Sick with (the idea of) love

Recently two of my girlfriends have gone through messy breakups from poor relationships. As I have listened to them (emphasis on the trying to listen and not trying to advise!) deconstruct their actions and emotions, I have noticed many similarities. So many similarities in fact, that since friend B has been slightly 'behind' friend A in her journey, I have been able to use friend A's experience to make awe-inspiring insights into friend B's situation.

Talking with these friends recently, and many friends over the years, I have noticed a worrying pattern. Of course there are probably only a few common paths relationships can take, and I don't know anything about the psychology of it all, but this is something I've noticed, and I wonder if it applies more often to women than to men.

What I've noticed is that some friends of mine, otherwise intelligent, savvy women, have a habit of behaving like idiots when it comes to men. And I'm not talking about hamming up their ditz credentials. I'm talking about a cascade of poor decisions that only end up hurting themselves. I know love is meant to make you crazy, but they're not sick with love, they seem to be sick with the idea of love. It sounds cliched, but they love being in love more than they love the guy, who more often than not turns out to be a dud, because they didn't have their brains on when they started seeing him.

This is how it goes, over and over again, and I'm sick of watching it happen: Boy meets girl. Girl is fantastic (all my friends are fantastic, that's why I'm friends with them). Boy likes girl. Boy has some kind of cool factor - maybe he's really hot, or plays guitar really well, or is a tortured intellectual. Or maybe girl's self esteem is low and just the fact that he's interested is very attractive to her. So girl likes boy, they go out. At which point, girl becomes infatuated with the idea that there is some magical wonderful powerful connection between them, and proceeds to lose any capacity she once had for character assessment. Boy, inevitably in these situations, turns out to be a dud for whatever reason, but girl just can't, or won't, see it.

So there our girl is, stuck in a relationship that is going downhill, fast. Her ability to attempt to salvage the relationship (if it had any potential to begin with) is utterly hampered by the fact that she has now lost herself in the idea of being with him, lost her sense of self, lost her belief in her own judgment, and is totally scared of being alone.

The key sign that your friend is in a relationship like this? She takes every opportunity she can to tell you just how fan-fugu-tastic her man is. She'll elaborate, ad nauseam, on how wonderful the connection they have is. She'll tell you over and over again just how fucking happy she is to be with him, how centered she feels, how it's not perfect but nothing is and she wouldn't want to brag but - you know - they're soul mates. Then when she gets drunk she'll cry to you that it's just not working and she doesn't know what to do. Then the next morning she'll pretend that conversation never happened, or that she was just being silly, that it was the wine talking.

The wine doesn't lie, take it from me.

It seems to me that what all these women have in common is that they are so attached to the idea of being with someone that they lose themselves. What they desire is a genuine, loving, intimate connection, but really, deep down, their lack of self esteem is telling them that they're not quite good enough. So when they get something that looks like it could be that relationship-that-is-meant-to-make-you-a-whole-person, they grasp on for dear life, and bugger the consequences. They refuse to a) use their judgment to assess whether the relationship and/or the man are right for them, and b) assert their own needs in the relationship.

What makes these two cognitive actions possible, it seems, is a) the pervasive idea that a woman is not worth anything until she is in a relationship, because sexual attractiveness is the marker of worth and also because she will never be happy unless she has this relationship; b) a discourse that women are physically unacceptable (we're never pretty enough, thin enough, tall enough, boobied enough etc etc) and emotionally neurotic or needy, which degrades women's sense of worth, and c) a discourse where women are obliged to give ourselves to men, physically and emotionally, so when a woman asserts that this relationship or this man isn't working out for her, she's seen as selfish.

So we have women who feel less-than to begin with, who are told they will only be worth something when they have a boyfriend, and that if they assert their needs in that relationship they are selfish bitches, thereby confirming that they were worthless in the first place. And no wonder its always such a cluster fuck.

