A few weeks ago this article caught my attention, Dating 101: Four Things Never to Utter Around Him and I thought #3 was fascinating of course.
Turnoff #3: Your Bad Body Image and Food Issues
“First it was the grapefruit diet. Then it was Jenny Craig. Now it’s the Fatkins thing. My girlfriend tries a new diet about once a month, and she explains how she’s convinced that this is the one that’s going to help her lose weight. I always remind her that the reason I asked her out in the first place is because I think she’s beautiful. I wouldn’t be attracted to her if she looked like a string bean.” — Derek, 29
Now, I’m not one to put a lot of stock into internet dating tips but I thought this one had a point. Assuming that you are in a caring relationship, your man is with you because he thinks you are beautiful and wonderful the way you are. And more than that, he’s probably not too interested in hearing you trash the love of his life. So, do yourself and your relationship a favor and start caring about and loving yourself the way your loved ones do. Here’s a healthy alternative: look at yourself in the mirror and try to see yourself the way that those who love you do. Make a list of what makes you beautiful. As simple as it sounds, this is not an easy thing to do. Believe me, I know. However, once you start seeing yourself the way those who love you do, a whole new world of freedom begins to open up.
Beautiful look into this tip; though I don’t agree with “Derek”’s little “string bean” comment since that equally bashes anyone who doesn’t fit his personal attraction model and lends more credence to the idea that there is only ONE perfect type of woman a man should be attracted to; I do like the idea that you should stop knocking around your partner’s love (yourself!)
A very great idea to start my day!
“As simple as it sounds, this is not an easy thing to do. Believe me, I know. However, once you start seeing yourself the way those who love you do, a whole new world of freedom begins to open up.”
I agree completely.
As much as I also hate internet and fashion mag dating tips, I agree, this one is a great one.
If we look at it from the partner’s POV… obviously they see some wonderful things in you, otherwise they wouldn’t be with you. To see that wonderful person pick themselves apart on diet after diet, when they could be living a happier life… that is very frustrating. No loving partner wants to see that. There is so much more to life than worrying about fat and diets!
Hmm. The only problem I have with the comment is that it assumes you are the same shape and size that you were when your man was initially attracted to you. Then there are those of us like myself, who have had their man watch them gain 80lbs in a couple years. I have my doubts that he still finds me the same level of attractiveness. But he seems to pride himself in pretending that he doesn’t care… while watching more porn of women who don’t look like me and having sex with me a lot less.
To be fair, I don’t have the libido I used to have.. so it is probably from both sides.
This really hits home. Recently I went thought some old journals and just about every 10th page starts with “I’m going to improve my life and finally lose weight…blah blah blah.”
I never realized my own introspection was so repeditive…and yet each time I swore that “this is it.”
I can’t imagine inflicting this kind of self-hate on another person…..even I’m irritated with myself.
I totally see your point, but at the same time, a woman has the right to want to change how she looks for HERSELF, not to please her man! I don’t like the suggestion that a woman’s sole motivation would be to improve what her partner thinks of her.
In high school, there was one bit of Shakespeare that just completely struck a chord with me, and I’ve not yet forgotten.
(And, in googling it, I found I remembered it incorrectly… but only slightly)
Hamlet’s friend Horatio makes a joke at his own expense, and Hamlet answers:
I would not hear your enemy say so,
nor shall you do my ear that violence
to make it truster of your own report
against yourself.
So- not insulting yourself to the people who would, in a minute, take down anyone ~else~ who said those things about you? Not a new idea, but a darn good idea.
while i do agree that we should love ourselves and trust our partners to love us the way we are, this tip leaves out the fact that many people with disordered eating or body image problems need to be able to talk about it. if you can’t, you bottle it up inside and often end up hurting yourself in secret (and not just for bulimics or anorexics; mentally abusing yourself is bad all on its own). trusting our partners to love us as we are means we trust them to listen to us when we need a space to air our thoughts. in today’s culture of DIET, we need to talk this through and we also need to learn to listen when people tell us how beautiful we really are.
[...] Your Man Doesn’t Want to Hear it Either. A few weeks ago this article caught my attention, Dating 101: Four Things Never to Utter Around Him and I thought #3 [...] [...]
