Look good, feel good.

Unless you puke, faint, or die, keep going.

Girls who are naturally skinny are lucky. Girls who have to fight to be skinny are strong.

No matter how slow you’re going, you’re still lapping everyone on the couch.

If you haven’t posted one of these pictures on one of your social networking sites, one of your well-intentioned friends has. I promise. Pinterest itself is a site designed to help people collect images that inspire them, for heavens sake. And while a slogan and image motivating you to get out and move and live and do is a beautiful thing, so many of these “fitspiration” messages floating across the web must be exposed for what they are.

Ever heard of a thing called “thinspo” or “thinspiration?” It’s an online world of thousands – even millions – of females who share and collect pictures of very thin women as inspiration to keep up their eating disorders. It is a saddening and terrifying world of females banding together to literally get thin at any cost, and thousands of girls and women die every year in this pursuit of thinness. But Beauty Redefined is here to reveal truth – to speak about things as they really are – and we echo Charlotte over on The Great Fitness Experiment: “Fitspo may be thinspo in a sports bra.”

It is.

So we are here to provide you with a few ways to determine if the fitness inspiration you are viewing is healthy and motivating you toward real health goals or keeping you imprisoned in a body that is to be looked at above anything else. You are capable of so much more than being looked at. And if you believe that, it puts fitness back into focus as a way to improve your physical health first and foremost.

Be very aware of any “fitspiration” that is advertising something. Nike, Lululemon, workout DVDs, etc., all profit from these “girl power!” messages that look so empowering on first glance. The problem with so many of these is what Virginia at VirginaSoleSmith.com calls “a lot of big, fancy girl power talk to sell us stretchy pants and sports bras. This is fine if you’re in the market for some new stretchy pants or a sports bra; not fine if you’re hoping their marketing materials will teach you something profound about yourself.”  

PLEASE read why this is NOT healthy or inspiring.

See this bit of fitspiration floating around online? It has effectively chopped a woman into just a part of her – without a head as is so often done in objectifying but totally normal and harmless-looking media. This part of her also happens to be sexually alluring to men, which is so often the case in this same objectifying but totally normal and harmless-looking media. Her hand is placed in her pants in a way that looks very reminiscent of a woman about to pull down her pants in a sexually alluring way. Her hip bones, navel, and cleavage are highlighted by the lighting of the shot, which say nothing of fitness or whatever the “it” is spoken of in the text. This text is open for interpretation so the “it” can be a well-meaning physical fitness goal, but the image would lead one to assume it is a look – a vision of oneself – that is the goal. A sexually appealing, “to be looked at” goal that leaves little room for worrying about internal indicators of health or meeting a fitness goal like hiking to the top of that peak or finishing that race or getting your heart rate up every day.

Pay attention to the advertising so often being done in these “fitness inspiration” messages and you will see what is really being sold here. Is it a message of real health and fitness or a message asking you to commodify yourself by buying sports bras, yoga pants, the latest fitness DVD, etc. to appear a certain way. Advertisers are VERY GOOD at framing their messages as an empowering “You Go Girl!” message with their fists in the air cheering you on. But pay attention to their swift move from using that pumping fist to cheer you on, to punching you in the face for not being enough. If you do not have rock hard chiseled abs, the right workout outfit, etc., you are not good enough until you do. These advertisers will make sure you know that, because their profit depends on your wallet and your beliefs about yourself. They’ll make sure you know you must work for “it” every second. Of every day. For the rest of your life.

Next time you see one of these “fitspiration” messages, please ask yourself how it makes you feel. If these images and texts motivate you to respect your body as something that can do so much good, make and reach fitness goals, and maintain health that will keep you happy and able, then they are appropriate for you. If they motivate you to worry about being looked at or to improve parts of your body to meet a beauty ideal you see in media, you must be aware of this. Virginia at VirginaSoleSmith.com so concisely says, “Pay attention to how it makes you feel to be ‘inspired’ by lots of photos of a largely unattainable beauty ideal. Because that’s what rock hard abs are, after all. Yes, sure, core strength is important for your health. But pictures of bikini-clad, chiseled muscles beaded with sweat? That’s about pretty, not about health.”

If these images and messages categorized as “fitness inspiration” actually inspire body shame – you feel ashamed of the beauty ideals you cannot reach and want to hide or judge your body or covet other women’s bodies – then these messages are not inspirational at all. They trigger you to feel anxiety, hopelessness, and ask you to resort to extremes to get somewhere largely unattainable for healthy people. I just finished writing 150 pages of my best work to date to culminate my Ph.D. competency examinations on all these issues Beauty Redefined brings to light, and the most powerful quote struck me hard. It has everything to do with the fitness inspiration we are discussing here:

“Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison” (Wollstonecraft, 1792).

This woman hundreds of years ago described what girls and women growing up today are asked to do every second of every day for the rest of their lives. We are asked to believe our power, our very identities, our worth, all lie in our bodies because we ARE our bodies. So we are asked to fix every part of our bodies – from the wrong-colored roots of our hair to the scratchy bottoms of our feet and every new flaw in between (baggy eyelids, insufficient eyelashes, saggy knees, cellulite, stretch marks, and every other sign of life). Men are not asked to fix these “flaws” because this is women’s work – a work that must last a lifetime. We are advertised in media to ourselves as parts of ourselves to encourage us to view ourselves as simply parts in need of constant maintenance and perfection. We are asked to believe we are our bodies and nothing more, and we are asked to adorn the prison that we must reside in every second. Of every day. For the rest of our lives.

Now look again at those “inspirational” fitness messages. Are those messages carefully crafted to appear to be health and fitness inspired, only to sell you a product, keep you fixated on parts of yourself that have nothing to do with your actual health and physical fitness, and keep you roaming around your prison? Our bodies are not prisons – they are gifts that allow us to live and breathe and act and do and be. But when we believe we are only bodies, and health is simply making those parts look presentable and beautiful to people looking at us, we are at once prisoners and the prison guards.

We borrow from the fantastic Virginia Sole-Smith again for our last very important point: “Any motivational statement that has to diss another type of body in order to make you feel good about your body? Not. Helping. Anyone.” You’ve seen those photos of Marilyn Monroe vs. Nicole Richie with the words: “When did this become hotter than this?” or some variation. Ugh. When we pit female against female, we get nowhere fast. We continue minimizing each other to our bodies EVERY TIME we judge each others’ bodies, comment on them, even compliment each other.

One thing Lindsay and I mention at every speaking engagement is this: We have been taught from a young age that girls are to be looked at. So we compliment little girls on how pretty they are and little boys on how funny/rambunctious/smart/anything else they are. When we greet another female, we so often compliment her on her appearance: “Have you lost weight?” “I love your hair!” “Is that a new outfit?” But reverse that scenario. When guys greet each other, how often do you hear them minimize each other to their bodies and appearance? I almost NEVER hear a man say “Is that a new outfit?” or “Your hair looks great today!” to another man, because they do not learn they ARE their bodies like females do. We are capable of so much more than being looked at, but when our dialogue revolves around our bodies and we judge other women’s bodies, we are not getting anywhere progressive or happy or healthy. So next time you see a “fitspiration” post that pits one woman’s body type against another, please comment on it and link to this post!

So where do you turn for fitness information and happy inspiration?! If you are seeking positive inspiration to get fit and healthy and respect your body as something so powerful and capable of more than being looked at, we can help. That’s why Beauty Redefined is here! Check out our in-depth look at the Body Mass Index (BMI) that has a shocking history and completely flawed present status. Get going on making 2012 the year of the Body Hate Apocalypse by setting real health and fitness goals. We’ve got a fantastic list of them here. Read why fat shaming and focusing on numbers on the scale won’t get us anywhere in terms of real health here.

You are capable of much more than being looked at. When you believe that, you break free from the prison walls that keep you confined to your body, pitted against every other woman/prisoner in her own individual cell, always monitored by a gaze that controls your beliefs about yourself and your actions. Beauty Redefined is here to shine a light in on that lonely prison cell and remind you what you are capable of in a world so badly in need of you – not a vision of you – but all of you. Thank you for joining the fight! 

Too many of us are guilty of imposing these unhealthy strategies on our children, our friends and ourselves. If any of these missteps sound familiar to you, now’s your chance to recognize it and reject it. Replace that mistake with a new strategy, a new way of thinking, a new way to redefine beauty while we redefine healthy!

You can read the full story in the current (April) issue of Vogue (not currently available online) to capture the full picture of this mother’s harmful, health-threatening actions, but I’ll summarize a couple of the problems with her approach here and follow that up with some much less shameful and more promising strategies to fight weight-related health problems.

First up on the list of reprehensible, health-harming strategies used in this much-publicized case: This mom decided to take action against her then 6-year-old daughter’s growing weight because she looked fat. When a boy at school mocked her beautiful little girl, calling her fat, Mom decided her sobbing, heartbroken daughter’s weight had to be fixed because it’s a problem “everyone can see.” Her instructions and warnings centered on the young girl’s appearance: “Bea, you have to stop eating crap like that, you’re getting too heavy.”

Second, Mom put her daughter on a restrictive diet, monitoring her food intake closely, banning participation in ”Pizza Fridays” and assigning “good” and “bad” labels and reactions to certain foods. Upon finding out about the 800 calories her daughter consumed at her school’s French experience day, Mom withheld dinner as punishment.

Third, Mom alternated her daughter’s food restrictions and allowances based on her own relationship with food and her own fluctuating mood.  “When she was given access to cupcakes at a party, I alternated between saying, ‘Let’s not eat that, it’s not good for you’; ‘Okay, fine, go ahead, but just one’ and …  Then I’d secretly eat two when she wasn’t looking,” wrote Mom.

Fourth, Mom openly derided and embarrassed her daughter in public regularly. “I cringe when I recall the many times I had it out with Bea over a snack given to her by a friend’s parent or caregiver … rather than direct my irritation at the grown-up, I often derided Bea for not refusing the inappropriate snack. And there have been many awkward moments at parties, when Bea has wanted to eat, say, both cookies and cake, and I’ve engaged in a heated public discussion about why she can’t,” Mom wrote.

Why those four strategies are bad and what to do instead:

PROBLEM: Rather than taking up a medically sound approach to promoting health in her child, Mom was only moved to intervene in her daughter’s health after her daughter was bullied and called “fat.” Her concern was solely for her daughter’s appearance, based on all given indicators. The 6-year-old was previously diagnosed as “obese” by her pediatrician, which can be used as a warning to pay close attention to proper nutrition and physical activity, but it can also be a very problematic diagnosis for such a young child since no reliable measures exist to determine what weight/levels of obesity coincide with increased health risk for children. More information on problems with measuring health can be found here. This confusion of health with appearance is a massive and widespread problem that much of my research is devoted to. In this profit-driven media world, health and fitness are consistently defined according to appearance-based terms, which simply isn’t accurate, to say the least. This article is featured in Vogue‘s annual “Shape” issue, right alongside a glossy portrait of cover girl Jennifer Lopez looking “fabulously fit.” We have to stop judging fitness by what bodies look like and start judging it by what they can do.

No amount of cosmetic surgery, Photoshopping, tanning or disordered eating will produce true health and fitness. By focusing on the appearance of this young girl’s body rather than her physical well-being, this young girl is set up for a lifetime of body anxiety and all the corresponding unhealthy practices that too often accompany body shame. What if Mom had instead consoled her crying, embarrassed daughter after the bullying incident and reassured her that she is beautiful, worthwhile and powerful? What if she then intervened in providing healthier food options and joining her in physical activity if there was true concern for her health? I believe the outcome – both internally and externally – would have been much more appealing.

We must remind people, especially young girls, that their reflections to not define their worth — or their health.

SOLUTION: Define health in terms of how you feel and what you can do, not what you look like, how much you weigh or your BMI. Same goes for kids. Kids need helping learning to take responsibility for their health and feeling the positive repercussions of doing so. Help them see their health in terms of how they feel and what they can do, NOT what they look like. Eating healthy and getting enough exercise won’t always translate into what weight charts and the BMI deem a “healthy weight” – many people (especially children) will be under or over this threshhold despite being active, eating a well-balanced diet and being free of disease and sickness. Along with healthy levels of physical activity (which many experts agree is 60 minutes per day) as the best predictor of a person’s health, internal indicators of health like blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure are much better indicators of wellness than weight, body fat percentage or BMI. More information on accurate means for measuring health can be found here. We must remind people, especially young girls, that their reflection does not define their worth — or their health.

PROBLEM: Dieting in childhood is a major predictor of both obesity AND disordered eating later in life. Dieting is not recommended for children, whose bodies are developing and in a state of constant flux in weight and composition. Further, Mom’s methods for weight loss are scientifically unfounded. Depriving her daughter of dinner after she ate 800 calories at school is a recipe for weight gain, if anything. Deprivation kicks body into starvation mode, which has been shown to contribute to weight gain AND binge eating. Further, assigning positive and negative labels or emotions to different foods will serve to promote anxiety and feelings of deprivation, not healthy choices. Dr. Leslie Sim, clinical director of the Mayo Eating Disorders Program, said, “When there’s a lot of emotional response around food, that can really create an anxiety disorder and potential eating disorder.” Further, most children do not understand proper nutrition. The foremost teacher of cultural values, including nutrition and health, is mass media — and that’s not a good thing. Studies show the influence of mass media, particularly food advertising, on children is a major cause for concern: In research, most children believe “diet” and “fat-free” labeled foods are healthier than actual healthful foods. That means when given the choice of which is better for their bodies, most children choose Diet Coke over skim milk and fat-free fruit snacks over apple slices.

SOLUTION: No more categorizing food as “good” or “bad.” Try your best to separate emotions from food. Avoid deprivation and exessive restriction. Get informed about what proper, balanced nutrition entails for you and your family and pass that information along! In a media landscape that teaches inaccurate health information left and right, the responsibility falls on parents, teachers and other adult caregivers to learn proper nutrition for themselves and then teach their children and those over whom they have influence.

PROBLEM: This mom determined her choices for her daughter based on her own mood, her own negative body image and disordered relationship with food. Preoccupation with thinness and weight in the home – especially by the mother – is a strong predictor of a future eating disorder. We know this level of shame associated with a young girl’s growing, changing body is harmful because it can generate a preoccupation with thinness and weight loss through unhealthy means for the rest of her life. Body shame and fixation on thinness are precursors to disordered eating and eating disorders on both ends of the weight spectrum — by contributing to anorexia and bulimia and to binge eating disorders, sedentary lifestyles, and poor nutritional choices. If you feel awful about yourself, why would you take care of yourself?

SOLUTION: Recognize and reject your own body image problems. Choose to recognize the ways you enforce harmful ideals, body shame and preoccupation with weight on yourself and those you love. Choose to reject them by giving them up, one step at a time, and replacing them with positive thoughts, health-promoting choices, love and renewed dedication to positive body image and positive health every day. Redefine beauty and health for yourself in attainable, realistic, happy, healthy ways. For a list of strategies you can incorporate into your own life and pass on to those you love, see our Strategies for Girls and Women to Take Back Beauty. For sticky reminders or postcards you can post around your house/work/school, check out our body-positive merchandise that supports the work of Beauty Redefined.

PROBLEM: You can’t embarrass or shame anyone into making healthier choices. It’s especially harmful to publicly embarrass a young girl for her food choices. Body shame only leads to health problems, as previously mentioned, which are often in the form of eating disorders, sedentary lifestyles and poor nutritional choices. We have to encourage ourselves and our loved ones in productive, uplifting, loving ways — not through negativity, shame and embarrassment. Lexie and I do this work out of a serious feeling of love and concern for girls and women everywhere. We’re not moms yet, but we are well aware of the love our mom feels for us and the love so many moms have for their growing daughters and sons. I don’t doubt the mother who wrote this sad article loves her daughter, but I do hope she recognizes that her strategies and priorities are tremendously misguided and doing a major disservice to the daughter she surely loves.

SOLUTION: Let your own love — for yourself, your daughter, those closest to you — be the impetus for making heathy changes in your own life and supporting those around you in doing the same. Shame doesn’t do it. I guarantee you love will have a much stronger, more lasting and more powerful effect on your health than shame or embarrassment ever will.

I had the opportunity to speak to Rod Arquette on 105.7 KNRS Talk Radio (the No. 2 radio station in Utah) about this very topic on Monday, April 2. You can listen to my short on-air interview at the link below!

Lindsay Kite’s Interview with Rod Arquette on Mom Forcing 7-Year-Old Daughter to Diet

Lexie (L) and Lindsay (R) with the beautiful coordinators of Brigham Young University’s Fantastic “Redefining Beauty” Event in Sept. 2011.

I have devoted the last 9 years of my life to studying media and body image and the last 3 years to running Beauty Redefined, a not-for-profit organization working to help people recognize and reject harmful messages about beauty and health. THIS is why.

As a swimmer on a competitive and demanding team throughout elementary, middle and part of high school, I practiced intensely on a daily basis. My favorite part was the excited, anxious, heart-racing feeling I’d get on the way to every meet and before every race. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before that anxious, heart-racing feeling started to stem from the way I thought I looked in my swimmingsuit, rather than my performance. I went home from practice one day in third grade and stood in front of a full-length mirror, looking at myself from every angle. I noticed one dimple in the side of my little girl thigh and desperately felt the need to cover up, though I knew that would be impossible every day in my swimmingsuit. Instead, I vowed to remind myself to keep my left hand covering the dimple on my left thigh at all possible moments. That is when my appearance became the forefront of my every thought.

My newly heightened awareness of my looks quickly gave way to a relentless preoccupation with weight loss, starting around age 11. Journals and notebooks filled with weight-loss goals, motivating thoughts and tips, food logs and my most depressing thoughts were still lined up in my home bookshelf, stacked next to piles of Seventeen, Teen, YM and Twist magazines. I would have literally given anything to look like the girls on those pages, or like Kelly Kapowski. That’s what the happiest, coolest teenage girls looked like. For a long time, my weight defined my days – either successful or a waste. One step closer to happiness or another day of  worthless disappointment.

By high school, it consumed me. In a particularly melodramatic mid-puberty journal entry, I wrote: “I HATE MYSELF. I have gained 4 pounds in the last 2 weeks. Not exaggerated one bit too. I have no idea why this weight is coming on so fast, but it scares me and it’s all I think about constantly. I hate this.”

I was active, athletic, pretty, social and smart. No one called me fat. No one treated me like an outsider. I got asked out by boys. And I still felt this way.

I wasn’t alone. My thin, beautiful friends suffered the same preoccupation and obsession with weight loss, but we suffered alone. Heather, the healthy and beautiful president of the ballroom dance team, could tell you her weight from any given day of the previous years. Popular and sought-after Jennifer* cut out dozens of lingerie models from Victoria’s Secret catalogs and stuck them all over the back of her door for “motivation.” Jane*, a cheerleader I didn’t know that well, bragged to everyone that all she had eaten in the past three days was five Doritos. I wondered how she found the motivation to be so strong. Jessica*, by all accounts a very thin girl, cried when she fit into a size 12 in black LEI pants, even though everyone knows LEIs are sized extremely small. We were all middle-class white girls form Idaho, with happy, successful families of all shapes and sizes, but we all shared deep-seated idea that the only way to attain happiness, success, popularity and love was to be as thin as possible. I had no real-life experiences to back this idea up, and I don’t believe any of those girls did either. (*Names changed)

What we truly shared, along with everyone else we knew, was easy access to media our entire lives, where Kelly Kapowski was always pursued, everyone pitied the chubby girl Zack agreed to take on a date, Jasmine, Belle, Ariel, Cinderella, Snow White and all the other Disney protagonists were unrealistically thin and so sought-after, while any average-sized or overweight characters were mocked, explicitly labeled as fat and often the antagonists. Male characters were valued for humor, athleticism, intelligence and power, while female characters were overwhelmingly valued for their beauty alone. Commercials and advertisements consistently reflected these differing measures of worth. I recognized it, but never ever thought to question it. That’s just the way things work.

Not much changed when I got to college. Freshman year was filled with weight loss ups and downs, but I felt happy and OK about myself, and boys paid attention too, even though I was fully convinced I needed to undergo a major transformation in order for them to like me. The next summer, I got down to my lowest weight ever. August 17, 2004: “Last night I tried on my old pants from Christmas of senior year and they are way too big. I distinctly remember wearing them and feeling pretty good about myself at choir practice, and now I can’t imagine ever fitting into them or feeling good. I’ve gotten more compliments than I can count and it feels so good even though I don’t feel so great about myself. I hope that eventually changes.”

The next semester at Utah State University, I took an awesome required journalism class called “Media Smarts” from Brenda Cooper and Ted Pease on critically analyzing the media for its implicit but powerful messages. We looked at race, class, gender and violence in media and I was amazed by  all of it, but none resonated with me more than the hugely imbalanced portrayals of gender – particularly the ways media sets the standards for what it means to be successful or worthwhile. No one in my life ever taught or demonstrated to me that thinness and body “perfection” equals happiness or success. TV, magazines and movies do it incessantly – sometimes overtly, sometimes implicitly, but always consistently. That creates a false reality that makes real-life bodies seem sub-par. I realized the first step to dispelling these myths and oppressive standards that had  held me and all of my friends back for so many years was to point out that it’s all made up. Producers, casting directors, advertisers and media executives make specific decisions for specific economic reasons – they don’t simply reflect reality, as we sometimes believe.

Lexie (L), Lindsay (R)

I knew talking about women’s representation in media got my heart beating fast for a reason. The palpable excitement of learning about it reminded me of my swimming days – the anxiety before a meet, the anticipation of putting all of my hard work to use. Media’s messages to women enrage me and thrill me, and its implications are too real to accept and just move on. I took my first women’s studies class for that reason, and was assistant to the director the Women and Gender Studies program for the next year and a half. My heartbeat didn’t slow down – instead, the work became more and more personal as I identified that passion as the loaded term “feminism” and began to reconcile the many facets of feminism with my own conservative religion. With time and studying, they fit together so comfortably, and I felt a strong desire to share my newfound compatibility between spirituality and feminism with anyone and everyone.

I read “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan and felt overwhelmingly impressed by its truth, by the oppression imposed upon women by media standards defining the ideal woman by her homemaking and housekeeping skills, which serve to isolate women inside their own homes and families while propelling a thriving economy backed by women consumers seeking fulfillment. I immediately sensed a connection to beauty standards as the “feminine mystique” of today, and was amazed to find a book detailing that very belief – “The Beauty Myth” by Naomi Wolf. I cried as I underlined entire paragraphs that resonated with my own lifetime of experiences of being stifled by a preoccupation with my appearance that was not a natural part of me.

“We are in the midst of a violent backlash against feminism that uses images of female beauty as a political weapon against women’s advancement.” (p. 10)

“Consumer culture is best supported by markets made up of sexual clones: men who want objects and women who want to be objects, and the object desired ever-changing, disposable and dictated by the market.” (p. 144)

While the feminine mystique produced isolation and unfulfillment, I saw the beauty myth as also a force for prompting misery, competition, jealousy, self-obsession and an end to productivity. When I became more worried about the dimple in my thigh than my race time, I stopped excelling as a swimmer. When I am fixated on keeping my clothes in the most flattering position and everything sucked in just right, I can’t think of anything else at all. I am depressed by the number of activities I could have excelled at, the friendships I could have cultivated, the goals I could have pursued, and the girls feeling the exact same way I did that I could have helped if I hadn’t spent so much of my life preoccupied with the way I looked.

I know media-imposed beauty ideals divide and conquer. They pit one woman against another and make one woman’s success the other’s failure. The connection between my faith and my feminism became so much stronger as I recognized the potential for fulfillment and unity among women that already existed within my church congregation. With a focus on serving others, taking care of each other and loving God, there is no room for competition and preoccupation with appearance. That’s when the feminine mystique and the beauty myth lose their power: when women unite to step outside themselves and concentrate on bettering the world around them. I implemented this belief into church meetings and talks, school speeches, papers, newspaper articles and my own writing. I applied for graduate school with this motivation behind me and was thankfully awarded a full fellowship to study media and body image at the University of Utah.

Soon after moving to Salt Lake City for grad school, I felt overwhelmed with the excitement and  potential implications of this work I so wanted to accomplish.  On August 19, 2007, I wrote this in my journal (only slightly less melodramatic than previous teenage me):

“I KNOW this is going to be a hard but amazing  time in my life. I can feel it right now. Lots of big things are going to happen,  both academically and spiritually, but also socially and emotionally. I know  I’m where I’m supposed to be, doing what I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t even know exactly what that will entail – definitely something to do with  helping people to become more critical media consumers – to question what  they see in TV, movies and magazines, and understand why it is that way,  especially how women are portrayed. If we can forget how inadequate, fat,  dumb and jealous we feel and concentrate on serving others and improving  the world, the world be a much better place and women – and their families –  will be so much more fulfilled and so much happier.”

(As a side note, most of my journal entries have focused on dating and roommate drama and vacations, not changing the world. This is one of those rare exceptions.) Through earning a master’s in communication, I hoped to shed light on the powerful, invisible forces behind idealized images of women and the influence they have on all of our lives. In 2008, during my master’s studies, I wrote my lofty intentions in a class paper:

“I want to help redefine women’s values and worth outside the terms of idealized beauty by reaching out to girls who are developing their own ideas of true womanhood and success. I, along with my twin sister Lexie, aim to hold classroom workshops, seminars, conferences, school assemblies, courses and even individual conversations to further this goal. Those mediums can be powerful tools in uncovering oppressive ideologies, questioning ideals and sharing liberating truths that have the potential to expand girls’ and women’s ideas of what it means to be valuable, successful and desirable – despite media messages that will continue perpetuating even more consistent, coherent, oppressive lies about women.”

Four years later, I’m thrilled to see that’s exactly what I’ve been able to work for through Beauty Redefined, and it’s what I’ll continue to do for as long as I can. My master’s thesis and project, co-authored with my twin sister Lexie, provided the foundation for a one-hour visual presentation on recognizing and rejecting profit-driven ideals of beauty and health, which we’ve offered in person to almost 10,000 people across the U.S. since 2009. From our website and Facebook page, we’ve shared those same message with hundreds of thousands more, and even got 13 nonprofit billboards featuring positive messages for women up from Utah to Pennsylvania! This work is entirely supported by donations from generous people and sales of sticky notes and postcards with our uplifting billboard messages. There are so many wonderful people across the world who recognize the problems with unrealistic beauty and health ideals and support solutions to alleviate those problems, financially or otherwise — and we are unbelievably grateful for every single dollar our supporters have trusted with us!

Lindsay talking back to a street ad with a sticky note!

Despite all my best efforts, that dimple in my left thigh never disappeared, but it hasn’t held me back from recognizing my worth and potential as a beautiful, capable, awesome woman – or my potential to spread that truth to women everywhere. My appearance (though it is ironically at the center of discussion in most of our media attention) does not determine my value, no matter how much the fashion, beauty and diet industries benefit from me believing that message. I’m unbelievably grateful that the anxiety that came from becoming aware of my body’s “flaws” has continuously been replaced by this empowering knowledge about my worth. It has transformed into an anxious, heart-racing desire to share this truth, and thankfully, it’s contagious! When good people hear true messages that help us to see women as capable of much more than being looked at and value women as more than objects, their hearts beat faster. Those people help share these truths too — through blogs, Facebook, Twitter, everyday conversation, sticky notes in public places, objecting to harmful messages in any way possible, and so many more strategies for both males and females.

THAT is Beauty Redefined!

Since it’s unlikely you will hear any popular media discuss the Swimsuit Issue’s serious blow to female equality, self-image, attack on women of color or its use of mainstream pornography packaged as “safe” for your coffee table, we are here to give you fair warning! I have chosen not to include any photos from my 40-year analysis because they are displayed everywhere else you will be looking (whether you want to see them or not), and Beauty Redefined is dedicated to de-normalizing these harmful images rather than promoting them in any way.

Every week, 30 million faithful followers catch up on the latest sports news in their weekly edition or online version of SI, the self-proclaimed “foremost authority” and “most respected voice” in sports journalism. And once a year, every year, those 30 million subscribers soar to more than 70 million and are joined by 250 million more online viewers for the always record-breaking event known as the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Published since 1964, the SI’s 200-plus pages of nude to semi-nude females is truly a cultural event, generating global mainstream media coverage, TV shows, calendars, DVDs and mass amounts of memorabilia to push Sports Illustrated’s sales through the roof every spring. Since its birth, the Swimsuit Issue has earned $1 billion for SI’s parent company, Time Warner, which owns CNN, AOL, HBO, the CW, Time Inc, DC Comics and hundreds of other media companies. Talk about a media powerholder!

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue: “A Cult-Type Thing”

The increasing popularity – even inescapable presence – of the Swimsuit Issue alone is enough to warrant serious study of this magazine. But while numerous readers and viewers post the pinups on their bedroom walls, countless more feel those non-sports-related images should stay in blatantly pornographic outlets like Playboy and Penthouse. Either way, 44 years after the first edition of the Swimsuit Issue and hundreds of millions of viewers later, the magazine has become a popular culture phenomenon. Even back in 1979, one reader is quoted in the magazine as saying the annual issue is an “American tradition,” along with baseball and hotdogs, while another calls it “a cult-type thing” for male consumers across the country. Today, SI.com claims 32 percent of adults in America regularly read the Swimsuit Issue (22 million are reported to be women), and with its own YouTube channel, mobile video on demand, and record-breaking website hits, this magazine is quickly becoming a global spectacle.

With a gold mine of information yet to be examined academically in terms of the Swimsuit Issue, this study is an attempt to move beyond the basic arguments on the disempowering nature of the images. My main goal with this research is to expose the way harmful, objectified ideals about women’s bodies are normalized and made so mainstream that we don’t question them. With this objective and the hundreds of millions of SI viewers in mind, I analyzed issues from 1978, ‘88, ‘98 and 2008 to explore the ways images of nude or nearly nude women are made normal and mainstream in one of the most popular “sports” magazines of all time.

I, and many other scholars, argue that the SI Swimsuit Issue profits from a philosophy of constructing men as active, women as passive; men as subjects, women as objects; men as actors, women as receivers; men as the lookers and women as the looked-at; and I argue, men as consumers and women as the “to-be-consumed” (Betterton, 1987). Women today have been socialized to see themselves through the male gaze so that they are both spectators and spectacles. As spectators of themselves, women learn from popular media, in this case the wildly popular Swimsuit Issue, to compare their appearances with the media’s feminine ideal, becoming objects of their own gaze. This feminine ideal, as proven again and again by the Swimsuit Issue, leads women to internalize these mediated ideals and constantly work to live up to these perfected “norms” of beauty while leading men to believe these qualities are essential (and attainable) in a mate. Essentially, “the feminine ideal is tanned, healthy slenderness, with no unsightly bumps, bulges, or cellulite, and bodily and facial perfection that results from hours of labor: exercise, makeup, and hair care” ( Kuhn, 1985), and 20 years later, plastic surgery and digital manipulation.

When Pornography Goes Mainstream

Magazines like Playboy, Hustler and Penthouse are an obvious source for voyeurism, or the act of secretive looking at things of a sexual nature without being seen, and those sources do so without apology. The Swimsuit Issue is equally voyeuristic in nature, but does so under the guise of being “America’s foremost sports authority” and “most popular sports journalism magazine.” Essentially, this magazine offers sexual fantasies and blatant voyeurism hidden undercover as a sports magazine. Duncan put it best in 1993 when she said, “If they so desire, readers can sneak looks at the models while steadfastly denying that they buy and read the issue for pornographic content,” and she had NO IDEA what SI would look like in 2012, with the help of digital manipulation, surgical enhancements and reductions, and a global company owner with the power to publish and produce nearly any message and distribute it immediately.

SI masks its pornographic presence by placing the models in foreign locations with sandy beaches and tropical jungles so as to appear to promote travel destinations and the appreciation of nature. And don’t forget to take into account the idea of being a “swimsuit issue” is quickly becoming a lie. Instead, in the record-breaking 2008 issue, the models are wearing far less than swimsuits more than 50 percent of the time and only body paint for much of that time, which clearly invites voyeurism. When they do wear bathing suits, the most private of parts that are normally censored in mainstream media are repeatedly exposed in an “oops, I didn’t know that was showing” sort of fashion. Even the cover of the 2008, 2009, and 2010 issues features topless models with string bikini bottoms only big enough to cover the necessary amount of skin to avoid censorship.