I want to tell these gorgeous women that, hey, they're gorgeous. I want to tell them that it doesn't hurt to be a little critical in your appraisal of men before you get into a relationship with them. I want to tell them that it's ok to assert their needs in a relationship, and that if he can't take it he wasn't worth it. I want to tell them that it's ok to be single.

But you can't save people, same as for everything, people need to figure it out for themselves.

So my musings on this issue got me to thinking about my own relationship, and the relationships of my other girlfriends who don't have this pattern. I was reminded of something my Mum said to me a few years ago...

My parents split up when I was two. Mum had a few boyfriends when I was a kid. There was Spike, with his red beard. There was Alan, god he was sweet, he gave me rides in the laundry bucket and had a big garden. There was PK, the trendy Indian guy who took us on cool holidays to Sydney and took me for a ride in a water boat. There were a couple of other dates in there, I don't really remember. Then she met my stepdad when I was 9 :-) All in all not that many over a 7 year period! Yet she said to me once "God I used to worry when I dated men and we'd break-up, you'd take the break-ups so hard, I was so worried I was giving you a complex about men."

It's true that when she broke up with Alan, and then PK, I did take it pretty hard. Well, I cried once or twice, if you call that hard (I was happy when she broke up with Spike, I didn't like him lol). But I did not get a complex about men. In fact, what I think I got, was a healthy attitude towards relationships. My Mum's example showed me that the only reason you stay with someone is if it's working for you. You don't stay with someone to be with someone. You don't stay with someone out of guilt. She showed me that it's ok to break up with someone when it's not right, and that while it's hard, you get over it. And all of these things have made my relationship stronger, because I know I'm not with Mr T for any other reason than it is where I want to be, and that it's right for me.

(I don't want to make it sound like my Mum taught me to break up with someone the second it gets difficult, because that's not the case.)

I don't think that without my Mum's example I would have ended up where Friend A and B have ended up. I don't think that is my personality type at all, and I have plenty of other friends who aren't like that. But I have found all these musings on attitudes towards relationships interesting. Peace out.

Objectifiying our bodies drives us from them

There is an idea I've been toying with for a while, its not well developed yet, but the bones are thus: our obsession with physical attractiveness (heck let's just say it - BEING SKINNY) is in a huge part responsible not only for eating disorders that restrict caloric intake, but also obesity and the pandemic problem of not finding enough time to exercise. Yes, I think people are generally fat because we're obsessed with not being fat.

Appearance obsession is I think, for some people, causing them to hate and flee from their bodies. We constantly dissect and criticise our bodies - my thighs are x, my belly is y, sweet Jesus help I HAVE CANKLES!

One idea floating around is 'The fantasy of being thin', where people image how wonderful their lives will be when they're thin; where when we imagine the future, it always seems to include a better, thinner you. When we attempt to fulfill this fantasy by dieting and apperance-orientated exercise, the majority of people fail because they want to be instantly thin, because they're hurting themselves, physically and mentally, by being driven by body-hate and the shadows of a shallow fantasy.

Our bodies feel neglected, they're not an ally in the change, and they fight back. The more you say "no chocolate", the more your body craves chocolate. The more you say "run you fat ass!" the more your muscles scream for you to stop; I don't think they appreciate being spoken to like that. And finally failure comes, thank god because changing your life based on body-hate and image-obsessed fantasy is cruel to your body and soul.

And with failure we retreat again from our bodies. We're not on speaking terms with our bodies because we feel they're letting us down so devastatingly. And I think, for some people, this is where overeating and sloth take over, cue obesity crisis. Stuffing yourself and lying about for more than a few hours does NOT feel good. But we're too angry with our bodies to listen to them, so instead we seek a quick-fix physical pleasure, and we punish our bodies. It's a nasty, nasty cycle.

Perhaps the only path to good health, for both the individual and society, is through body-love, not body-hate. If we took some time to be nice to our bodies, to listen to them, we would realise they're not actually telling us that they want lard and laziness, but that they want good nutrition and healthy exertion. And in this scenario the same activities - good diet and exercise - are not a painful chore but a pleasurable fulfillment of a physical need. So in order to be healthy we need to stop worrying about what our bodies look like, and start listening to what they feel like on the inside.

I'm touching heavily on ideas of body acceptance, of which there is way more coherent literature than I want to focus on here. However one issue relating to body acceptance that is pertinent here is the power of the fantasy of being thin, where people espouse body acceptance, but in the back of their minds it's still the same - "I'll accept my body with all its 'flaws'....when I've lost 15kgs."

I think body-love makes people healthier, and in some cases that may mean slimmer; but attempting to use body-love to achieve some goal of weight-loss is never gonna work. After all, your body will know the love is shallow, cos your body is you! lol.

Anyway, that's just the first rambling on this issue, I'm sure there'll be more to come.

(Disclaimer: I'm not suggesting obesity is caused solely by image-obsession. There are significant issues relating to socio-economic status and access to healthy foods, education about healthy diet, medications and weight, obsessive and compulsive mental illness etc. My musings are based entirely on my own experience, and the experience of my mainly white, university-educated, middle class girlfriends.)

Because feeling beautiful is central to women's self worth?

Jennifer Hawkins, former Miss Universe, appeared naked and unphotoshopped on the cover of Marie Claire. She had a crease on her waist *gasp* and apparently some cellulite. It was meant to raise awareness about eating disorders, and help your average woman feel better about herself. Anyway, not only did the feminist blogosphere go mad, but a large portion of the general public weighed in to the debate. In my opinion they rightly pointed out that the picture didn't really make much of a point because a) she's not an average woman, she's a supermodel, and b) she doesn't really look any different when she IS photoshopped, cos you know, she's a supermodel.

There has been a lot of talk about how they should have put on an un-photoshopped image of a woman who doesn't fit perfectly into the current cultural ideal of female beauty. Part of the problem is that we are exposed to so many images of one ideal, and so few positive images of anything else. A positive image of a fat chick for example, may have had a good impact on women seeing that even though they don't fit the ideal, they are still beautiful.

Marie Claire's actions, and the response, was largely predictable. It's been analysed until the cows come home. But as I've reflected, something else has stood out for me....

The whole argument seems to revolve around how a naked picture of Jennifer Hawkins does not make other women feel beautiful, in fact it makes them feel unattractive, which in turn makes the whole thing deplorable because it was supposed to be fighting eating disorders. A positive image of a 'real woman' ('real woman' - that's a whole other side to the debate) who doesn't perfectly fit the cultural ideal is advocated because this, it is presumed, will make women feel beautiful.

I'm going to assume it is believed that women will feel beautiful if they see a naked picture of an average woman because they will appreciate that the female body is quite beautiful even when it doesn't fit a cultural ideal, and that despite media saturation only genetic freaks fit the cultural ideal, so we should all stop worrying.

I think this is a fair enough statement. Working in a bikini shop and seeing women's bodies all day, I did in fact grow an appreciation for the beauty of the female body in all its diversity. But what irks me is that the implication coming across, including from those working to fight eating disorders, is that we must do everything we can to make women feel like they are physically beautiful. The goal is to redefine beauty so that more women fit it because 'feeling beautiful' is seen as centrally important to a woman's perception of self worth.

This is a fundamentally counterproductive approach to women's empowerment in general and eating disorders in particular. Sure, attempt to shift the goal posts so more women fit into the 'beautiful' category, there is merit in that particularly when ideals promote unhealthy behaviours. There is merit in expanding ideas about female beauty to appreciate women's bodies with their cesarean scars, womanly dimply thighs and flabby stomachs. But what would really benefit all women - conventionally beautiful, butt ugly and everything in between - would be to reduce the focus on women's bodies entirely.

