Body Image Warrior Week Post!

As I've mentioned previously, I'm a Sister to Sister Mentor for New Moon Girls, a fabulous magazine and online community for girls ages 8 to 12. It's really the perfect community for preteen girls- it's smart and not at all condescending, there are incredibly insightful discussions, and it allows girls to discuss issues both fun and serious in a safe environment. One of the issues on which New Moon focuses is body image, regretfully perfect for the demographic of its participants. Although I know body image barely brushes the surface of the issue, I wrote a post for the girls of the site (keep the age group in mind :)) for National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. I'm pleased to also publish it in conjunction with Body Image Warrior Week at Already Pretty, which was inspired by NEDA Week to publish posts regarding body image, and I thought that worked out conveniently. Here's the post reprinted below.

My group of friends consists of some pretty incredible girls. I suppose I am biased, as their friend, but they really are spectacular. Some of us have the highest grades in our whole class, others are being commended by colleges already for their athletics, some are leads in the school plays. But wait—that’s not really what makes us special; those are just things that society thinks make a person stand out. My friends are special because they’re caring, kind, good listeners, honest, and beautiful people.

That’s why it’s so disheartening that every one of us has known many equally special girls with eating disorders or disordered eating. A combination of genetics, cultural and family norms, low self-esteem, media influence, and dissatisfaction with weight or one’s body are causes of eating disorders. At least one in every hundred American women suffers from an eating disorder. Even more appalling, 95% of those suffering from eating disorders are between the ages of 12 and 25, and about 90% of those people female.

Eating disorders are a really important topic for me. I had very poor body image when I was younger, which is something that I still struggle with, and even contemplated eating disorder behaviors. I had really negative thoughts about my body for over a year before I told my best friend, and it was over another year later when I told my other friends. I trusted my friends, and they knew most things about me, but I was embarrassed and terrified to tell them or anyone else. My friends were all so smart and didn’t seem very concerned about their image; I thought that if I told them that I wanted to be thinner or prettier they would think I was silly or “girly”. I thought that they would be awkward around me after I told them, treating me like there was something wrong with me. I was afraid that they would agree that there WAS something wrong with me.

It also just happens that most of the people in my group of friends are especially thin. I was even afraid- amazing girls that they are who would NEVER do such a thing- that they just hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t as thin as them yet, and once I told them, they wouldn’t want to be my friends anymore.

When I told all of my friends how much I hated my body at a sleepover in ninth grade, no one freaked out. Most of the other girls admitted that they’d felt the same way, which shocked me. Most importantly, all of those girls are still my best friends, and at times that my body image was particularly negative in the future, I’ve found friends to go to that make me remember that weight isn’t important. That’s something I know for a fact- that every girl is beautiful- but sometimes I forget it about myself.

When I finally made this confession, though, something unanticipated happened- my body image improved dramatically and I was so much happier. It wasn’t because people had assured me that I wasn’t “fat”; it was because a secret that had seemed so dark and embarrassing to me really wasn’t so powerful anymore. I realized that I didn’t have to think about my weight all the time, and that people I loved most would still love me back regardless of how much I weighed.

If you are ever struggling with body image, please don’t hesitate to sticker me or one of the other mentors or post on the Sister to Sister message board. It feels so much better to get it out in the open.

Love,
Alexa

Guest Post on The Beheld Today!

Around the time I posted about fear for my generation, Autumn at The Beheld posted about her generation's attitude toward beauty as teenagers, noting,

In some ways this post may just be a mea culpa to the world at large for not having paid closer attention to the differences between what young women experience today versus my experience as someone who came of age at a time when baby tees hadn’t yet been invented. I maintain that the root issue isn’t that different. But more has changed than I realized.

Upon reading my post, she asked if I was interested in writing a response to hers about my own generation's approach to beauty. I was thrilled to be asked, and wrote a post that went up today. Please check it out! :)

New Moon Girls: Sister to Sister

I have the opportunity to be an older sister-esque mentor for New Moon Girls , an awesome website and magazine for girls ages 8 to 12. I write advice blogs for the girls about once a month, and here is this week's!

Sister to Sister- Take Your Own Advice


I had one academic goal for high school: to be on Principal’s List every quarter. Principal’s List is our school’s highest honor roll, with all averages above 94.45%. I wanted to be on it so badly. I worked so hard, and when I was up studying past midnight or ditching lunch to do homework (neither of which I recommend whatsoever), I would just remind myself of the goal: Principal’s List. It became this elusive, enigmatic way of epitomizing all of my goals. It was my proof that I was smart. It gave me a right to say so- or else, I would just be like everybody else, and to me, that seemed awful. Then, the very final quarter of my sophomore year, the unthinkable happened: a 94.38. Yes, that was my fourth quarter average, everyone. 0.07% off from the goal that I had defined myself so intensely by. What the heck was I supposed to do now? I had tried as hard as I possibly could, and I had failed. I’d always been told, by parents, teachers, even New Moon Girls, that if I tried my hardest, I could achieve whatever I wanted. But I didn’t. I was heartbroken.

I’m not seeking pity here. And I’m not complaining. I know so many people have so, so many worse things to deal with. I’m using this experience of mine to serve as a metaphor for the first time you try so, so hard to do something, and you can’t do it. Sometimes, this has to do with competition with others. For example, even if you try your very hardest for a part in the school play, someone else could get the role. That’s different, though, because people other than you had control. It’s so hard when so much is on you, when they standards even you set for yourself become too tough.

After my academic average fell short of my expectations, one of my close friends reminded me that the same thing had happened to her last year. She had been about the point off from the same goal, and I had consoled her, saying that it didn’t make her any less smart. It didn’t make her any less deserving of praise. It’s not like her parents, or even colleges, would care about one little point. This system of defining us, I had said, was stupid and baseless.

It wasn’t the first time stuff like this had happened to me, either. When I was in middle school I was very concerned about my weight and appearance. I thought that I was overweight and that if anyone else “noticed,” they wouldn’t like me anymore. Don’t get me wrong- I knew how silly that was, at least logically. Yet at the same time, I was on the Girls Editorial Board and spent tons of time on New Moon telling others that everyone was beautiful and that weight didn’t matter- and I believed it, too. But much like with my friend and our averages, I couldn’t manage to apply it back to me.

I don’t know if this is only a female issue, but I think that it has a certain relation to self-esteem that exists with primarily girls. Whether it’s natural or nurtured, girls are often empathetic, or attuned to other’s emotions. We understand what it feels like to go through such troubles, and are great at consoling each other. Yet, sometimes we can’t take our own advice.

I just wanted to remind you girls not just to treat others how you’d like to be treated, but yourselves, too. Imagine how much we could all get done if we focused on our awesomeness instead of our supposed faults.

I Fear for my Generation

It’s typically stated that the current generation of young people, spotlighting adolescents, is ignorant and self-absorbed. It’s a long, winding list of absolutes- that all kids are addicted to their cell phones; that American students don’t study nearly as much as their international counterparts; that they don’t realize all of the social progress that has allowed them to live their lives the way they currently do.

I always tried to ignore this prevalent viewpoint. How could it even be uttered? Many of my friends are caring, wonderful young people. I have one that builds houses in an impoverished area of West Virginia each summer, and another who’s seventeen and has volunteered at her local congresswoman’s office for four years. We’re the kids who invite the kids deemed pariahs to sit with us at lunch. I’m not claiming we’re perfect, of course, but I think that we are good people. And how about all of the lovely, brilliant young teenage bloggers? Julie at The F-Bomb, Danielle at Experimentations of a Teenage Feminists, and Talia at Star of Davida are just a few examples. These girls are taking the time to eloquently express their opinions in a public forum, creating a community for other like-minded people. I’ve never seen an ad hominem attack done on any of these blogs, which is far more than could be said for many adult pundits.

But my last few weeks in the start of school have made me feel that all of the ignorance and apathy associated with my generation might be right on the mark.

Take the conversation I was a part of at an athletic team gathering. A friend and I were sitting on the couch next to a bunch of very recent high school freshmen, who were discussing various females in their grade, branding them as “sluts,” “weird,” etc. It was very The Plastics in Mean Girls. One of the girls there mentioned that she was frequently called a slut, and everyone shouted, “OMG! You’re totally not! Not like [insert name here]!” (I wish I was hyperbolizing.) I tried to profess that your worth can’t be defined by your sexual activity- whether devised on the grapevine or actual- but everyone just kind of looked at me. Anyway. One girl, now Girl A, switched the topic to how Goth was weird. “My dad said that if I ever become a Goth, he’ll send me to female military school.” Alright. A bit weird, definitely. But then Girl B interjected, “Oh, yeah, that’s like when parents send their gay kids to straight school.”

