More Than A Body: Your Body Is an Instrument, Not an Ornament

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If you are going to have a book that is supposedly 'inclusive' and then dwells on how everyone is different and therefore some have it worse than others but definitely THAT MEN and how they view women ARE THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL...but not have pornography (the ultimate objectification) listed in the index as a problem for men or women? I am totally baffled. In junior high, I spent all my time wrapped up in athletics. It’s what I loved and I excelled at it. … I was a softball player. A catcher. A short setter in volleyball. I was proud of my physical abilities, believing I could do anything I put my mind to. I LOVE exercise. I love the way it makes me feel. Is it because I need to fit into a size 2 pant or a size small shirt? No. It’s because I want to be able to feel strong, powerful, and confident. There is a sense of accomplishment when a certain speed or mileage is accomplished – a joy that cannot adequately be described. Everyone can and should participate in some form of physical activity. Not just to keep their bodies healthy and strong, but to improve their own belief in their physical abilities and to encourage others along the way.” Self-objectification is at the root of negative body image because it puts all the focus on how our bodies look rather than how we feel or what we can do. It prevents us from seeing ourselves as God sees us: as children of our Heavenly Parents with inherent, unchangeable value. Improving Body Image

An indispensable resource for women of all ages, this is a guide to help us better connect to ourselves, to value ourselves, to love ourselves, and ultimately, to be ourselves." (Chelsea Clinton) I totally agree that clothes can be hard to find in certain shapes and sizes. I am one of those sizes, but when I look around, most people are hard to fit no matter what their size. But the history of clothing sizes and why they are what they are is another story that the authors didn't study that much. The second group is fighting to fit broader ideas of beauty and empowerment within the prison walls of objectification. This book does an amazing job with science and metaphor to disrupt the objectification of women and our bodies, and instead embrace a new paradigm of thinking about our bodies as instruments, not ornaments.The fact that you have a body — regardless of your appearance or ability level — means that you innately have access to physical power. Your body is an instrument to be used for your benefit, and not a burden to drag around, hiding and fixing along the way. Want to develop positive body image? When you learn to value your body for what it can do rather than what it looks like, you improve your body image and gain a more powerful sense of control. The truth is, regardless of what you look like, or what you think you look like, you can feel good about yourself because you are not your appearance. Value your body for what it can do by engaging in physical activity. It will change your life and boost your body image in a way you never thought possible. Instead of fighting for more women’s bodies to be viewed as valuable, let’s fight for women to be valued as more than bodies to view. I learned a lot from the Kites about media trends that influence and promote self-objectification (including ones that seem positive and empowering at first glance), so that was pretty eye-opening. There was a lot to help me work on the way I think about & treat my own body and how I can better teach my children to relate to theirs. I wanted to like this book as it came well-recommended by a friend. But I just can't. I am sorry, my friend. Despite Chelsea Clinton’s front cover assertion that this book is “for women of all ages,” its message is very clearly targeted to women in their teens, 20s and 30s. That’s whose comments and posts are quoted by the authors, and that’s the demographic who, for the most part, are posting selfies on social media and chatting about their journeys to a ‘better bod’.

I’m excited to teach these principles to my daughters and other girls and women I interact with, and feel more comfortable in my own body.

Anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention to modern culture is aware of the rampant objectification of women’s bodies, which has become even more prevalent and insidious with the expanding reach and scope of social media outlets. In their attempts to obtain an “ideal” weight or body type, women embark on often fruitless diet, exercise, and beauty routines. Kite and Kite, identical twin doctors whose physical attributes have been scrutinized by others and each other all their lives, provide refreshingly straightforward advice to help women let go of impossible goals and learn to love their bodies regardless of their outward appearances. They provide engaging arguments against comparing oneself to the images on social media, and they point out the problems with relying too much on the body mass index metric. “Other ways to evaluate our own health (often with the help of a medical professional) include measuring internal indicators like heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, blood lipids, and respiratory fitness,” they write. “Blood tests can reveal much more about a person’s metabolic health than their dress size can.” With the authors’ guidance and a commitment to self-acceptance, women will be able to ditch yo-yo dieting and costly beauty regimens. Perhaps more importantly, they will find the confidence to avoid jealous comparisons and even leave abusive relationships. “When you know…that you are more than a body,” they write, “you will find that your sense of self, empowerment, and life possibilities are expanding. You will find out that the path to fulfillment and achieving your personal potential is bigger and better than simply forcing your body to fit a perfect mold.” I was raised and live in a conservative religious culture (LDS) and have seen the emphasis on clothing standards for girls and women become more rigid in the last couple of decades. I bought into that mindset for a long time. This book perfectly explains how, despite our sincere desire to protect young women and teach them to respect and honor their bodies, we are Being Part of the Problem and There Is a Much Better Way. At home, girls are taught to cross their legs in public and take up as little physical space as possible. They are taught that being beautiful is much more valuable than being smart and strong. Magazines preach the gospel of constant diet and exercise to achieve ‘bikini bodies’ that are meant to lounge poolside and be gazed upon. It is a true testament to the misogyny of our culture that women are encouraged to whittle away their bodies and maintain postures that make them as unobtrusive as possible.” So how do we fight against the all-out war against us and our bodies? Physical activity. Physical activity is shown to lead to body satisfaction when girls develop an appreciation of what their bodies can do, rather than how they appear to others. When women exercise to increase their fitness, rather than to improve physical appearance, they are more likely to feel positively toward their bodies. So, exercise! Play sports! Use your body as an instrument to experience life, and enjoy fantastic health benefits like increased cardiovascular health, improved blood sugar, lowered cholesterol, healthy blood pressure, and countless other internal health benefits in the process. The Harvard Women’s Rugby team encourages you to consider their sport as a route to positive body image. Here’s why: Lindsay and Lexie are the wise, thoughtful, patriarchy-smashing older sisters that every girl and woman needs in their life. In More Than a Body, they meticulously dissect the deluge of messaging that says we should tie our worth to our appearance—and then they blow all of it apart. They inspire us all to imagine what more we can be and what more we can do when we are able to take up all the space we need in this world.” An indispensable resource for women of all ages, this is a guide to help us better connect to ourselves, to value ourselves, to love ourselves, and ultimately, to be ourselves."—Chelsea Clinton

That doesn’t mean a relationship where objectification is present is destined to fail or can’t be fixed, but it does mean that both you and your partner have some work to do if you want to progress.

Footnotes

The objectifying messages in our culture tell us to think of our own bodies from an outside perspective, as though we were looking in at ourselves. This is called self-objectification. Studies show that when girls are self-conscious of their looks, they don’t do as well on math, reading, or physical fitness tests. Seeing and valuing yourself as more than a body will allow you to identify whether your relationship is healthy and founded on love and respect. You deserve nothing less. If you feel your primary value lies in the way your body appears, every rude comment, judging glance or withheld intimacy or kindness can be blamed on you and your body. Every ounce of rejection and coldness will feel deserved, and will hold intense power over you because you might even agree with it. It reinforces the very pain and shame you have learned to feel about yourself and your appearance — never good enough, never in control, never right. We have all been trained to blame ourselves for the love we don’t receive, but we can’t turn against ourselves. We can turn against objectification. I wish I had all the money to buy this for every woman & teenage girl I know. And, while I'm at it, all the teenage boys and men would learn a lot from reading it too. I wanted to cry when I read (and recognized) the process young girls go through: we start out thinking of our bodies as a place where we live and play (an internal experience), but over time we are moved to an external perspective where our thoughts center on how our body looks—what we see and what we imagine others see & think about our bodies (self-objectification).

However, look past the focus on that age group and the myriad of ways the authors try to get young women to view the world differently, and there’s a very important message that is being delivered. Which is that the body positivity movement, while increasingly successful at expanding the definition of a beautiful body, still objectifies the female body. The authors’ well-argued thesis is that those of us who are in secure positions, financially and in our relationships, need to fight against objectification of the female body of any size. The book title sums it up: We are more than bodies. Our research points to one particularly awesome way to experience real empowerment, decrease self-consciousness, and embrace your body as your own – not as a decoration for everyone else to gawk at. Lindo Bacon, PhD, researcher and author of Radical Belonging, Body Respect, and Health at Every Size

A pertinent study of the countless, ever present misconceptions about female body image and why these delusions need to change.