Bodies and Shame
It is a tragedy really. You know, how so many people see their bodies and think of themselves because of how their bodies look. It is sad that so many people are angry with their bodies, hate their bodies, hurt their bodies. Yet, that behavior seems to be normal in today’s society.
Of course society puts pressures on us to look a certain way. Whether it be what we wear, how much we weigh or style our hair, society has something to say about it. Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of body positive people out there, which is great for them, I just believe there are less of them than there are people who struggle with body image.
In a Cleveland Clinic article titled “Body Dysmorphic Disorder”, they discuss this a little more thoroughly. According to the article, Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is a mental health condition that many people begin to have during their teen years or adult lives that get worse as they get older, if not treated. BDD makes people very anxious and/or obsessive with their physical appearance and defects/flaws. BDD is related to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and 5-10 million people in the United States deal with it. The doctors say it is hard to diagnose someone with BDD because they find that oftentimes people who experience shame in themselves do not open up about these feelings or talk about it. Apparently, people can go years before being diagnosed or never get diagnosed at all because they are too embarrassed to talk about it.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, any and all genders can experience BDD. Although, there are also people who have shame or experience shame who do not have BDD. In Sandra Lee Bartky’s “Shame and Gender” written piece, she talks about how shame in women can and does happen in multiple settings. For example, we see the diminishing of women happen in places such as the classroom, the workplace and during childbirth.
People can create the feeling of shame in women simply by the way they communicate. An example of this could be sexist humor. While some women, such as myself, get enraged by sexist jokes, others may believe it and feel sad or shameful. Bartky explained that shame in women does not come from one specific incident or comment, but it builds up from being born in and living in a sexist society; one that is always reinforcing their shame.
It is also important to note the pain that people go through with their bodies. In Sonya Huber’s “The Sunday Rumpus Essay: The Lava Lamp of Pain”, there was a lot of light shed on both pain and shame within our own bodies. Reading her words hit home as she described being disappointed in her own body and how it made her feel mentally. After a very painful transition into puberty and years of not having regular periods, I also felt similarly.
I think looking back what frustrates me the most was the fact that every single time I would go to the doctor they gave me the same response “You’re just too skinny… you don’t have enough fat on you to have a regular period.” This never made sense to me. What does being skinny have to do with my constant pain? After almost a year of doing nothing except the occasional blood work and telling me I am just too skinny, something changed. I got a new gynecologist. I had an ultrasound down on my uterus and they found three ovarian cysts. I was shocked, but at the same time not at all because it explained so much.
Questions were rolling through my mind a million miles a minute. Why didn’t my doctors think of this possibility? I may not be able to have kids? What guy will want to be with me if I can’t have kids? Will I always be in pain? What if I get more cysts and then have to have surgery? I hate IVs. Will I need a hysterectomy? Why is this happening to me? I guess pain is natural. And while I have not had a cyst in a few years, my pain is still there, painless pain, pain on the inside. The pain of the unknown of when the pain will come back.
I deal with shame. The questions I ask myself make me pity myself sometimes and cause me to have shame. Shameful that I am not normal, but deep down knowing I am normal and it is okay. I know friends or family members of mine who deal with shame and pain. It makes me sad to know they are hurting, but in a weird way I am happy to not be alone.
For me, it is more so that I am angry. Angry I do not look like a model, angry I had cysts and they may come back, angry that my stomach is not flat, angry my hair is so thin that I look like a bean when it is in a ponytail, angry I am not shorter. I am angry that I am angry. I am angry that it took years for my doctors to believe I was in pain and it wasn’t just because I was too skinny. I am angry that when I look in the mirror sometimes I cry. And maybe I should go almost a year without looking in the mirror like Lucy Grealy did, but I don’t even think I am capable. I am angry that I want to look like other girls, and I am angry to know that they may be thinking the same thing. It is sad.
The most interesting thing that I have realized lately is how I feel about old pictures of myself. I often find myself looking back at old photographs of myself from a few years ago and wishing I still looked that way. I find this so odd because I remember hating myself at that time too. So why do I wish I looked like that today? It doesn’t make any sense to me. It makes me wonder if I am just dramatic because apparently I am never happy with how I look.
I wonder if I will look back at pictures of myself from today later on and wish I still looked like this. In Chelsea G. Summer’s written piece, “Aging Ghosts in the Skin Care Machine”, she talks about aging. Summer believes that everyone wants youthful skin, which is why so many people buy skin care. They are afraid of their skin aging, and not aging “well”. Skin care performs the idea of self care, but mostly people buy it out of fear and self loathing of how they already look. Summer wonders why it is seen as a bad thing to age and have wrinkles and grey hard. Why has society ruined that too?
Summers dives into the reality of how expensive skin care is and why it is that way. As well as what skin care’s role is in this society. Summers points out that a lot of skin care gets sold by Instagram by influencers. This can be a deceiving method. For example, selling anti-aging cream to the unaged market, or using younger people to sell anti-wrinkle cream when they never had wrinkles to begin with.
When looking at shame within the elder community, it is not that different than what I was discussing before. A lot of shame stems from communication. For example, when people say things along the lines of “She looks good for being ___ years old.” What does that even mean? As if she wouldn’t look good because of her age?
I recently saw a video of a girl on TikTok who was born with white streaks in her hair framing her face. She explained how she was always bullied for that growing up and people would call her things such as “Granny” or “Grandma”. But, now people praise her hair. This is because a couple years ago it became trendy for people to dye their hair grey. So, society strikes again.
When reading Chelsea G. Summers’ I can not help but think of my two grandmothers. My grandmother on my mother’s side is very stylish. However, as she has gotten older she has dealt with shame a bit more than she used to when I was a young child. My grandma dyes her hair black constantly. In fact, I don’t think I have ever seen a single grey hair on her head. When I ask her why, she says she doesn’t want people to see her as “some old frump”.
Similarly, my grandmother on my father’s side also focuses on how she looks very much. My grandma is from Seoul, South Korea. While she has lived in the United States for a while now, she still brings shame from when she was in South Korea. My grandma is a solid 5’5”, but to her this is a very big deal. She has told me many times stories on how she was bullied for being tall in school. Many other asian women are much shorter than 5’5”, and there were times that my grandma was even taller than some of the boys in her classes. From then until now, my grandma does not and will not wear heels. You would think that after being in the United States for so long she would feel better because there are taller women here, but the feelings of her younger shame is something she carries with her every single day.
My same grandma also deals with insecurities related to her hair. Unfortunately, everyone on my dad’s side of the family has thin hair or lack of hair for some reason. And even more unfortunate, that gene did not skip me. But, my grandma struggles with this because she has always been a very feminine lady. So, a few years ago when she started losing her hair, this hit her hard. It started when she went from long hair to short hair, but then she started losing hair on the top of her head as well. I remember my grandma bawling her eyes out one day about her lack of hair and how she didn’t want to always wear hats. My dad took her wig shopping and she has been wearing them since. It makes me sad to think that my grandma is so upset with her lack of hair, because I think she is beautiful. While I am happy that she is now comfortable in her wigs, I am upset in other ways. I am upset because she is right. People in society do treat people differently depending on what they look like. That is the exact definition of pretty privilege.
I think shame and pain are so similar and go hand in hand because they run deep. Whether it be pain from physical problems, or pain from feeling ashamed about the way you look, they are not much different. The sad thing is everyone can feel pain and everyone can feel shame. I just wish our society was in a different spot with how we treat people. It is easy to say looks don’t matter, but unfortunately in this life they matter much more than they should.
Until next time,
Mia White
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