Monday, October 28, 1996
IMAGE:
Success in life not determined by a woman’s measurements
Hello Happy Bruins! Although requests have been pouring in from
around the country for more penis articles, I decided that my
journalistic career must move forward. I would hate to be called
sexist, so now it’s time to move on to the female body. No, this
isn’t going to be about a specific part of the anatomy, but rather
our image of those parts that form a complete woman.
Women in our society have a problem. We think we are FAT. You
heard me  not fat, but FAT. Our bodies have been taken over
by green Martians. They train us to see ugliness and fatness when
we look in the mirror. Thighs, butts, hips  you name it, it’s
too big. The "standard of beauty" in our culture has been steadily
breeding thinner and thinner women in recent decades.
Blah, blah, blah … You may be wondering how this abstract
rhetoric affects You, the awesome Viewpoint reader. I was
originally going to share some anonymous stories of friends at
UCLA, but they became agitated when I showed them the draft of my
column and urged me not to print it. I respect their right to
privacy, but I believe that it is exactly this resistance that
causes eating disorders to remain such a huge problem behind closed
doors. A friend said that she didn’t want to be stereotyped in the
way that I portrayed her. I agree; no woman wants to be known as
the "floor bulimic" or "closet anorexic," but we need to begin
sharing somewhere, because this is a problem that affects all of
us, either directly or indirectly, and if we continue to deny the
existence of green Martians, then they will win.
This summer, when driving my two 7-year-old cousins from Oakland
to my house for a cousin slumber party, they started talking about
how fat they are. I quickly told them that they were being
ridiculous and that they shouldn’t worry about things like that.
Reflecting about it later, I was horrified that our culture had
been able to penetrate innocent childhood with its warped
perceptions of how women’s bodies should look.
As for myself, I don’t really care about my weight unless my
clothes start feeling tighter. I know that I feel best about my
body when I eat healthy food and exercise regularly. My problem is
that I am lazy, and while I love garbanzo beans, if the Cheetos are
sitting right there, I’ll eat half the bag without a thought. The
one thing I learned in Physiological Science 5 is that there is no
such thing as a diet. Diets will take weight off temporarily, but
if you want the weight to stay off you will have to eat like that
for the rest of you life. I have learned that there are more
important things to worry about in life than counting fat grams and
calories.
Eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa
specifically, have a high prevalence among college women. But the
aforementioned diseases have narrow definitions that do not include
any of my friends. The problem of eating disorders must be seen as
a spectrum starting from healthy (the only woman I know with a
healthy body image is my mother) on to having the serious disease
of anorexia or bulimia.
Why is this such a problem among women our age? Transition and
instability are huge factors. This is a rapidly changing time in
our lives and many times we may feel that we have little control in
the outcome of events around us. Control over our bodies and eating
patterns (or lack thereof) is one way to exert power over the
forces around us. Unfortunately, many become obsessive about it and
develop eating disorders that warp their sense of how their body
should and does look.
Our surroundings here at UCLA also contribute to this mire of
unhealthy body images. Have you ever really looked at the women
walking around on campus? If you truly haven’t before, put this
newspaper down right now and take a good look around you. No, keep
looking. Okay, how many skinny women did you see? How many fat
women did you see? Los Angeles is an extremely body-conscious area,
and as a native Northern California chick, I have always been
fascinated by the number of deathly-ill Kate Moss wannabees that
seem to breed out of nowhere down here.
There is incredible pressure here, as well as in society at
large, to be good-looking. Skinny, tan, fit … women internalize
this silent pervasive message and decide that they can’t succeed in
life unless their bodies mirror that of a prepubescent girl. We
need to remember that people come in all shapes and sizes, and that
many of us will never be skinny or fat. Learning to accept and live
in harmony with our bodies will create a healthy and lasting
relationship between mind and body.
I’m angry. Angry that women can’t love their bodies or
themselves. The issue is not food  it is power. Those green
Martians have it, and one by one we need to take our power and our
womanhood back. Each of us possesses a unique trait: our bodies. It
is amazing that no two bodies are alike. Similarities exist, but
our differences distinguish one human from another. I wouldn’t give
up or alter a part of my body for the world because my body is an
extension of myself. No one has my eyes, eyebrows, teeth, lips,
boobs, bellybutton, legs or toes. They are all idiosyncratic from
person to person.
My body belongs to me and nobody else. My name is Leah Green.
I’m 5 feet 6 inches tall, weigh 135 pounds, and I love my body!