NO NO NO NO OH MY GOODNESS NO.

I cleared my throat. “Um, hey Girl B, that kind of doesn’t make any sense at all. What do you mean?” [Fake giggle.]

“Oh, there are lots of them. And they, like, work, too. Because when the kids come out they were gay before and now they’re straight.”

“But… that makes no sense. If you’re gay, that’s it.”

She looked at me like I was completely insane, and then the conversation switched to which belly button rings each of these fourteen-year-olds planned to get when they turned eighteen.

Oh dear.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------




This story’s off the middle school rumor mill, courtesy of my little brother.

Most people have heard the rather annoying phrase, “Cool story, bro. You should tell it at parties.” It’s now printed on lacrosse pinnies across the country. But my brother told me about a shirt one of his thirteen-year-old male compatriots wore to school, reading, “Cool story, babe. Now make me a sandwich.”

I was legitamitely speechless.

My brother said that when a teacher saw it, she supposedly lectured him in front of the whole class, “but not like yelling at him. He wasn’t in trouble. But asking him if he even knew what it was saying.” (I knew I trained him well.) Obviously, I think that this was the right thing, if not the awesome thing, for her to do.

But really? Thirteen’s a bit young for blatant sexism.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The list goes on and on. Another shining moment is when teammate relayed to me that a kid in her Global History II class asked the teacher, “If you’re Lesbanese, are you automatically a lesbian?” “I just knew that would make you mad,” she said. And she was right.



Why does this make me so mad? Because these kids are SO young. They already have these close-minded views in their heads. I know the last generation was all Free-to-Be-You-and-Me, but I think my generation may have missed some of that acceptance. Our world is progressing so much socially. These kids could have any opinions they want. If this is what they really think, then that’s fine. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion.

But… how many thirteen year old guys buy their own shirts? I can’t say very many guys I knew bought their own clothes before high school. I would strongly suggest that this kid’s mom bought him the offending clothing article. What the Hell is that teaching him about how to treat women? And my teammates- it’s one thing to have self-expression stilted by threat to boarding school, but another entirely to say that being gay isn’t a part of one’s intrinsic identity. I can’t help but think that parents influenced this too. In the media this is becoming a far less portrayed view (I mean, Glee, right?) But if kids’ parents are stuffing them with archaic opinions, how much can we blame these kids for their ignorance?

And yeah, maybe I’m guilty of this too. I try as hard as I can to be open- stuck 100% in liberalism is just as bad as being stuck 100% anywhere else. My parents’ opinions on issues such as these wasn’t particularly strong in my childhood, for which I’m glad, because I’m confident that I formed opinions that are right for me personally at this time in my life. But how can my generation achieve social progress when bogged down with no room to think for themselves?

Five Videos I Wish Every Middle School Girl Could See

When I’m trying to share feminism with my friends, dropping Manifesta on their desks or barraging their Facebook walls with links from the Ms. blog are often dead ends. I found that YouTube videos are an awesome way to disseminate this information. When I see the ideas that I subscribe to put out so clearly and grippingly, often with humor, I wish that every girl could see them. Maybe not every girl would agree, and that’s fine, but at least the opinions would be exposed to them in a palatable way. Here are my top five short videos, all with a feminist vibe, that I wish every middle school girl could see.

1. Good Girls Don’t Get Fat I think that this video would make a lot of ideas suddenly click in many young girls’s minds. They may know that they’re valued for more than their looks, but still put a ton of energy into being thinner. This video, to promote Dr. Robyn Silverman’s book of the same title, is very eye-opening.
2. The Girl Effect In a different vein than most of these videos- the issues affecting the middle class, middle school girls of today- this one is about girls around the world and how sexism, far more influential than it is in the US today, rules their lives. It’s incredible to see how much the world could improve
3. Billy Bricks: A Poem (This link is a little tough to get to- click on it, then scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the video there, with the girl’s face with her hands on her cheeks as the screenshot.) The Arts Effect NYC is an awesome theatre group that, with students writing the plays they perform, provides an extremely authentic voice to the preteen girls of today. This video shows that the encounters many girls assume must occur in their daily lives are actually sexual harassment, and not to be tolerated.
4. Why Girls Sometimes Wanna Be Boys By the same theatre company, I found this to be one of the most honest videos I’d ever seen in my life. These girls are brilliant. I think every adult who deals with girls this age- teachers, parents, coaches, everyone- should see this video.
5. Target Women: Story Time Target: Women, a former segment on the former show infoMania, just might be the funniest, feminist-est series I have ever seen. Although (unshockingly) targeted towards adult women, it truly exemplifies how much the media and advertising especially impact girls.

