A wandering reflection of Western women’s weight loss
Women’s bodies in the age of advertising
In her renown documentary Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising's Image of Women (2010), pioneering feminist-activist Jean Kilbourne devotes forty-six minutes to leading her audience through a multitude of pictures, videos, and sound bites that she had collected from numerous advertisements propagated in both North America and Europe.
Kilbourne lectures alongside the audio visuals flashing before her audience, remarking on the harmful images portrayed through the various advertisements. During her documentary, Kilbourne focuses on one picture in particular: an image depicting a tiny model curled up on the floor, strategically making an isosceles triangle with her body by folding her arms, torso, and legs in on themselves. Commenting on the unnatural pose, Kilbourne highlights the negative space that the director intentionally created by maneuvering the already small model to look even tinier. Pointing out the deliberate use of negative space through the model’s tiny figure, Killbourne uses the image to comment on society’s standards for feminine space as a whole; that is, culture expects women to remain small, fragile, and delicate, subliminally symbolizing their powerlessness, weakness, and need for men’s strength (Kilbourne).
The image of women often seen in advertising, curled up in on themselves so as to take up as little space as possible for the shot.
Kilbourne is not the only feminist to have made the assertion that female space (or lack thereof) is directly associated with women’s perceived lack of power. In her book, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, feminist theorist Susan Bordo repeatedly stresses the idea that females are pressured to take up less space than males, as it secures men’s place as the powerful, dominant gender. Looking through the framework of theorist Susan Bordo, we still see advertisements made today in 2022—12 years after Jean Kilbourne’s documentary—that morph women’s bodies into barely-there positioning, implying to the world that their physical space, or lack thereof, is not only sexually unappealing, but is itself a threat to male dominance.
Only a month out of the dreaded New Year’s Resolution Season where women are encouraged to spend the beginning of each year shedding as many pounds as healthily possible, let us reflect on the fact that these weight loss desires are often based on the internalized misogyny that our society has pushed into our minds, keeping power in the hands of men by making us women literally smaller, and weaker.
Why are we conditioned to want weight loss?
Weight loss—or, by the fashion industry’s standards, becoming a size zero—is directly correlated to men’s power here in the West. Men have convinced women to hyperfocus on their body image, willing them to contort their already-small bodies to pencil-thin bones that are easier to dominate and control. These same men have also convinced women that hyperfocusing on their own weight loss is beneficial; the smaller women who have bodies that appeal to the average man are the ones who “snag” the husbands, the ones that snag the promotions, the ones that snag those competitive positions in male-dominated fields. While it is true that women who have bodies that appeal to the Male Gaze do better in business (as do all pretty people, some would argue), it is also true that this same male-inspired hyper-fixation on female weightlessness wastes hundreds of hours of women’s precious time.
Most Western women spend thousands of hours throughout their life hyper fixating on their physical appearance to appease the male gender. We spend hours at the gym. We spend hours in cardio. We spend hours counting calories. We spend hours counting carbs. We spend hours researching dieting trends. These hours don’t even include the ungodly number of hours we’ve already spent getting ready for the day—tweezing our eyebrows, curling our hair, applying foundation, concealer, under eye corrector, eyeshadow, winged eyeliner, bottom eyeliner, mascara, fake eyelashes, eyebrow pencil, eyebrow freezing gel, lip liner, lipstick, lip plumping serums, powder blush, cream blush, contour, highlighter, bronzer, matte finishing powder, and setting spray—nor do they include the thousands of hours we’ve put into our skincare routine—cleansers, toners, serums, moisturizers, spot treatments, eye creams, and SPF. Point is, women are expected to obsess over their physical appearance, as only the beautiful women will survive in this male-dominated world. But I would argue that this expectation for women to appear at their physical top every day is also an idea implanted by men to keep women from using those same hours they would have spent primping their bodies on education and career growth. Men are incentivized to keep women indoors front of the mirror—whether in a gym or beauty parlor—to maintain their male-dominated monetary structure.
