Your ass is yours

I ran across this post at Shakesville today--in case you don't feel like clicking, it's a love letter from Melissa McEwan to Emma Thompson, lauding Ms. Emma for protecting her young co-stars from pressure to become sylphs. In fact, Emma goes all Mama Bear and makes them eat, according to Hayley Atwell. Now, I'm pretty keen on Emma Thompson myself, and I certainly respect Melissa McEwan, but the idea that poundage fosters female self-worth is as ridiculous--and anti-feminist--as the endless quest for size zero.

Yes, it's disturbing to see actresses and models who look like walking skeletons presented as beauty icons. It probably does encourage unhealthy dieting in young women, though it certainly is not the primary cause of anorexia and other eating disorders. I was an anorexic for nearly ten years. I'm lucky to be alive, and if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that nobody ever starved herself to death because she wanted to be pretty. It's a lot more complicated than that. Trust me.

I'm all for defying the beauty burden placed on women in a consumer culture, but you don't do that by defining yourself in opposition to it and demanding that other women do the same. That's just another form of control, another distraction from the things in this world that ought to matter. It's galling to me to see this fake notion of owning the body pop up so often in female discourse. It gets lip service all along the feminist spectrum: from suburban mommies (from whom, frankly, it seems a lot like camouflaged envy), to Goddess girls who like to sit around on their abundance and declare it sacred.

The truly radical act is to claim your body as your own and do with it what you will, independent of imposed notions of beauty--and yes, health. If you want to fast until you look like a greyhound, go ahead. Get as fat as you please. Pierce anything you like. If you're really certain you'd still want them if you were stranded on a desert island, get the fucking breast implants. Whatever. But do it because it is what you want to do. Take charge of your body and leave other women alone to do the same.


Chloé, Jules Joseph Lefebvre, 1875. Image from Wikimedia Commons.