“I’m so fat!”; “Ugh, my love handles are definitely showing in this picture… dieting starts now!”; “I can’t eat that—gotta look good in my swimsuit, you know?”
Spring Break is just around the corner and campus is drenched in talk of women seeking to get fit and look good. Wilson Gym is more crowded than usual, and chatter in women’s bathrooms across campuses center on looks and the imperative of “losing a few pounds” before being seen in a swimsuit.
Talk like this is not unique to this time of year. After all, Duke women are generally health-conscious, and we pride ourselves on our attention to fitness, including taking care of our bodies.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to look good for Spring Break or any other occasion. In fact, such a desire can be just the right impetus for a change of habits that can mark the start of a shift in priorities or lead to a long-term improvement in lifestyle. However, it is when dieting and working out—the desire to “trim down”—becomes an unhealthy struggle for perceived perfection that it becomes malicious rather than beneficial.
In our media-saturated society, images of female bodies are everywhere. Women’s magazines are filled with photographs of airbrushed models representing cosmetic and dieting products. Although we may know that the pictures have been altered or enhanced, we flip through the pages of our magazine or the channels of our television without consciously thinking about it. Instead, we compare ourselves to these unrealistic women and, in the process, soak up the implied assumption that being thin is a prerequisite to being beautiful.
Indeed, articles such as “Best and Worst Beach Bodies” and “Last Minute Ways to Get Fit for the Beach” play their part in fueling the desire to lose weight and look thin before an upcoming vacation. The accompanying images, often selected by men, also help set an unhealthy standard of female beauty. However, the desire to look slender, as well as the phenomenon of women judging each other’s bodies, is not something new.
Nor is it confined to the media; we ourselves contribute to this vicious reality. Women, when was the last time you said to a girl friend: “Wow, you look great! Have you lost weight?” Intended as a compliment, the line seems positive enough. The hidden downside is that statements such as this, thrown so casually into our language, reinforce the expectation for women to be slim.
In this cycle, women are often the biggest culprits. Sure, one facet of our attempts to look good is the desire to attract men—but one could argue that women are often each other’s harshest critics. Even judging other women who are not our friends (“Oh man, she shouldn’t be wearing those jeans!”) sets a tone of negativity that seeps into our culture more readily than we may expect.
A friend recently forwarded me a YouTube link to “Tri Delta—Fat Talk Free Week,” the video for a yearly campaign that was started by a national sorority in 2008 and seeks to draw attention to body image issues and the role that our own words play in them. Trivia that stood out to me included the fact that fashion models are skinnier than 98 percent of women in the United States; that over half of women would rather be hit by a truck than be fat; and that more than two-thirds of women would rather be mean or stupid than fat.
The video’s concluding purpose was to get viewers on-board with its five-day body activism campaign, which challenges both men and women to eliminate what it calls “fat talk”—negative messages that reinforce unrealistic standards of body image.
I leave you, both men and women, with a similar challenge. Starting this Spring Break, whenever you are tempted to critique a female friend’s physicality, or even to share a judgment of a stranger’s body, think twice about the message you are sending and the assumptions you are reinforcing. And when you do speak, pick even your most well-meaning phrases carefully, so as to not send the wrong message.
Bring these habits back to campus: start noticing “fat talk” and the impact that words can have. After all, Duke is our home and we are all invested in each other. Spring Break is transient, but the relationships we form at Duke are especially worth cherishing. The girl on your cruise may smile about your well-placed compliment for that day, but your hallmate in Kilgo will be positively impacted by the culture that your words are helping to create every single day.
If we can be more conscious of the direct effect our language has on the creation of this culture at Duke, we will have taken the first step towards putting the focus back where it belongs: on health and fitness rather than on an unrealistic standard of female beauty.
Ying-Ying Lu is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Thursday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.