If you have girls this age in your life, please share these videos with them! And if you have any others, please comment!

Interview with Autumn Whitefield-Madrano of The Beheld!

The Beheld is a blog focusing on beauty from many different and thought-provoking lenses, run by Autumn Whitefield-Madrano. I find it particularly interesting as one of the few beauty blogs that explore beauty from a feminist perspective. I had the opportunity to interview Autumn about the many topics she covers on her blog.


What sparked your interest in writing about beauty?

Honestly, I don't know! I was researching a post on the history of makeup and found something in a Wikipedia entry about cosmetics history, and found what I was looking for, and when I looked at the footnote source saw that it was drawn from an article I'd written for my college magazine in 1999! So I've had this interest for a while. I think it's that I was reading lots of great feminist stuff, and was also engaging with beauty on my own terms, and I felt frustrated that there wasn't more examination of how women actually treated beauty beyond just condemning the beauty myth. Bust magazine broke some ground in that area, but they became a little too "yay roller derby and retro lingerie!!!" for my tastes. There's still very much the idea out there in the world that we're either smart OR pretty; that we're either serious women who don't care about our appearance or who do so begrudgingly, or we're big fluffballs who just wanna look purdy. And I know so few women who fit into one of those categories, and gobs of women who don't. I personally don't feel satisfied by the discourse of beauty that's out there--I still find a lot of it one-dimensional.

I guess I just really took to heart that "we write what we know." Anything truly good that I've ever written has come from a place of truth within myself. And the fact is, I think about how I look a lot. I think about how what I assign to my appearance affects how I move through the world; I think about how it shifts how I relate to others, and how they relate to me. I think intensely about a lot of appearance-related choices I make. And I used to belong to a Livejournal community in which I'd just write whatever came to my mind--it was really a journal, not a blog, so I wasn't thinking about how to make it readable to a broader audience. But when I started getting the real itch to put myself out there, I looked through my Livejournal and was surprised to see how many of the entries were tagged "beauty." Around the same time a good friend had been listening to my various thoughts on the matter, and he said, "You should either be thinking about beauty less or writing about it more." I chose the latter!



In regards to your Mirror Fast- what did you most take away from the experience? Would you do it again?


By now you've probably read my grand conclusion--if you haven't, here it is. The upshot is that I had to come to terms with how much I was using the mirror as a barometer of how I was feeling. I'm in recovery from an eating disorder, and one of the biggest issues surrounding eating disorders is a lack of awareness of how one is feeling. Food, or lack of it, or treating it inappropriately, becomes the way one deals with the slightest blip of emotion--it sublimates what you're actually feeling, so you don't really learn how to recognize and handle emotions. I'm still working on dealing with that, but I'm getting better. But when I was "mirror fasting," I realized how frequently I wanted to turn to the mirror to help me determine how I was feeling--like, I'd want to confirm that I was having a good time, or confirm that all was well, or assure myself I didn't need to be sad, which I'd determine by, say, how puffy my eyes looked that day. (Which is all in the head anyway!) And an unexpected outcome of the mirror fast was that for the entire month, I experienced hardly any eating disorder urges. I'd been doing okay at that point--not great, but pretty well, and WAY better than I was before I sought treatment. But for that entire month, it was almost like I'd never had an eating disorder--I ate normally without thinking about it. It was, quite honestly, sort of radical.

I would do it again if there were a situation that called for it. But actually, in some ways I'm still on it. My bathroom mirror is covered, and so is my gentleman friend's. I lift my mirror shroud to apply makeup, but I don't look at it at other times. I do when I'm in an office or another person's bathroom--it's reflex. But I look in the mirror WAY less than I did before. Highly recommended!


When did you begin to define yourself as a feminist? What aspects of feminism do you most identify with?

