The Ninja Reader

Okay, so, body image. Whoo boy, where do I start.I'll go upfront with this, I'm not very sure about where I stand on this. There are feminists who completely disregard make-up and other tools of conventional beauty. From what I gather, every woman is beautiful exactly as she is and any attempt at change will only lead to frustration and anger and lowering of self esteem. And then there is FIFI. The theory at the heart of "Fat Is a Feminist Issue" is not that all women are perfect, but that they need to love themselves. Sometimes, that means digging through all the shit of your past and discovering why you're so unhappy with yourself.If this sounds like something your life coach might say, it's because this is half a feminist manifesto, half a manual of dealing with compulsive eating.You see, we don't only eat to stifle a biological need. Unlike sneezing and scratching an itch, we use food for a variety of reasons - to have something to do with our mouths, or rather, to stop our mouths from talking, to stifle an emotional hunger, to make up for something. Food, in itself, is not much, but the cultural connotations drawn to it are numerous and weighty. I won't lie - some of that stuff hit a little too close to home for me. I'm nervous about eating, you see. I won't disclose my exact weight, but I can easily tell you that I am very conscious about what goes in my mouth. Not enough to binge and purge, because I absolutely hate wasting food, but enough to make me nervous. Some of the things Orbach talks about are things I can easily relate to, which is one of the reasons why I liked this book.The other reason is that FIFI acknowledges something "The Beauty Myth" didn't - we may be feminists, but that doesn't automatically make us super confident and ready to take on patriarchy. It doesn't eliminate immediately all our conceptions about ourselves and it doesn't make us happy with our bodies from the get go. Some of us use the idea of 'fat' and 'ugliness' as a shield against life's worse aspects. Yes, the outside environment plays an important role - the formative years in particular, how are we treated in social situations, how we're treated at work, what happens and doesn't happen, it all affects our view of ourselves, and the book suggests exercises that help us get over that. But ultimately, it is up to us to understand that this and that is not our fault and not our bodies' fault either and that we should stop equating person to body. It's pretty much the same as "The Beauty Myth", with the sole difference being that Orbach doesn't preach to us. Oh, sure, she says, love yourselves, but she doesn't make you feel bad if one day you feel dissatisfaction from looking at yourself in the mirror.