Why We Don't All Have Kim K's Butt

https://clairedowler.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/dissection/

http://nypost.com/2015/09/12/meet-the-
man-who-helped-kim-kardashian-
break-the-internet/

Body shape. Are you curvy? Are you curvy in the ‘right’ spots? Are your breasts proportional to the rest of your body? Or your butt? Or hips? Do you have that desired hourglass shape? Or are you really just fine in the body you have and should turn off the noise about what your body should be?

            Lately, social media displays a dichotomy about the female body. There are magazines and TV ads and ‘articles’ on Facebook that all portray the same essence of the female body. Over and over. There’s Kim K with her round, voluptuous, oiled butt splayed in her notorious Paper® magazine cover. In malls and TV commercials, there are Victoria’s Secret Angels™. On fitness posters, there are slim women with toned muscles, though not enough to be prominent, who work out to “feel good.” Even the pregnant women shown in mainstream media maintain a curvy shape, devoid of any stretch marks, loose skin, or excessive weight gain.

https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2012/08/02/how-to-look-like-victorias-
secret-angels-by-trainer-chris-law/

            Now, though, a growing campaign for body positivity is circulating. It combats all the stereotypes present in my above examples and thousands more that pass within our societal radar on a consistent basis. There’s The Body Positive Project  that is working to end negative body image. Individuals are taking this philosophy on too, posting on Facebook or Instagram or some other site about their journey to body positivity. Colleges, even high schools, are beginning to hold forums, talks, or small group discussions about body image and what it means to learn to love your body.

            While diet culture as a whole is a topic for another day, dieting and exercise play a significant role in women and girls dictating how they perceive their body. And why they think about their body in the ways they do. In Sandra Lee Bartky’s critique of Foucault’sdescription of “docile bodies,” she argues there exists a stark difference between male and female bodies. Indeed, a glance at the media, an overheard conversation through the grocery store, or picking up a novel will tell and show you how dictated female bodies are. Bartky characterizes the ideal female body as “taut, small-breasted, narrow-hipped…” with an overall aura of smallness.

While this piece was written in the late 1970s, the expectation of small still manifests all through mainstream media. The images of women that circulate have these ever-desired characteristics. The fear of fat goes hand in hand with that expectation. Which is why diet culture persists year after year, because women are told, implicitly and explicitly, that they should keep their figures small, unassuming, fatless, yet still shapely. Many women claim they exercise for the enjoyment. But are they enjoying it because of how strong and capable their bodies feel as a result, or because they enjoy knowing they’re working toward a desired body shape?

With the discussion of body positivity starting to permeate the media, ever so slightly, these kinds of questions are asked a lot. Do you really exercise for the sheer enjoyment? Do you put on makeup or intricately do your hair because you like to? Is that kale actually delicious? It makes me stop to think if I’m doing what I’m doing because I really, truly want to. Or because I know consciously or subconsciously I should in order to keep up with the expectations everyone, it seems, around me has for me. The mind boggling inquiry comes, too, in whether you can truly want to do something like diet or exercise for the sheer enjoyment or if it’s so ingrained in our brain it’s impossible to separate expectation from pleasure.

https://boldomatic.com/view/post/9g_mHw

In thinking about all of this, something stirs in me. When I see magazine cover after cover, a commercial, a actress, a singer, portrayed in a very public manner, 95% of the women I see are white, likely no bigger than a size 6, and have “shapely’ bodies. Part of me is angry. Because there are millions of women in this country alone who cannot identify with those body types. Who have this expectation of having their fat deposits in the proper place on their body. Who, when that doesn’t happen the way they think it should, are upset. They’re incredibly upset. They feel undervalued. Worthless. Flawed. I know because I’ve felt that way. I still feel that way on many days.

            And I look around at all the body positivity posts on Instagram or Facebook by women who are also trying to combat these public expectations yet aren’t overweight, let alone obese, for their height. And I’m angry with what they’re saying because they’ve never been 200 plus pounds. They don’t know what it’s like to go up and up in clothing sizes yet still never need a size greater than a 6. The posts I see come from women whose weights fluctuated and they’re now “taking control of their lives” by eat nutritiously, exercising well, and shedding that weight.

            Yet I shouldn’t think that. That anger I have toward them because that perspective is truly harmful not only to other women and girls, but to myself. And it undermines any body positivity work that does provide success and high self-esteem in other women. We all struggle with different understandings of ourselves. And perspective is incredibly influential in determining what we think and why.

            And reading what I just thought, wrote, and am now publishing is horrible. I’m now, too, contributing to the body ideal expectations of women by diminishing their experiences.

So as I sit here eating yet another bowl of Coldstone ice cream, because that’s what I do when I’m upset, I’m wondering how I can feel better about all of this. People can preach all they want to their audiences about how great it would be if everyone loved their bodies regardless of expectations and how their bodies really turned out. But if I can’t believe that about myself, there’s no way I can tell other people to do the same. So why can’t I accept the beautiful body I was given? Is it because we’re bombarded by the media with desired figures? Or overhear almost daily in conversation what’s wrong with her body, coming from a third person judgment? What is it going to take for me to feel okay about myself in ways it seems so many other women online feel about their bodies? Truthfully, I don’t know. I really don’t.