Only when female physical attractiveness, however defined, is taken off its pedestal will we get somewhere with equality. And as men are drawn into this appearance obsession, we are not only risking equality of the sexes but a general healthy, mentally and physically, society. Seriously is it that difficult to imagine a society where being fat or ugly isn't the end of the fucking world? My sense of humour isn't to many people's tastes, but its not the end of the world, I just tend to consider the people who do appreciate it as connoisseurs of a fine brew.

"But being fat is unhealthy! And a drain on the health care system!" - it's true, it is. But so is cigarette smoking and sodium intake and not getting pap smears. But smokers, fish 'n' chips lovers, and women with creepy doctors do not center their entire self worth and behaviour around these issues.

I'm gonna put it out there - it's more acceptable for a man to fugly than a woman. Some women would say that's unfair and they resent being expected to hook up with ugly guys, and that's a fair point of personal taste. But drawing men into this insanity is not the answer, what a perverse equality that would be. A promotion of a wider variety of female beauty would be beneficial, but more importantly maybe we should all realise that being, or even feeling, like the opitomy of sexual attractiveness is not the be all and end all of existence.

First post

Ok, first post. Deep breath. Not that I ought to worry, I don't intend on letting anyone know I'm blogging until I find my feet a little.

I find the concept of blogging to be intimidating, but suspect it will be cathartic. This is really just a substitute for me sending rambling, ranting feminist tirades at my girlfriends while they're trying to work; or getting increasingly heated as I yell at Mr Tesseract over a few glasses (or bottles) of red about what is so damn wrong with the world and why we need another feminist revolution, while he nods and agrees and wonders when we can put on some sci-fi 'cos the converted don't need so much preaching.

Tesseract: a four-dimensional hypercube. The wikipedia entry pretty much sums up the geometry of the hypercube. In particular I was attracted to the 3-D projection of the tesseract performing a simple rotation. The tesseract, for me, is a powerful representation for identify; complex, interconnected, shifting. Similarly, the fourth dimension often represents time, which taps into ideas of personal and societal history and future. For me the personal is the political, and it is ideas about the dynamics of personal identify and larger political discourse, through time, that I like to think and write about. I use the word political loosely here, if politics is power then politics is everything.

[With the linear passage of time my days as a political science major are increasingly distant...as is my grasp of the nuances of the jargon that goes along with it.]

Should I tell you about the set of characteristics that supposes to make up my identity? It's the only honest thing to do I guess, you have the right to know where I'm coming from, where I am priviledged and where I am subordinated. I'm hesitant all the same, because it allows people to place someone into a tesseract, a box within which you believe you understand the linkages; I know because I do it all the time to people. But here we go anyway: female, heterosexual, white, my body operates within parameters that are considered 'normal', middle class, left wing, not religious, university educated, green. I'm 26 years old. I have family (parents) who are stable individuals with disposable income, this provides me with a significant safety net should things ever go ass-up.

So I'm a woman, but not especially good at being girly, apparently. More shoes and make-up are a feminine remedy I'm not interested in committing to, financially or otherwise. My mother finds my opinionated nature rather 'unladylike'.

I'm married to a man and we live in a monogamous relationship. I guess this makes me functionally and socially a heterosexual.

White. But not quite. Whiter than my Asian best friend, not quite as white as my blond cousins. "Where are you from?" is a question I sometimes have to endure, but not as much as others.

According to government records, I do not live with a disability. How long my eyesight will hold out on this count is unknown.

Middle-class. I grew up in a poor, single parent family in a poor neighborhood (it's now trendy as hell). Currently half my income goes on rent. But somewhere in between there I went to a private school and lived in a 'nice' area. My immediate family is middle class. I suspect all this makes me middle class.

My political leanings (left and green) have been driven largely by a sense of social justice, where that came from I'm still discovering.

Atheist on a good day, agnostic on a bad one. Which of course makes me agnostic, atheism is more an aspirational goal.

I have recently finished my masters degree, after doing two undergraduate degrees.

I promise I will never talk about myself so much on this blog again. I just thought it was good to get it out there. Off to see Ms W and the Red Ferrari crew now. Peace out.