This Thursday, October 18, is apparently Love Your Body day.
We all know about the unrealistic and degrading presentation of women’s bodies in the media, blah blah blah. They hand out those notes on the first day of Feminism 101. I’m not saying that’s not a problem.
I’m irritated by the Love Your Body site because it implies that external physical appearance is the only reason to love your body. Most of their example ads in both the “Offensive to Women” (They can’t really think those are only offensive to women, can they? Nice reverse sexism.) and “Positive Ads” section focus on the idea of beauty.
They seem to be concentrating their attention on convincing all women that they are beautiful, and assuming that will solve problems with body image and self-esteem. But to my thinking, all that does is validate a point of view that in an ideal world would be completely irrelevant. You can redefine the notion of beauty all you want, but it’s still a focus on external appearance, and that’s what irritates me. I don’t get why you need to convince women that they’re beautiful in order to convince them they should love their bodies.
The primary function of my body is not to be a decorative object, no matter how loosely “decorative” is defined. The purpose of my body is to be my vehicle for experiencing the world. I couldn’t care less how frizzy my hair looks or how wrinkly my skin gets, as long as I get to run fast and go places and taste food and look at pretty things. Why would I not love the tool that carries my brain around so I can have all that fun?
So, Love Your Body, everyone. Feed it some pizza and beer, and thank it for the delicious taste sensation and nifty digesting functionality with optional belching feature. Bodies rule.
The Clareverse 