Fisheyes · 16 April 2008
In the ladies' after the yoga, some of the willow-women talking how fat they have gotten. Bitterness and self-revulsion. And some of the others, amazingly still, understanding what they are witnessing. But also not understanding.
The transcript replays in my head. It has knocked one of my tracking beams off course, sent my perspective of mind-bodies in to a removed third-personhood.
The bewildered side of wonderment.
What are we humans doing? What is the relationship of minds to bodies? How many different ways of being are possible, and how can you tell what they are?
Tripping myself out, watching all the undergraduates move around the campus like I'm seven, beholding brand new species on vacation at the Seattle aquarium. Giant eel! Hammerhead shark!
Where is the awareness in that one? How is she swimming through space? Why are all the ones coming out of the econ building all tilted forward and moving with their fists tight? How are these three moving together? What is the feeling in them? Do they feel? What are they seeing? What am I seeing? Won’t someone please make eye contact with me?
Maybe this is what it feels like to be tall.
Are we all equally trapped inside our own experience? Equally free in our bodies? Students are spacey, uncertain, late for everything. Ashtangis are deliberate, quiet, controlled down to the breath. But maybe just as clueless?
Liberal political philosophy is big on this idea of “self-ownership.” My body and my essence: they are mine. The whole autonomy thing. (You can argue yourself into a corner with it, but that’s true of all theory.) This assumption—the self-navigated boundaries of personhood—is the underlying left-liberal ethic of the day.
So go for it! You are free to dislike your own body and attack your own mind.
Or are you..?
Are you just your own? Do you have carte blanche to disrespect and fail to thank anybody else for this educated, fed, disease-free, safe, genetically refined self-body-mind regardless of who gave it to you and regardless of the circles of relationship in which you’re enclosed? Are you just yours to fail to care for, to isolate, to beat up? Is it personal? Or is trashing yourself fundamentally non-relational, ungrateful, falsely disconnecting?
I actually don't know. All I see just now is pretty fish.
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: having a body
, morality
, self-deception
, social theory
Previous entry: Besotted, All of You / Next entry: Bookend
Comment
Commenting is closed for this article.
Someone is knocking on that threshold door! Very Douglas Adams.
Posted by: Gregor · Apr 16, 12:53 PM · #
What do you mean? What would it look like not to be free to do any of those things? Not sure what kind of freedom/non-freedom you’ve got in mind. The first two things that spring to mind are American-style illegal abortions and Chinese-style forced sterilizations.
Posted by: Guest · Apr 16, 07:37 PM · #
To those who are asking: I am not on drugs.
I was just free-associating.
You didn’t follow?
Weirdos. Ok here is the summary.
I was in the bathroom and the women who are actually thin were talking about how they are fat.
It suddenly dawned on me that humans are crazy! We have all this stuff in between our minds and our bodies and it makes us say crazy things like Oh look I’m 100 pounds I must be getting fat. And the mind-blowingness of the craziness made me telescope back to this other point of view and see humans like they were oddities in a fishbowl. And I took that perspective to campus and looked at the students and the economists with it and watched the different ways their bodies moved through space and thought Wow, all humans are weird. Ashtangis and students alike.
And then I said to myself: so what about that static in the ladies’ room? Where do we humans get off attacking ourselves for being ugly when really we are perfect? What makes us think we have the “right” to do that?
And this is what got me going on the whole “humanistic” hyper-personalist ethos of all political philosophy. The self-ownership thing, which is just a little to atomized and hyper-individualist and vaguely capitalist if you ask me.
Because what I’m thinking about the whole self-hate for beautiful, functional bodies thing is: Hey, when you say that, you’re kind of insulting not just yourself but the whole gene pool and the whole supporting society and maybe even human history. Let’s ease up, right?
Better than being a hammerhead shark.
No offense to the sharks.
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 16, 07:41 PM · #
Oh, is that you again, Guest? Looks like we astralplaned.
What I mean is what I said in the last long paragraph above. When I look at myself in the mirror and think I see some thing that is just mine to love or hate or care for or not care for, this ignores two things. In my case, it ignores that I’m basically a replica of my mom and grandmother. So if I look at my body and say it is worthless, I’m actually failing to be grateful for the ways that they (and the rest of my family) are in me.
Also, second, I’m not recognizing that the boundaries of my body are pretty fluid. I exist as I do because of the society that has educated me, created infrastructures to feed and house me, perpetuated research that cures diseases that might have offed me. And not valuing the way those resources manifest in my body is pretty short-sighted… and not taking care of my body so others (either my family or some anonymous taxpayers) don’t have to seems not just a matter of personal choice. I am not just “mine.”
