Writing about Body Image

[alanajoli]

Speaking of characters I've fallen in love with lately, there's a great new web series I picked up from a friend* via facebook called The World of Holly Woodlands. Calle, the loveable star, is an out of work actress who doesn't fit the body image Hollywood promotes. But in this world, skinny isn't in: instead, actresses who are "cusha" (or about size 18) are the ideal, which leads to a very different spin on ideas about beauty and body image. There's a two-minute trailer on the site that introduces you to Calle and her blog project; the first ten episodes are also live, which means it's still a good time to catch up without all the back episodes eating your life while you watch. A very cool thing for the series and the actors is that they're finalists in the New Media Film Festival. If you check out the series and like what you see, you can vote for them over at Mingle Media.

I've never been very good at targeting in on the issues behind body image/ideal beauty and the problems these cause to self-esteem. I've tried to write characters with body image issues before and haven't mastered introducing those themes without making them feel like themes. As a reader—and a watcher, I suppose—I usually avoid stories that seem to be about the message rather than about the story. I went to a short play a few years ago that had a very powerful effect on the audience, but it didn't work for me: I felt like I'd been hit over the head with the theme enough that I couldn't care about it. I felt that I'd gotten the point—but had no story to recall as my reward. (Another play by the same playwright, presented at the same performance, didn't have this issue at all—it stemmed from the relationship between two characters, one living and one dead, and the sense of loss and, at the same time, freedom, that came from the one character letting go of the other. So clearly, it wasn't that I just didn't like the writer's style, it was very much about the content of the piece.) So, since I don't like to read "message" stories, I really want to avoid writing them, while at the same time I want to tackle issues that real people struggle with.

I suspect that part of my lack of personal understanding about the body image issue is that, before the past year or so, I felt more or less divorced from my body. My body was a tool, or the thing I lived in, but I didn't much think it related to my understanding of the world, with the exception of self-identifying as short. (Tall people do experience the world differently from us short folk, because size comes with a host of problems for each of us. I can't use our food-processor without a stool, for example, because our counters are too high. A tall friend of mine has to sleep in his bed diagonally, or his feet stick out the bottom end. This is a fundamentally different way of experiencing the world!) In the past two years, however, going through pregnancy and post-partum, I've gained a new appreciation for how much my body impacts my world-view. Maybe this comes from not being in control of what my body was doing—being pregnant was, for me, much like being displaced from my own body, as I had no idea what I could expect from myself on any given day—but I think more of it comes from the fact that I've had to pay more attention to what it has been like to live inside this body. (This is particularly true as I've gotten more involved with women's fitness issues through my training with Dancing thru Pregnancy, since I've been paying close attention to the differences between men's bodies and women's bodies, and how we experience exercise.) My thoughts aren't just out there, floating around my head, they're impacted by a host of factors that I've probably always had to deal with, but never really taken into account. Hunger, tiredness, exercise, diet, hormonal cycle—all of those things have a more noticeable impact on my mood than I'd previously recognized. I was one of those people who'd just forget to eat if she wasn't reminded (not often, but occasionally), because I was too busy thinking about a project I was working on. Now? Forget about it. I don't want to inflict myself on my family when I have the hunger crankies.

Maybe now that I've gained a better idea of living inside my body as an experience, rather than something to be dismissed, I'll be able to look at some of those issues about body image that I've wanted to tackle. In the mean time, I'm comfortable leaving that kind of writing to people like "Calle," who can say a lot by just spinning our current perceptions on their heads.

* My friend is married to the director and creator of the series.

Comments

[citizenjaq.livejournal.com]

http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/go/may

All those factors you mentioned - "Hunger, tiredness, exercise, diet, hormonal cycle" - jumble up your brain something fierce. Whether it's directly, with post-exercise endorphins being generated, or indirectly, with chronic pain affecting your mood and general outlook, so much of your personality is influenced and possibly even defined by mere chemistry in the brain.

Maybe we each have a "true" personality, but how would we ever know what it is? Just the amount of sun we get changes how we think. Let alone pharmaceuticals - Paxil made me "meh" all the time, Wellbutrin tweaked me the hell out and Effexor lets me feel almost, for lack of a better term, normal.

I worried for a long time that medicine took away the "real" me. I certainly don't feel as creative, ambitious or smart as I used to. I also don't feel as anxious, desperate or miserable. Fair trade.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this comment more and more, even after leaving a response on facebook, and I wonder if the idea of that "true" personality is tied into the idea of the soul -- at least, in how I thought about such things as I was growing up. It goes with that body-mind-spirit division that we hear about so often: the idea seems to be that those elements aren't already unified -- that somehow, they're divorced from each other. I had in my head that the soul was something housed by the body, but independent -- the objective self, if you will. And I'm wondering how much I need to entire reevaluate that way of thinking -- that there isn't an objective self beyond the body, there's the self that is part of the body.

[citizenjaq.livejournal.com]

Yup. It's troublesome, all right. I'm certainly not saying there's definitely no soul, but it's undeniable that the body and brain at least affect and influence the personality / consciousness / soul. It could very well be that they influence each other, like different firmware versions will change how your MP3 player behaves (and the same firmware on slightly different hardware will behave very differently).

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I had trouble with Kim Stanley Robinson's really excellent novel Years of Rice and Salt was that the reincarnated characters weren't always identifiable as themselves -- their personalities also changed in each incarnation. And now I'm thinking maybe that was exactly the right way to do it: the soul may be the same, but the experience of reality -- and thus the way a person reacts to it -- is different.

Of course, if the soul only gets one shot at an earthly trip, then there's no reason it couldn't be formed by the experience of life rather than the other way around. Although I do like the firmware analogy... :)

Fun to ponder, anyway!

[citizenjaq.livejournal.com]

Funny - how do you feel about Doctor Who?

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

I've watched just enough to know I'd like it a lot if I watched more of it. That's convoluted, but close to accurate, I think. ;)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Fascinating on so many points--thanks for this. I feel the same way about message stories, and I liked how you put it: you receive the message so strongly but have no story to remember and enjoy afterward.

Tangentially, what have you learned about women's bodies and how we experience exercise?

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've been learning so much! One of the big differences in organized exercise particularly is that, psychologically, there are tendencies that differ between how men and women get the most out of a work out. (These are only tendencies -- there's certainly a spectrum!) Men tend to be driven by competition, even if it's only topping their own scores -- they're motivated by what I'd call leveling up, to use gamer terms. Some women certainly are similarly motivated, but women also tend to be motivated by the social aspects of exercising -- which probably contributes to the success of places like Curves. When designing an exercise program for women, making it a comfortable place to socialize -- or to create a sense of community -- gives a greater chance of success.

A lot of the motivating factors that tie in directly with the body have to do more with new moms. For example, doing push ups from the toes -- women's bodies aren't actually well designed for that, because of how we widen at the hips. The balance for men doing push ups vs. women doing push ups is actually really different. But there are lots of ways to build up those same arm muscles (and later, as the core gets stronger after recovering from labor, the core as well). We do baby push ups for the new moms: put the baby on a blanket just under your chest, and keep the butt in the air while getting a full range of motion with the arms as you lower your face to kiss your baby. You can convince new moms to do a *ton* of baby push ups -- because it's all about mom and baby time and togetherness, and it's actually a safer way to rebuild those muscles.

Some of this stuff I learned just as an exercise student, but I've picked up more as I've taken the teacher training -- and I'm sure that once I'm watching my students, I'll learn even more!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

This is fascinating! Thank you so much for taking the time to write it out.

I like the baby pushups :-)

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

I like them, too! Sadly, Bug is too squirmy for them to really work, now. She's on the move instantly!