What We Inherit- Normative Discontent
TW: Body Image, Body Weight, Intergenerational Trauma. Please take care of yourself how you need to.
It seems like just yesterday, I was a teenager folded up on my friend’s bedroom floor poised in front of a grimey full length mirror. We were getting ready to prowl around town looking for whatever it was teenage girls were looking for. Validation, trouble, or an Applebees offering half-price appetizers. I remember poking, prodding, pinching. Side by side, my girlfriend and I would offer our insecurities up to each other as we’d scrutinize our bodies, our skin, our hair. A ritual I can feel the memory of in my bones. Pulling on outfit after outfit, huffing and pulling the clothes left and right. We would dance the dance that so many women knew the count to. We would validate each other in the shared knowing of what it was like to dislike our bodies. We would express dissatisfaction and then sweeten it with a half-hearted “but I only feel that way about my own body”. As if, being the judge and jury halted at the edges of our own bodies shortcomings.
In these moments, I never questioned the practice. I had seen women connect this way my whole life, it was our shared language to be dissatisfied with the shape, weight, proportion of our bodies. I would even dare to say that I interpreted this as honesty, this critique as humility! Humility that our bodies could always improve,humility that as a woman there were certain things to strive for and thinness was principal on that list. At this tender and naive age, I could have never imagined that this interaction would inform my life’s work.
Even imagining this scene, I would guess, makes you a bit uncomfortable and potentially a bit understood. Uncomfortable is just how I like my readers before we break down some major systemic bullshit together. In a space of discomfort and curiosity is where we do some of our best work. So, stay right here with me.
Before we begin, I want to clarify. This article is not discussing disordered eating or clinically significant body dysmorphia. While you may find solidarity and understanding in this article relating to those concerns, this is not written with the intention or purpose of offering advice or insight on pathologized conditions that relate to eating and the body. In this article, I will be defining and exploring socially derived ideas and concepts that are relevant to women’s relationships with their bodies.This blog is merely the tip of the iceberg when unlearning harmful ideas about bodies and our experiences in them. I hope you’ll feel normalized and validated in learning and labeling these ideas. I mostly hope this article will inspire you to think critically about what it looks like to repair harmful beliefs you might have about your body, in order to live a more aligned and embodied life.
Body image dissatisfaction (BID) is a common, long-standing, and generationally inherited experience that most American women are familiar with in one way or another. To be dissatisfied with one’s body can look many ways. Oftentimes, BID is so common and normalized amongst women we rarely question it or identify it as such. In order to talk about BID, we must address the glaring systemic beliefs that promote and maintain it. America has long held and uplifted fatphobic ideas about health and how it relates to morality. There has been a blunt assertion that there are right and wrong ways to have a body in America’s media. We see this in the forever raging success of fad diets, think Weight Watchers. The pursuit of fast-acting solutions to lose weight, think Ozempic. The blatant monitoring of women’s bodies in the media. If you’ve ever scrolled through a celebrities comment section on Instagram, you know exactly what I am referring to. Thinness in America has become a shared aspiration for all, and particularly for women. In response to this shared aspiration, women for generations have disciplined, disconnected and disapproved of their bodies.
As a feminist therapist, I have spent years deconstructing Body Image Dissatisfaction in women and understanding the complicated web from which it has come. In my personal and professional opinion, BID is a result of patriarchy and misinformation. Patriarchy as a quick breakdown is a system in which men hold the power. Our current model of patriarchy has long asserted that men are looking and women are being looked at. The appraiser and the appraised.
This idea transcends heteronormative objectification. Women often learn socially to derive value from being desired or approved of aesthetically. If this is the way women are taught they command value, of course women become fixated on the body. The other half of this complicated web, stems from America’s shared and unquestioned value of fatphobia. Fatphobia is an under-addressed oppressive idea that promotes and entrenches the othering of fat people and perpetuates the fear of being in a fat body. The narrative around fatness is a false and harmful set of beliefs that hides behind the mask of ‘health and wellness’. For more information on this, I highly recommend the podcast Maintenance Phase for unlearning and debunking ideas of fatphobia.
Body Image Dissatisfaction is both an individual and collective experience for most women. We do not live in a vacuum meaning, the way we learn to speak about and interact with our bodies are learned behaviors. Psychologist Albert Bandura coined a theory called The Social Learning Theory, where he posited that much of the way we learn to be human is through observation of other humans. I believe this theory is helpful when considering the way BID shows up in both families and societies of women.
Imagine you are five years old, you watch as your mother refuses to play in the pool for fear her body be on display. Your mother orders salads and speaks eagerly to her girlfriends about her new diet plan. They praise her, they share their struggles around their own bodies and they leave feeling connected. Your mother shames herself around food, around exercise. She may never say anything negative about your body, but in watching her you learn what is required in maintaining a body and maintaining connection with other women.
Your mother is not the enemy. She is merely a victim of the same system as a woman in America. She learned from your grandmother and the women before her. The discipline of women’s bodies is an intergenerational inheritance that is often perpetuated by other women.
When consuming research on this idea and through therapeutic work with clients, it becomes clear that women teach their daughters to critique their body from a protective place. Women understand the pressures and expectations of society and want to protect their children from hardship and discrimination. This often results in passing down harmful ways of interacting with the body under the impression that it will result in less hardship for the child. I include this to cultivate empathy for all women and to reassert that the enemy is the system and not the women in your life. I hope for their body freedom the same way I hope for yours. May all women be liberated from these bounds and uplift each other in living full lives connected to their bodies.
After developing an understanding of Body Image Dissatisfaction and how it shows up socially, we can finally explore normative discontent. Normative discontent is simply defined as the practice of bonding through discontent. Let’s take a look back at the anecdote I shared in the first paragraph. A life of conditioning led both my girlfriend and I to stand together and critique our bodies. It was a safe and shared experience to speak poorly about our bodies together. However, what we can understand now in this example is that we were each modeling to one another. By participating in this connection we were perpetuating harmful traditions that have dangerous consequences not only for us but the women that come after us. With information and understanding, we can make a new choice, act in a new way. We become empowered and informed cycle breakers.
Now that I have imparted all of this information, let’s do something with it. This week, I’d like you to embody the wisdom and tenacity of a cycle breaker. I would like you to speak about your body with neutrality and admiration this week. When we practice something unfamiliar we must be extra mindful and intentional to integrate it. Here’s what this might look like. You are on a walk in the spring sunshine and you take an extra second to notice how your legs carry you, how your lungs take in air. You pause for a moment of mindfulness to acknowledge and thank your body for carrying you and allowing you to walk. Another example, you are at coffee with your friend and notice that the coffee you’re sipping is delicious! You pause and take a moment to feel gratitude for your body allowing you to enjoy the tasty beverage. The main focus here is to center in on the function and utility of your body rather than its appearance or form. Connecting neutrally to the body is helpful when trying to shift your relationship to your body. Try this out this week and see how it goes!
Overall, Body Image Dissatisfaction is a shared and complicated experience for many women in America. The roots of this paradigm are cemented in patriarchy and fatphobia. The common nature of BID, leads to normative discontent which socially validates harmful ideas about bodies. In order to move into a more embodied life, we must intentionally make choices to act in a way that defies the norm. Through awareness, neutrality and reformation we can free ourselves from this cycle and in turn free generations of women from the weight of this oppressive narrative.
For more on these topics try these books:
More Than a Body: Your Body is an Instrument Not an Ornament by Lexi + Lindsey Kite
Reclaiming Body Trust: A path to Healing and Liberation by Dana Sturtevant, MS, RD and Hilary Kinavey, MS, LPC
My Body is not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor
