot women–at 225, in college, I discovered that I could wear things other than t-shirts. I was then treated to a summer of people who, while not attracted to the rest of me, seemed to forget that my eyes are up here, dammit.

T-shirts are dumpy. Not accidentally showing cleavage with necklines can be hard. And it’s hard to be subtle with a large chest. And if you decide to try and embrace it a little, show it off a tiny bit when out with friends, you can get the cattiest comments. Usually from other women. Sometimes by men. Like, how dare we try to be attractive while not being attractive! But if we don’t try to be attractive, then we’ve let ourselves go, or simply don’t care.

And we’re conditioned to think this shit’s normal. And we have to think about it a hell of a lot more often than the guys.

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Amen, zweisamkeit.

That gets at my hatred of the “real women have curves” meme. Real women have curves, and don’t have curves, and imagine that, come in all shapes and sizes. One’s femininity or indeed, personhood, has nothing to do with weight/size/curvaceousness/appearance. Backlash against the super-thin ideal is not healthy, either.

Like, say you put body size on a spectrum from A-Z. Right now, say sizes C-F are considered the most attractive by the prevailing voices in our culture, and A-B—G-Z are considered unattractive. Moving the narrow spectrum of attractiveness further to the left does not fix the problem. Someone showing up and decreeing, “Don’t worry, ladies, most men like women who are between G-J” does not fix the problem. Now it’s just women sizes A-F----K-Z who get told by almost every facet of our culture that they’re unattractive and therefore worthless. This is not an acceptable solution.

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Interesting thread and about what I suspected. I guess I am as guilty of any male of looking at a woman and evaluating her looks. But I do get over that when I know them. There is a woman I know, a fine mathematician and wonderful person, but almost terminally homely, who I was very attracted to after I got to know her. (She was married and so am I.)

There is another woman mathematician I know. A stunningly beautiful blue-eyed blond Italian. She dresses in plain baggy clothes and a friend of mine who knows her better says she does so in order to be taken seriously as a mathematician. That is a sad commentary.

The other point I wanted to add was the difference in how male and female performers dress. I was at a concert yesterday. It was a cello accompanied by a piano. The male cellist was dressed in a shirt and slacks, extremely casual. The female pianist was dressed to the nines. As are female soloists in virtually any concert. It is clear that society has very different expectations for men and women.

BTW, I will mention that I weigh every day. And then make a moving average. I have lost 40 pounds in a year and a half, watching the moving average go down (nearly) every day, although the daily weight fluctuates a lot. It is very reinforcing.

69

I’ve wondered often about the source of my body image issues and I think I finally figured it out. I’ve always been incredibly close to my Aunt. She is an amazing person, so for the most part she’s been a good role model, but she also has serious food issues. She has a history of bulimia (still binges) and is obsessed with food. And she’s always talking about how much she hates her body. When we talk on the phone, 50% of our conversation is about food, losing weight, or how fat we feel.

My biggest issue right now is finding that line between wanting to be healthy and wanting to fit some ideal body image. I finally figured out that the weight loss hysteria is a scam, but I don’t want to die at 60 either. I have always been somewhat overweight, but the older I get the more I worry about it.

I don’t know why I want so badly to be attractive. I’m happily married and my husband thinks I’m gorgeous. I don’t know who it is I want to impress. All I know is that lately I feel disgusting.

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I just read this blog post and thought I would share.

This story highlights something that I really resent about our culture. When a female is going about her daily business, the act of having her female body in public is treated as an invitation to critical evaluation and comment. I’m glad the author called out the bad behavior, and I hope her story inspires others (witnesses, not just victims) to do so as well.

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I don’t think you’re wrong. I had two friends in college we’ll call Cassie and Tara. Cassie was heavy (still is) and Tara was painfully thin. In the last two years of school I never heard anyone say anything about Cassie’s weight to her face. But Tara? People constantly told her to eat more, made jokes about how she should be the one to eat this fattening treat etc.
One thing I haven’t noticed in this thread is that there another aspect to being programmed to compare ourselves to other women. Not only are you asking yourself “Am I thinner than her? Fatter? Prettier? Uglier?” there are also other insidious comparisons. If you’re single and reasonably attractive and fit, noticing that there are heavier, plainer women who are happily attached makes you begin to dwell on what else might be wrong with you. “Am I bitcher than her? Less likable? Less nice?”