I don't remember a time when I wasn't a feminist; I was raised in feminism the way one might be raised Catholic. My mother was an active member of NOW when I was growing up, and she volunteered at the local women's resource center. This was in the Dakotas, which was hardly a hotbed of feminist activism, but that meant that people who were a part of the feminist community were tight-knit, so I was steeped in that culture. (I marched in an ERA march in 1980 dressed in all white like a miniature suffragette, and wore a pin that said "Ankle-Biting Feminist," which I still have and think is hysterical.)

But of course that meant there was rebellion. For a while when I was quite young--maybe junior high?--I declared myself basically a "notafeministbut." Even at age 12 I could see that the term brought up some negative connotations. But then I read a piece in Seventeen by Linda Ellerbee about how we shouldn't be embarrassed to use that word, and I figured if it was in Seventeen it must be cool! I haven't looked back since.

They say the personal is political, and certainly for me the whole idea of body talk and appearance has been central to being a feminist--learning to look at media messages critically has been helpful for my self-esteem, which enables me to be a better feminist. And, frankly, talking body stuff is way more interesting to me than politics. (Though, of course, even there I'm making a false division--marital rape, for example, was once considered "personal," but now we see it as political, because we've legislated consequences for it.) That said, I think it's very tempting for feminists who have reaped the benefits of feminists who came before us to ignore that sort of thing, and I really try not to. I'll never know what it's like to not be able to find birth control, or to not be able to get a credit card in my own name, or to be eyed with suspicion if I stay at a hotel by myself, or to know that if I got married my husband could rape me and the law wouldn't care. It's a luxury to be able to have my primary outlet of feminism be more philosophical than political, and I try not to forget that. But my way of supporting political women's causes is to donate money and to speak up on a personal level in conversation. Me writing an essay about reproductive rights would seem hollow compared to people who have had more intense experiences with that.

I also feel strongly about empowering women in developing nations, and support such causes financially, either through microfinance groups like the Grameen Foundation or through groups that support girls' education, like She's the First and the Vietnam Fund for Education, Music & Infrastructure. I spent time in Vietnam a few years ago and saw firsthand how essential it is to support women's work there in practical ways. Helping women in developing nations means helping communities; the two cannot be extricated from one another.


What do you think the role of feminism is in allieviating ridiculous beauty standards?


I think it's a process, and a historic one. Second-wave feminists played a crucial role in this by signaling to women that their role could be a public one that had nothing to do with their appearance, but rather their skills. We wouldn't have the beauty myth in its current form if that hadn't happened. But, of course, we DO have the beauty myth.

I see the role of feminism in alleviating harmful beauty standards as being twofold: 1) The more "real" women there are out there in the world saying to one another, "Hey, this is bullshit," the more alert and aware all of us will be. And while those women don't have to identify as feminists, without feminist discourse those non-feminists might not feel as free to challenge the beauty standard. 2) Feminism can provide an alternate script of what beauty means. I think that it's a human desire to want to beautiful ourselves; the problem is that we've created a rigid template on how we should do that. Feminism can expand that template, provide alternate modes of living and of seeing one another, and I think that's exciting.

General Confusion; My Apologies.

Hello. I am remarkably grateful to all of you who have followed my blog. I'm so pleased that you found my ideas, or writing, or whatever interesting enough to make it a part of your Internet experience. Unfortunately, I did a rather sucky job of repaying you by not posting in forever.

You see, I have a small problem. Every single time I think or type or write out a complete thought or concept that seems true to me, I immediately contradict it. It's becoming quite a mess. I write up these pieces, think, "This would be awesome to post!", and then read it the next day and think it's the dumbest thing in existence, and there's no way I'd want to put it on a blog where (essentially) anyone could see it! It sounds trite and cliche and maybe it's inherently part of being a teenager, but I apologize for not disseminating any cool ideas as of late. I have many ideas of things to write once the school year starts up, and I'm thinking about posting weekly once September comes. Due to my now routine contradiction, though, anything could happen.

In the meantime, some things to do...
• Check out The Beheld. It's an awesome feminist-flaired beauty blog with new posts most Wednesdays, always intriguing and enouraging comment.
• An interesting post on the satire in Lily Allen's music from Rachel Hills
• & A made-of-awesome feminist Nerdfighting video.

Thank you :)