That said, woah. The minute I start thinking about the nation-state and its various intrusions into the human (especially female) body, I do want to step back from this perspective. Because I do want autonomy from that—from nation-states that feel free to cross the boundary straight into a woman’s uterus.
Which I guess the Republican party feels free to do too.
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 16, 07:48 PM · #
I totally felt where you were going there. Interesting subject. And, tongue mostly in cheek, I gotta point out with respect to your first point that maybe the reason some of those women don’t like their bodies is because their mothers & grannies didn’t like theirs either. If you’ve been instructed not to like yourself, or not to like the female/male in yourself, then in a very real sense you’re showing respect and gratitude for the others that are in you by hating yourself. People always think of rebellion as being destructive and disruptive, but sometimes the best rebellion you can raise is self-love.
Posted by: Guest · Apr 16, 08:55 PM · #
Sweet! Your last line especially.
Thanks for helping me work this out. I am not usually so loquacious here, but this idea was not formed yet. So I didn’t take the time to make my comments shorter. :)
My mom lives, as they say, a short distance from her body. Super-heady. And my grandma (age 88) is a cyclist and swimming fiend. Therefore I think I’m missing something about the inherited body-critique that many women experience. That’s real—no need for tongue in cheek.
I want to remember this. That others have had to work harder to find self-love, because they are working with a more complicated body image legacy. (As a preacher’s kid I had to work harder to push past sexual repression, but that is a tangent.)
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 16, 09:09 PM · #
The internet ate my comment. I was trying to say that everything is relative. Instead of thinking myself as disrespectful of my family because I often “feel” fat or talk about my weight, I’m actually quite proud of the fact that even though I have some negative body image, I have never dieted extremely or binge eaten.
For someone who watched her mom abuse laxatives and wacky diets for years on end, I think this is pretty good going.
Posted by: V · Apr 17, 12:03 AM · #
Doh. Now it all makes sense. I thought I was weird for a moment.
Perhaps to colour in some areas of that thought, we could see our body is a rental made by our ancestors. Thousands directly involved. Consciously and mostly unconsciously evolving. Oh I think I’ve been inspired!
Posted by: Gregor · Apr 17, 04:31 AM · #
Owl, if you did not inherit any body issues from your close female relatives (mother, grandmother, etc) you are VERY lucky. I have actual videotape of my mother saying I shouldn’t bother to eat, just look at me from my high school graduation day. And I weighed about 140 lbs at 5’9” on that day. The female body-hate thing is VERY REAL and is a symptom of other underlying self-hate issues that females many times pass along, mother to daughter. And my mother is NOT a bad person or even an inherently bad mother. Some things she just didn’t get quite right :) I didn’t respond to a similar post a day or two ago by a different blogger because I didn’t feel up to jumping in the fray but I guess I’ll jump in here….. I guess what I’m saying is, sometimes we don’t even notice that we’re doing it! The body-loathing is very difficult to get rid of.
Posted by: LI Ashtangini · Apr 17, 06:38 AM · #
The body loathing thing (and any self-loathing thing) is reinforced by those seemingly innocuous social chats in the locker room/at the water cooler/in Mom’s kitchen. Rebel by refraining from them! And if you hear them in your own head, step away from that language! It’s a practice, so keep at it and all is coming. Step away from the language!
Posted by: karen · Apr 17, 06:52 AM · #
Indeed, it is the conversations in my head that are the most disturbing! Oh wait, now that makes me sounds just nuts…..
Posted by: LI Ashtangini · Apr 17, 06:56 AM · #
My mom, talking about my brother’s girlfriend at the time, who had two degrees, spoke four languages and was lovely and funny to boot.
“She is not pretty. Well, if at least she made an effort, but no, she throws whatever on, just like you do, V”
Ta-chan! Thanks Mom, I love you too :-)
Posted by: V · Apr 17, 07:29 AM · #
Body loathing! I found an old journal a couple years ago and was appalled at how obsessive I was about food vs exercise. I recorded everything I ate & also how much I’d exercised and the ratio was hugely important, distracting, joy reducing.
Now I love my body. Am very happy with it. But then I’ve gotten it to where I wanted it. Lean. Defined. Strong. I can eat instinctively, whatever I want, however much I want. I have tuned into my intuitive control & don’t have to worry or obsess about it.
And then sometimes I go out with women who order the iced tea unsweetened and pancakes without butter or syrup and I wonder if that’s the only thing they’ll eat all day & they eat a little & are then tortured.
That’s no way to live! Just exercise and be done with it!
