I've been reading Zadie Smith's new book, On Beauty, when I come across a line that makes me stop. It's a great book (she's a great writer) and every once in a while, she throws out a home-cooked truth that makes you choke, simply because she has the guts to write it down. The line was:

This was why Kiki dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust.

BAM! Right in the stomach. A line of work that was not only truth, but a truth that no one I've ever read has taken the stance of publicly uttering. The simple statement reflects a lifetime of self-conscious image issues, battles with anorexia and bulemia (which I now understood is really bulemia-vomiting isn't the definition of bulemia, it's the purging that defines the illness. Forgive me, Father, for I have eaten.) And I look around at all the women I know and we all do it-we're all so stock-shocked with our bodies, constantly whittling away at them. The Zadie Smith quote makes me realize that we think: "She is a woman, therefore she will have self-disgust." No more "Thinking, therefore I am. " Now our thinking seems to come from the depth of a mirror.

I wonder, sometimes, what it is that has made us (as women) hate ourselves so much.

And I don't think it's just with our desire to make ourselves Calista Flockhart thin, either. We seem to have gone from being worth nothing (can't own property, can't vote, can't defend yourself when it's "Time to Beat the Grown-Ups" time) to having all that and a bag of white birth control pills, to where we are now-some kind of "want my cake but not eat it" stage-we want to be equal, we just can't treat ourselves any better than we think we deserve.

Consider Koren Zailckas-from her book Smashed-Growing Up a Drunk Girl, she talks about the perception of date-rape amongst the women that have had a few too many:

Or consider [site name removed]'¦.these sites show photos of girls slamming back glasses of whiskey, right alongside nasty close-ups of the sex acts that we're led to believe came afterward. Visitors are reminded, "Kelly was dead drunk and I don't think she realized what was going on. But one thing is for sure, she sure enjoyed herself!"

And the tragic part is, we can't even allow ourselves to feel sorry for girls like Kelly...if we say that Kelly, who is clattering beneath some man in the live feed of a hidden camera, exists as a passive object for the gaze and enjoyment of men at their laptops (one that intrigues us, then grosses us out, then makes us feel superior), she is already guilty'¦Once we write her off as an "easy drunk girl" (porn-site speak) we can feel comfortable that her punishment fits her crime.

Koren's angle is that women, to some extent, "had it coming". We get drunk therefore we get taken advantage of. I can't tell you how depressed that makes me.

We lose control, we get used.

We are women, therefore we are disgusted with ourselves and in turn engage in situations that may make the self-hatred worse.

It's a fun ride.

I'm not going about the deep feminist anger here, I've already done that. I'm not talking about bashing the male dictates or what society has forced upon us-to some extent, it's not about equality and fair pay (although yes, I am fucked off about that, too).

Being a woman today should be easier. It's true we still get a lot of shit-I remember 5 years ago work wouldn't let me go to a customer visit in Asia as "I was a woman" (they're right, you know. It's true-I am, indeed, a woman.) As the manager of an engineering team I get a lot of grief-when management have a go at me, I let them know it's not ok. When a member of my team says something stupid, I let them know it's not acceptable (2 days ago one of the guys on my team made the comment that a failed 4-hour phone test was "a woman's issue". I made him apologize. He did.)

But that's the working world. In the private lives of women we make things harder for ourselves. There is guilt simply because we carry our organs around on the inside, as opposed to them being hung in a nicely sewn handbag around groin level. We seem to feel apologetic, we seem to feel, somehow, less. We are a mess of contradictions-we can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, but never let you forget you're a man...but dammit we just realized that frying up bacon is a messy business and we don't actually want to do it. We may have the rights to exit the Titanic first but we don't seem to be able to meet someone's gaze when we say that our occupation is "Stay at home mom", which has to be the hardest fucking job I've ever heard of and one that commands respect.

So the question is...who broke us? Men? Society? Cosmopolitan Magazine? Ouselves? Are we even broken, or simply being too hard on ourselves? Why are we being too hard on ourselves? Why are we constantly relegating ourselves to a status we wouldn't allow men to relegate us to?

Maybe, in the tradition of Japanese business culture, it's better to not question who fucked up but to just fix it.

I don't know how to fix this. I would give anything to spare future generations of women from the issues that we face, to truly find that perfect embodiment: You are a woman and that is good. I don't know if we should cuddle our daughters and tell them how fucking great they look all the time or not. I read recently that parents actually are encouraged to not comment on their daughters' weight/appearance now, but to highlight other positives instead, so as not to fixate on appearances: You are so clever, you're fantastic at football, you're the best violinist I've ever known. That seems like a good starting point, but then again you get an insecure little train wreck like me and I'd just be thinking: Why do they never tell me that I'm pretty?

I don't know if women as a whole should throw out their magazines and their makeup and simply say: Fuckit. I may have an extra pound or two. My eyebrows may disappear without eyebrow pencil. I will never walk a catwalk in Milan but goddamn it, I have so many great qualities. But I know that I myself won't leave the house without lipgloss and there's no way I'll ever be happy with my body and I think I'm riddled with character faults, so my glass house just got blitzed by a hail of stones.

We can't win.

Mostly because we never let ourselves.

Koren Zailckas has a suggestion:

Rather than turning our dissatisfaction inward, allowing ourselves to be thwarted by gender stereotypes and the burdens to achieve feeble feminine goals like thinness, rather than allowing our frustrations to be wasted and to waste away inside of us, I think we should use them as ammunition against the world we were borne of'¦By the same token, I think it's time we allow ourselves to experience real anger as women. And I don't mean that passive-aggressive dance that we've employed for too many years. It's not real anger if it is implied or a few degrees removed, if it takes the form of whispering, or cold shoulders, or silent treatment. Real anger is what popular culture would have us be afraid of, based on the fact that it is not courteous, elegant or feminine.

I'm with her on the "not turning the dissatisfaction inward" piece. As far as the anger? Well, frankly, I'm tired of being angry. Angry has come at the wrong time, I'm all angered out. I also don't really care if I'm considered feminine or not-I suspect my penchant for pajamas and fuzzy socks will deprive me of that title anyway (and that would mean that I consider anger "unfeminine", which I don't. Anger is, in my world, simply human.)

But what does make me angry is Zadie Smith's quote, that girls would grow up to have self-disgust. It makes me angry because it is too bold. It makes me angry because it is unfair. It makes me angry because it is bitter and anti-women.

But above all, it makes me angry because I agree with it.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:51 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 1445 words, total size 8 kb.

1 WOW! That was good! I do believe we make things a little bit harder than they should be, but I dont really know why we do. Something seems to have engaged a silent competitive side which we express differently than our male counterparts. Is it our generation or our soceital influences? Is it better or worse in Europe than in the US? I think in Europe, but not from first hand knowledge, just from hearsay. Either way you are BRILLIANT!

Posted by: Steff at October 04, 2006 01:38 PM (uKuUC)

2 You are so so right about all of those things. There are weeks when I'm consumed by self-hatred and self-disgust and all I can think about are the stupid things I've done in the past (that probably no one remembers except me). If I have kids, I will PRAY that I don't have a girl, so she won't have the struggle so much with self image, and so she won't hate me like I hate my mom. What made us this way? Who knows. All your theories are good ones. My boyfriend keeps telling me that my repetitive crying, binging on junkfood, and anxieties are boring. "Yes.", I say to him, "they're boring. I'm so grateful for the many years you've put up with me." But inside I'm really ANGRY, and I don't even know if I'm supposed to say so, or just try to forget about it.

Posted by: Sylvia at October 04, 2006 03:41 PM (AnAPb)

3 I said the same things when I was convinced I was having a girl. Not half as well, but the same things. I dont know what to do either, and I dont have excess emotion to waste about it right now. But it really has to stop.

Posted by: That Girl at October 04, 2006 04:34 PM (oT4a3)

4 *ahem* I'm...uhmmm...glad you think it's a nicely sewn handbag... (I had more to say, but it turned into a post, something I try to avoid in a comments section. Your post was very thought provoking for this father of two girls)

Posted by: ~Easy at October 04, 2006 06:08 PM (u8qrx)

5 Well said! I don't know what the answer is. Girls who are brought up with love, patience and frequent confirmation of their worth will not dis-respect themselves (mind or body).

Posted by: kenju at October 04, 2006 07:15 PM (2+7OT)

6 I hate what I see in the media concerning women, they way celebs are portraying themselves. I loathe the way girls who like to have fun must be "wild"(ie: young and drunk), and the pages of Myspace make me sick. I don't know the answer either, but I do know that everyday I have to make a conscious effort to show my daughter that you can be smart and athletic and honest and fair and pretty-all at the same time. I know for sure that sometimes the quietest girls are the most fun, and that if my food is cold when it is brought to my table I will send it back, even if the waiter thinks I am a bitch. I know that sometimes the high school girls that live by me act so immature, but I remember that I was young once too. The one thing that I know above all is that I have always loved being a woman, even in the bad times. I don't have to be angry and loud to be heard, and somedays I want to wear make-up, and sometimes I don't-doesn't mean I am still not beautiful. I can throw a wicked fastball and still like my pink fuzzy slippers. And as I age, I am beginning to appreciate the women that I have in my life, and what they can teach me. Thanks for the wonderful post.

Posted by: Teresa at October 05, 2006 01:53 AM (PZNTf)

7 Another brilliant post. I'm not sure there is anything to be done, except maybe putting it out there so we can think about it. I've never met a woman who didn't have some form of self-disgust, and I've known some extremely well-balanced women. Perhaps there is an innate search for perfection we all share, and we aren't immune from trying to make ourselves perfect.

Posted by: Donna at October 07, 2006 12:53 AM (Aanzg)

8 I thankfully never had any body issues while growing up, and after researching the topic rather extensively for a thesis (due to far too many of my friends having problems), I came to the conclusion that it was largely because my parents, both of them, were very very careful to make sure the "thin is beautiful" thing never came up. (I find it ironic that my mother has a weight tally on her journal page.) My research indicated that women's magazines— showing a percentage of the population in the lowest 2% of body weight— do, in fact, lower a woman's self esteem. Women who look at those pictures register a lower self-satisfaction than those who don't. (Gotta love psychology. They'll test anything.) It also indicates that one of the major risk factors for eating disorders is an environment that is hostile to female intelligence. Really. A subset of that risk is girls who are striving for a higher level of achievement than their mothers— probably guilt. But anyway, all of this, and I never thought that I was beautiful until my husband started telling me so, constantly. Outside affirmation really helps. So I make it a point to tell women that they're beautiful, particularly if they're not fashionably beautiful. I'm an artist. I think I'm qualified to judge. And I'm currently working with high school photography, so if we sit a girl down and she favors us with a radiant smile (a lot of them don't like to smile; pity), I make sure that instead of "Got it," I say "Beautiful," or "Pretty." I hope it helps a little.

Posted by: B. Durbin at October 07, 2006 04:01 AM (tie24)

9 Too true! I am so damn tired of trying to live up to some twisted miracle of perfection that someone else dreamed up. How pretty is pretty enough? How thin is thin enough? How much money is enough? Enough to shut that evil bitch up that lives in my head and whispers: “You’re not as smart as you think you are and you’re not going to make it.” Some days, I am enough and some days, I’m just like Sylvia. Sweetie, you do NOT need that boyfriend. When someone who supposedly loves you tells you that your personal agony is boring – it is time to leave! You have every right to be angry.

Posted by: Tina at October 07, 2006 12:32 PM (C+aDk)

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