It’s different for girls
So said Joe Jackson, but he wasn’t thinking about this:
[I]t kills me to think of the world my perfect, beautiful, gorgeous daughter is inheriting. Soon someone will tell her that she is not enough and she will believe them and it will break my heart. Because she is perfect, and I do not wish this torment on anyone, especially not my spectacular Kiki. (Except for maybe Karl Lagerfeld, though I have a feeling he is quite familiar with this particular hell. He’ll never be the thin woman he really, really wants to be.)
The obsession with outward perfection extends into the political realm, as you can be any fat slob with a computer and become a respected political pundit (no offense, guys, you know I loves ya), but you ladies ain’t gonna get a Fox News contributor gig unless you lose 50 pounds and get some blonde extensions. It doesn’t help when awesome, supportive chicks like Laura Ingraham start slagging off “plus size” airheads they don’t agree with, as if that is somehow a valid response to the vapid musings of the McCain Spawn.
Vapidity, of course, is not a function of one’s size, and fortunately, I don’t aspire to much beyond “fat slob with a computer.” Furthermore, while Fox News sports a fair number of babes, there are interesting-looking talking, um, heads on rival networks.
More important, though, is this:
In situations like these, the lie only has as much power as we give it and once we break the cycle of passively condoning the lie by continuing to consume it, the house of cards starts to tumble. There are much more important things for us to worry about than whether or not we can fit into sample sizes. Me, I worry about my Fran times and my mile splits. And, you know, a nuclear Iran. I’m totally shallow, though.
Sure she is.
fillyjonk »
23 February 2010 · 6:55 am
I dunno. I don’t think it’s exclusively women who go around being told by society they’re “not good enough.” I think getting the sense that you are not doing enough, that you’re not achieving enough, not making enough money, not “hot” enough, not a nice enough car, not WHATEVER enough is just a part of being in modern society.
I will admit that it frustrates me with the health-related stuff, though: just as soon as you get used to doing the equivalent of 30 minutes of exercise every day, there’s going to be someone who declares that it’s really not even worth your time unless you’re doing an hour. Or that the five servings of fruits and vegetables you manage to choke down every day are so minimal that you might as well be eating Good and Plentys instead, what you really need to Not Die is to eat 9 servings…
I guess it’s the Health stuff that really gets through my head. I can kind of ignore the clothing stuff, or the income stuff. But somehow it’s the “But, but, you’re not TAKING CARE OF YOUR BODY if you eat that!” that really gets me.
I suspect also in my case a lot of the Not Good Enough pressure is internally imposed, but, to quote another writer, I’ve not quite learned to turn off Radio KFKD in my head.