Posted by: Boodiba · Apr 17, 08:45 AM · #
I think the voices above were advocating for a practice of body-talk that is actually sensitive to the way women’s talk about themselves (esp. mothers and fellow practitioners) affects others’ feelings.
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 17, 08:57 AM · #
Oh I never doubted that. I was just thinking out loud, in a not very linear way. Babbling, in short.
Posted by: V · Apr 17, 10:22 AM · #
I’m actually advocating desisting from any of the social body-chat — negative OR positive. It’s too rote (either positive or negative) and settles a complex reality into a handful of responses (good/bad, fat/thin, too much/too little). Bah!
Posted by: karen · Apr 17, 10:37 AM · #
Isn’t that some form of body negation, though? Do you (you all, in general) think it’s possible to say “I’ve put weight on” and try to lose it without necessarily being self-hating about it?
Posted by: V · Apr 17, 11:02 AM · #
I kinda dislike my body. In fact, I dislike what I have done to it, in spite of the genetic material that was given to me by my ancestors and the information given by the society. I was wrong eating like a pig. I am slowly repairing the damage and by that I am paying respect to the genes and society. I do not believe it was wrong to be so pissed off at myself.
Posted by: Alfia · Apr 17, 11:27 AM · #
You only just now came to realize humans are all wackadoodles???
The genius of the human species is wildly spectacular but to see just how phenomenal we are we have to quit viewing ourselves merely as individuals. Certainly, individuals have invented nice things, and discovered and attained interesting things too, but individual achievements are merely momentary, minuscule pixels of a vastly bigger picture.
Posted by: Carl · Apr 17, 11:37 AM · #
nice post. i really enjoy the way you write Owl!
i once edited an article titled ‘my body – the thing that takes me to the store to get milk’ (or something like that). the author had interviewed young women about their relation to their bodies and she found that most of the women separated their minds, their ‘selves’, from the body. the body was this ‘thing’ below the head. scary…
Posted by: chitta vritti · Apr 17, 12:36 PM · #
I knew Carl would sympathize with my fisheye condition—you live in this perspective in a unique way.
V, you crack me up. You’re not insensitive! On the contrary!
What is insensitive, however, is the message that in order for a woman to have a body worthy of loving and one that makes her happy, that body needs to be “Lean. Defined. Strong.” And that such a body is easily attainable if you “just exercise.”
This is an uncritical reproduction of objectifying, body-obsessed popular culture images and exactly the message that causes women to judge themselves harshly.
Insofar as messages like this are getting in women’s heads and informing their self-talk, I feel like a more reflective, critically-thinking, equanimity-loving, body-celebrating kind of verbalized talk can be liberating. Just to create space for self-compassion and healthy habits that naturally follow from the habit of DEEPLY liking oneself on a deeper level than the body.
Here is the specific verbalization I would like to add to this thread: our bodies and our mothers’ bodies are beautiful and perfect. Revolutionary is the idea that our mothers are perfectly beautiful—TELL THEM. One does not have to be 100 pounds and chiseled to have a beatiful body… in fact that is the image of an athlete and not something to use as a measuring stick.
Glancing at the server activity, people are all over this thread today. No wonder… it’s a topic that gets in your head.
What do you do? I like Alfia’s approach of practical, positive action. Cognitive- behavioral therapy (the non-Freudian wing of psychology) might take an approach like this: Remove the negative stimuli. Replace the negative self-talk with positive self-talk specifically through learning positive talk in conversation with others. Then as the damaging images and narratives go away, rely less on the positive work and make space in your head and your life for things more interesting and useful than body image.
Maybe there’s something useful in the CBT thing.
In any case, I want to do an ethnography of locker-room talk. It’s all about women’s bodies on both sides of the wall. In the Ladies’, women doing criticism and comparison… in the Men’s, everyone doing a much more equal-opportunity celebration of T and A. I can’t stand either version of locker-room talk, but that contrast is powerful.
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 17, 02:30 PM · #
See also:
Susan Bordo, both her volume on the pomo female body (Unbearable Weight) as well as her volume on the pomo male body (which I think is simply called The Male Body: in any case, along the binding runs an image of a RULER, which I think is bottomlessly hilarious and spot-on in a way that’s a little spooky).
For further body politicking (and this is almost all theory, not therapy; hey, it’s what I’ve got) see Riki Anne Wilchins (anything; Read My Lips is a good place to begin).
Trans-bodies and trans-literature also offer a completely compelling take on what it is to “be” a gender; that stuff’ll blow your mind.
Posted by: patrick · Apr 17, 03:52 PM · #