These same women spending thousands of hours whittling away into pencil-thin bodies are also tricked into spending thousands of their hard-earned money on the gyms and expensive diets that are often run by the same greedy men. They then are encouraged to spend even more money on useless skincare routines, makeup products, and hair tools. Women, even in 2022, are pushed against a wall. If they don’t appear at their most beautiful (beauty defined by male standards and expectations for the women), they save thousands of their hours and dollars while also opening opportunities to pursue further education, but, because they aren’t at their tiptop physically, they won’t be memorable, or seen as important, in any of their job interviews, thus giving opportunities away to other men (or, in rare cases, better looking women). On the other hand, women who feel the pressure to obsess over their physical appearance have little time for anything else, including education and job hunting, once again being forced to retreat behind the mirror.
I’m not at all implying that a woman cannot lose weight for her own benefit. I’m doing it right now myself. After finding out I was diagnosed with fatty liver disease—irreversible if I remained the same weight—I knew I had to take control of my health. I’m also not implying that women should ignore their health needs. Especially in America, obesity runs rampant, and a woman’s quality of life is greatly attacked when she is not at a physically healthy weight. However, the men who want power over women’s bodies aren’t asking for women to be a healthy weight; they want women tiny, micro, easy to manipulate, dominate, control, and physically overtake. Women are encouraged to wither away into almost nothing, to be nothing but skin and bones. It is there in our vulnerability that the preying men will seize their chance of power, flaunting their large, dangerous bodies and threatening weakened women with their physical grandeur.
Don’t let this morbid article distract you from becoming healthier, but perhaps it can’t hurt to think about the people you are trying to appease in your weight loss. Think about the hierarchical power structure that is currently in place in America, where men are more attracted to women who are smaller, as it signals their physical and social power over these tiny women. Think about the fact that women are constantly encouraged to take up as little physical space as possible. We can’t spread out our legs as we sit, we can’t spread out our arms on pews, we can’t place our elbows on an airplane’s shared armrests, and we certainly cannot take up the seating space of a size seven jean. The same misogynistic ideals that have instilled weight loss culture into Western society’s women are the same ideals that wish women—their bodies along with their physical space—would simply disappear entirely. Misogynistic society wants women literally and metaphorically invisible, walking shadows that leave an endless land of opportunity to the men in power.
Perhaps with each new year, we women should protest weight loss. Maybe we should act more like the men around us, eating whatever we want, refusing to do our skincare routines, our hair, our makeup, and spending those hundreds of extra hours finding new avenues to income, friendships, and job opportunities. Another fun New Year’s resolution is to walk men through exactly what we do in a given day to upkeep our appearances. Have him follow you to the gym. Have him count calories. Have him chat with your personal trainer. Have him do your hair. Have him apply all your skincare products and all your makeup. Have him shave your entire body, as many women do every day. Perhaps the good men, when confronted with the unimaginable cost of keeping up feminine appearances here in America, may understand the devastating effects on women’s time—perhaps they will shift their expectations. Or perhaps not. The first step to finding freedom in your womanhood is rethinking our beauty-obsessed actions all together, the makeup, the hair, the weight loss. Before you force yourself to lose those extra 20 pounds, ask yourself who will benefit. Ask yourself if you are willing to give up your physical space to another man. Ask yourself if you are willing to sacrifice your power to a man who will see your tiny body as a weakness, a vessel ready to be ignored, or worse yet, overpowered.
This new year, I beg of you: take weight loss off your resolutions.
Moriah Lee
Moriah Lee is the Communications Manager for Grant Me The Wisdom Foundation. Her work has been featured in the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, Yale Today, and Bestreviews.com. A recent graduate of Yale University, Moriah spends her newly-minted downtime hiking California’s golden hills and snuggling with her favorite black Lab, Brynn.