THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 3, 1996 TAG: 9603010086
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANN G. SJOERDSMA
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
IN HONOR of Women's History Month - March - I would like to respond to a letter from a teen-age girl published recently in this newspaper. It touched a chord with me. A plaintive one. Its headline: ``Get-slim-fast pressure.''
I once was prisoner to that pressure. Some women spend a lifetime trapped. I hope Julia will not be one of them. This slice of women's ``history'' needs to stop repeating.
Dear Julia:
Do not look to the mass media and the rock music industry to change their messages about female beauty for the betterment of vulnerable young women. They pander to a simple-minded view that sells: Thin is attractive, desirable, sexy, ``in.'' Even dangerously thin. The flip side: If you are not thin, you are flawed.
As long as the messengers turn a profit, they won't change.
But this doesn't mean you and your peers should let them off the hook. I urge you not to. Challenge the harm that the messages cause to women, to male expectations of women and to sexual relationships. And don't let them erode your sense of self. Don't fall prey.
Too many women, myself included, have struggled with negative body images developed in our adolescence. Images that undermine our self-confidence and determination. They don't die easily. It takes time, insight and growth. We have to learn to care for ourselves better.
After losing the 35 pounds that plagued me as a teen-ager, I quit playing the numbers game. No more scales. Now I strive for comfort with myself. But the pain is still there when I stand before a mirror and still cannot see the truth.
Yes, Julia, we should be able to resist the pressure. To nurture our inner selves and reject the ``beauty myth.'' But, as you've noticed, we are assaulted by constant headlines blaring ``Tuck Your Tummy,'' ``Lose 10 pounds the Easy Way,'' ``Two Weeks to Slim Thighs,'' etc., etc. Even seemingly benign newspaper fashion spreads with waif-thin models send the message: We don't have the right look.
And we never will, Julia. We never will.
By succumbing to such pressure, we help to perpetuate a popular culture - not necessarily the individuals within it - that values women more for how we look than how we think or act or even feel.
Sure, we all want to be attractive. But women's obsession with being thin no matter what can cost the ultimate price: Some refuse to quit smoking because they don't want the extra pounds. Yet their faces look like road maps. Others, like some of your classmates, suffer serious eating disorders.
Excessive thinness has been linked to osteoporosis, anemia, ulcers, early menopause and other health risks. A thin woman of 50 can look 60, 65. Cadaverous.
This is beauty?
The messages are even more pervasive for you and your peers, Julia, than they were for my generation of women, who came of age in the 1970s - before gym workouts and jogging were everyday rituals.
Somehow we failed you.
In our childhoods, rock artists sang of romance and love, not supermodels and bitches.
Aside from Twiggy, an aberration who started the thinness craze, fashion models weren't celebrities. We didn't consider their every waking moment ``news.'' They just wore clothes.
Learn the pitfalls of the beauty myth - the hazards to health, mental and physical. Yes, you'll always be evaluated first by your looks, much more critically than men are. While you needn't accept this as fair, you need to acknowledge its reality. And find yourself.
Today's media overlook the complex, myriad beauties of what it means to be human, and perpetuate images that are only skin-deep, but that doesn't mean deeper-thinking people do not exist.
Seek out people who love life, people who appreciate life beyond their immediate worlds, who read, think and dream, and whose views are not media-dictated. Believe me, they're out there.
Thin is not ``in.'' It's a trap. When you see it, Julia, just step aside. Do not repeat history. MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma is a lawyer and book editor of The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB