Body Acceptance: It's More than Skin Deep

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by Zae Zatoon, Ph.D.

WE ARE NOT BORN WITH JUDGEMENTS ABOUT OUR BODIES. Instead, from the time we are in diapers, we undergo a process of social conditioning that influences the way we think about ourselves and the world.

Over the course of a lifetime, messages we receive from outside sources either enhance or hamper our capacity to love ourselves, to love others, and to allow others to love us. Information we take in from the culture we live in flavors our perceptions. Encounters with friends and role models influence our values and beliefs.

If you've recently listened to women talk to each other about their bodies, you probably have some sense of the abusive self-scolding prevalent in our global society today. Women with perfectly normal, attractive figures eagerly relate to one another on the basis of what they hate about themselves. Complaining about breast size, facial features and other physical attributes has become not only socially acceptable; in some circles it's an almost obligatory form of female bonding.

One fairly typical example of this is a woman who has exhibited this kind behavior for most of her life. An attractive single mom with an internationally successful caree, she has been putting herself down for nearly thirty years because of an extra ten to fifteen pounds she's been unable to lose.

Recently she lost the unnecessary weight and has been successful in keeping it off for close to eighteen months. Although she admits that she feels better and has more energy now than ever before, she still looks with disgust at her image in the mirror. Failing to forgive her body for being a body at all, she complains about the angle of her nose, the bulge of her tummy, the curve of her hips and an endless list of other physical traits.

HOW'D WE GET THIS WEIGH?

Since ancient times, people have operated as if the body is a direct reflection of the personal worthiness. The specific focus on body parts, size and shape has varied over the years; but a certain "body as object" mentality has endured cross-culturally throughout the ages. The notion that people--especially women--do something to alter, conceal, or reshape their bodies in order to make themselves more appealing is neither new nor unusual.

Beginning in the second millennium BC, men and women have corseted and girdled themselves to conform to socially prescribed proportions. Women in particular have developed an infatuation with coloring their faces and with binding themselves in an assortment of different contraptions to raise, flatten, or accentuate various body parts according to popular vogue.

With the onset of women's rights issues in the twenties, and again with the women's liberation movement of the sixties, the idealized female figure has tended toward a thinner, boyish standard. Millions of women around the world have eagerly rejected the traditional look of "woman as mother" and have chosen to compete new ways on a more masculine level.

Recent studies indicate that people associate competence and intelligence with leaner, firmer builds rather than with ample feminine figures. As men and women push themselves to be thinner, shapelier, and more muscular than ever before, the model physiques for both genders continue to move towards increasingly unnatural extremes.

Almost every conceivable body type has been popular at some time or place in history, but the current preoccupation with youth and fitness imposes unrealistic demands on us all. Advertising's hyper-promotion of the lean, muscle-bound, plump-bosomed figure (biologically normal for less than ten-percent of the population) predisposes the other ninety-plus percent to feelings of self-dissatisfaction.

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