As a recovered bulimic/anorexic, I can relate to Jamie’s pages of the journal. In mine it’s the same: again and again it’s “I’m fat. I’ve gained weight. I’m going to lose weight. I’m so ugly and disgusting….” Awful. I used to talk like that around my boyfriend, too. But it wasn’t just the appearance. There were many aspects of my self that I was constantly working on to make myself “love-able” — whereas today I simply trust that I am loveable as I am. It’s more a matter of finding the right partner. I chose the wrong one and tried to model myself to make myself right for him!!! (That I won’t bother to go into — just very low self-worth, etc.) In any case, I have discovered that there is so much more to life than worrying about weight and food! That I am grateful for. — Martha
In today’s “thin & young=good, everything else=bad” society, it’s easy to lose the plot and forget that your body is only part of who you are. To amplify Derek’s viewpoint: string beans are fine, but they’re hardly satisfying.
I have mixed feelings about that article…I think our partners should be able to accept us as a whole. I would be suspicious of a man who said “I was attracted to you in the first place because I thought you were beautiful…”
Really? Not because of my kind heart or my generous nature? I’m good with kids and small animals, does that count? *haha!*
I think “body anxiety” is more of a fact in most womens’ lives than in most mens. What would give men the same level of anxiety..? Concern over their ability to provide for us and support us, maybe? Ability to achieve and maintain a stiffy? And do we say to them, “Oh, honey…it wasn’t your ability to provide for our family that first attracted me to you – it was that tight little @ss of yours and your chiseled jawline! Now just you hush and get those dishes done while I’m at the office!”
or:
“Babe, it doesn’t matter that you haven’t been able to get hard in 6 months…that’s what my vibrator’s for! I love you exactly the same…honest! Now you get sume shut-eye and I’ll join you when I’m finished.”
I think most Y-chromies just ‘don’t get’ many womens’ relationships to their own bodies, the social and political correlations, the standards put forth by most of the media and the pressure to conform to those standards, et cetera.
And the “You handle it on your own. I don’t want to hear it.” attitude doesn’t seem to mesh with my idea of a healthy relationship dynamic…
I loved what you had to say.
And as dieting relates to dating, I always try to keep my boyfriend posted on what’s going on with all that- but without getting into every detail every day. That just gets annoying!
Our culture is saturated with woman-hating messages and imagery, and the thin ideal is one of the primary ways in which women are indoctrinated into submission at the expense of our physical and mental health. As the ideal is medically “underweight,” to even come close to achieving it would require most women to literally starve ourselves – and due to bone/muscle structure most women can NEVER achieve it no matter how severely we starve ourselves.
Having body fat is normal and healthy for women. Starvation is not healthy; obsession with food and weight is not healthy; self-hatred is not healthy.
We are being shamed for being healthy. We are being shamed into sickness and despair. Every single woman I know is painfully aware of how she fails to measure up to the thin ideal. Every single woman I know is ashamed of her body. It is an epidemic. And women suffer from it at a wildly disproportionate rate compared to me.
If our culture is saturated with this shit, who is doing the saturating? We know who the victims are, but who are the perpetrators? Are women doing this to ourselves?
The beauty industry is dominated by a few key players, all multi-billion dollar corporations with ownership over multiple major brands:* L’Oreal, Proctor & Gamble, Estee Lauder, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, and Avon. Who controls these corporations? Men do. And they always have.
Who controls the corporate media that provides a forum for beauty industry advertising? Men do. And they always have.
Every way you measure it, men control the content and dissemination the woman-hating messages and imagery in popular culture. Men profit from it; women suffer from it.
Men profit from our suffering. They always have. And they will continue to do so as long as they can get away with it.
*Meg has the numbers at:
http://fakinggoodbreeding.blogspot.com/2007/05/beauty-industry-who-owns-what.html
…what happened here…?
This is such an awesome website/blog, I hate to see it with no new content in over a month!
Is everyone okay over there???
Sorry Hope, we have been on a bit of a hiatus, but we are not gone, rest assured a new post will be up soon
)
That post is so true. Your also questioning your partner’s ability to choose women by criticizing yourself.
Not good!
i kind of share gnome princess’s worries. every day, i announce i need to lose a few pounds. every day, my dear boyfriend says, “no, no don’ t lose weight. you’re perfect. beautiful. amazing — just the way you are.”
but what if i gain weight? he loves the way i look at 5′6 and 130. would he say the same if i gain a fair amount of weight?