When Women of Color Go Wild: Exoticization in SI

Though the original Sports Illustrated began in 1954, people of color were found solely in the first 10 years of publication as “hired help” by serving food and drink, performing physical labor, or entertaining in ways that U.S. readers would perceive as “exotic.” By 1982, the magazine had featured only two women of color anywhere within its pages, but they always had very light skin and typically “white” features. It may startle you to know the first dark-skinned model did not appear within the pages of the Swimsuit Issue until 1990 – more than 35 years after its initial publication, after the production staff received complaints about its exclusionary practices and realized their increasingly non-white readership would pay to see models of color. According to one anonymous editor in the early 1990s: “I think the magazine’s growing up, and being more aware of the social consequences of what it’s doing.” (Davis, 1997).

The 2008 Swimsuit Issue features approximately 72 percent white models and 28 percent non-white models, which closely resembles the U.S. population. However, the harmful issue at play in this magazine is not so much the number of representations anymore, but the type of representations. What I want to emphasize is how the “exoticization” of women of color within this magazine does NOT reflect a magazine being “aware of the social consequences of what it is doing” as one editor put it, but promotes dangerous ideas that whiteness is the norm and the most desirable, and anything else is an exotic deviation – even a less-than human object of desire.

History tells us women of color have historically been described as “exotic” in popular media, and it has always carried a sexual connotation. In the 2008 issue alone, I explain the details of how “exoticization” works: When a dark-skinned model appears, she is most often wearing a different animal print bikini on every one of the pages she is featured on, which makes her appear to be animal-like or “exotic.” One of only two dark-skinned models in the 225 pages of images is seen exclusively in leopard and cheetah print bikinis. In Western, white culture, there has long been a fascination with black women as different and ‘other.’ Therefore, this swimsuit model, representative of the non-white female population, reflects what is exotic, inhuman and even animalistic as she strikes seductive poses in her animal-print bikini. Need more evidence of this “wild” phenomenon? The 2008 magazine boasts a two-page spread featuring the only Hispanic model. She appears to be emerging from a muddy body of water, with dirt covering her face, neck and chest. With only a roughly one-inch piece of cloth visible on her body, this model doesn’t model anything but mud! Instead, she appears to be a less-than-human object made up of nothing more than breasts and dirt. Photographs such as this degrade non-white women, and even all of non-Western societies, by reinforcing a stereotype of non-white women as “different,” exotic and purely sexual.

I Object!

Let me be blunt here. Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue is the epitome of female objectification. Packaged in a magazine that can be picked up and packed around, the semi-nude to nude females within the pages can be equally possessed and controlled. Do you want further evidence of the objectification overflowing the pages of this magazine? Because you’re going to get it! The Swimsuit Issue represents the very literal fragmenting of women into parts of women. Between 1978 and 1988, the models were often in two-page spreads where their chests were the focus of one page while their backsides and hips occupied the other. But in the late 1990s, editors made the classically pornographic move to a three-page centerfold spread. As the 2008 issue featuring cover model Marissa Miller demonstrates, three-page spreads allow for women’s bodies to be segmented and magnified into three parts: faces, chests and behinds. She is first identified as one page of chest and one page of a derriere as the reader turns to the centerfold. Appearing virtually headless, the only way to identify her face is to turn back one page and unfold it to find all three pages. If this magazine continues progressing – better yet, regressing – toward more extreme forms of female objectification, its next step will be to simply leave the heads off their models, blur out their faces or place bags over their heads.

In 1978, the swimsuit models posed in what we’d now call mildly seductive positions. Most often posed with flirtatious smiles and hands on hips to emphasize the curve of their waists, these women were acting to accentuate their best features – the objects of men’s desire. But as years passed, the models seem to more fully act like they were turning themselves into objects. By 1988, the cover model, Elle Macpherson, is staring intently into the camera while pulling her swimsuit down to expose her cleavage. Because her goal is to attract and satisfy the male gaze, she is acting with herself as a male would act if he were present. But just wait! The 2008 edition (and all the following) take objectification to the extreme. The 2008 issue, titled “Barely Bikinis,” is packed with models tugging at or removing bikini tops and, most often, bottoms. This is just one example of the models turning their own bodies into objects to be acted upon. Further, the title “Barely Bikinis” is an understatement: the majority of the models appear naked, missing either the top or bottom of their bikini or are wearing completely translucent coverings. More fully bare chests appear in 2008’s edition than any other Swimsuit Issue, which further proves the shockingly increasing amount of  objectification taking place year after year.

The Swimsuit Issue’s Global Impact

The global exposure of the Swimsuit Issue, one of the self-proclaimed “most powerful phenomena in publishing and new media,” is having and will continue to have a worldwide impact: an impact on the way white and non-white women are viewed, and therefore, treated; an impact on the normalization of pornography as safe and socially acceptable; an impact on the standard of beauty we all use to evaluate women; an impact on profit increases in diet and beauty industries, as well as an increase in cosmetic surgery procedures. Objectification, exoticization and normalized pornography, occurring in more extreme and blatant ways each year, work to harm women and cannot be accepted in the U.S.’s “most respected voice” in sports journalism.

Speak out! If the harmful ideals identified in my research bother you and you’d like to help Beauty Redefined break the silence, please comment on this post and I will send this story and your comments directly to the editors and publisher of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

And if you’d love to slap a sticky note on any issue of SI with the happy truths “There is more to be than eye candy!” or “You are capable of much more than being looked at,” DO IT! Find them here.

Lexie Kite, 2011. “The Issue with Swimsuits in Sports Illustrated.” Excerpt from “Top Debut Paper” paper presented at Western Communication Association Conference in Anchorage, Alaska: April 2010.

In a world where health successes and failures are too often measured entirely by weight loss or weight gain, we have to seriously reconsider this idea. Fitness researchers prove it: “There is a need to increase knowledge and understanding of the health benefits of exercise, and reduce the emphasis on weight loss. This agrees with the evidence that cardiorespiratory fitness is a more powerful predictor of risk than body weight” (1). How often do we see health advice that promises you will “Lose 10 lbs. by Friday!” or “Shrink your belly bulge!” if you’ll begin some exercise program or make healthier food choices? Constantly. This messed-up way of thinking – equating healthy choices with quick weight loss – is seriously hurting our health. It’s also making lots of people LOTS of money, while our health problems are still killing us.

Experts are warning against this profit-driven tendency to focus on thinness rather than actual indicators of health and fitness. In a fantastically-titled paper – “Beneficial effects of exercise: shifting the focus from body weight to other markers of health” – King et al. (2009) conclusively demonstrated that “significant and meaningful health benefits can be achieved even in the presence of lower-than-expected exercise-induced weight loss.”

Sounds crazy, right? It goes against anything most media will every tell you about health, but it’s true. Even when you don’t lose as much weight as you think you should (and as money-making media train you to think), you’re still likely gaining some serious health benefits. Doctors know this is true. When people with serious health issues like Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular issues and high blood pressure start a meaningful exercise program, their health problems often disappear or greatly improve – regardless of whether or not they remain overweight or obese.

The Society for Nutrition Education produced a report in 2002 promoting healthy weight in children, which emphasized the need to “set goals for health, not weight, as appropriate for growing children” and says that it is “unrealistic” to expect all children to be at an ideal weight range. Instead, this report defines “healthy weight” as “the natural weight the body adopts, given a healthy diet and meaningful level of physical activity,” which it later specifies to be one hour of physical activity each day.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stated that poor nutrition and physical inactivity are the second leading causes of preventable morbidity and mortality, and are among the top priorities of Healthy People 2010. Notice there is no mention of obesity or overweight in this statement. Along with this imperative, scholars, health educators and medical experts have begun a push toward a “health at any size” movement that encourages people to switch their focus away from weight loss and toward healthy behaviors that can increase physical and emotional health at any weight – even at weights currently considered medically compromising (2). This movement is controversial due to the perception that it may “promote obesity,” which Beauty Redefined has also been accused of in trying to improve female body image. Here’s why that is patently FALSE.

This shift in health objectives toward activity rather than fat is founded upon a huge body of research that shows health and fitness often has very little correlation to body weight or even an individual’s BMI. There’s one impressive meta-analysis of medical studies since the 1970s that concluded overweight and active people may be healthier than those who are thin and sedentary (3). Understanding that activity level – rather than body weight – is a reliable indicator of a person’s health, is a key to dismantling an unhealthy ideology that defines health according to appearance-based measures.

A promising example of promoting physical activity without emphasizing weight loss as the measure of success is from one 2011 study (4) that tested the effectiveness of an exergame (like a Wii or Kinect exercise-promoting video game) to promote exercise self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the confidence in one’s ability to achieve a goal or complete a task. That study, and many others, shows that even when people know what they need to do to be healthy, that knowledge only turns into healthful habits through the mediator of self-efficacy (4). People have to believe they can exercise – in the right ways, consistently, effectively, without hurting themselves, embarrassing themselves, or whatever else might hold them back – in order to do it and stick with it. That makes exercise self-efficacy a hugely vital goal for anyone who cares about improving their own health or others’.

In order for exercise-promoting campaigns to be effective, people need to be able to identify and remove barriers to physical activity in their lives – any excuses, real or imagined, that are holding them back from exercise. One of those barriers is feelings of previous failure at exercising – and this one is especially true for women. Health studies show women tend to associate weight loss with “success,” while many men who gained weight during a study period still considered themselves to have been successful at controlling their weight or managing their health (5). The researchers rightfully warned, “It is possible that women’s perceived lack of success in weight control when no changes in weight ensue may prompt the adoption of aggressive and possibly harmful weight-loss methods, and exacerbate negative body image and weight pre-occupation.” Yep, that’s exactly what happens.

Interestingly – and perhaps not surprisingly to followers of Beauty Redefined – researchers have identified body dissatisfaction as one of the major barriers to regular exercise for women. One study found that one of the most significant barriers to exercise for obese people was their body image perception, with “feeling too fat to exercise” showing up as one of the most common stumbling blocks, particularly for females (6). Recent studies have found that body size satisfaction had a significant effect on whether a person performed regular physical activity, regardless of the individual’s actual weight (7). That is, those who were satisfied with their body – regardless of their size – were more likely to engage in physical activity regularly than those who were less satisfied.

This is scary, considering studies show women tend to overestimate their body weight and size, while men tend to underestimate their body weight and size (8). In one telling example, researchers found that 61 percent of normal weight women perceived themselves as overweight, while 92 percent of underweight women perceived themselves to be average or overweight. As media images of women’s bodies across advertising and entertainment of all genres have shrunk to extremely thin proportions over the past several decades, women’s perceptions of their own bodies has become just as distorted.

In a country where 50 percent of women say their bodies “disgust” them and a whopping 90 percent of women are dissatisfied with their appearances (9), body shame needs to be viewed as a huge barrier to health and physical activity for women, and one that must be addressed in meaningful ways - NOW. This rampant self-loathing, which can be partially attributed to women’s self-comparisons to unrealistic and unattainable body ideals in mass media, may very well encourage women to give up on achieving healthy body weights altogether due to the perception that “healthy” or “average” is unreachable. Studies help to confirm this idea.

A 5-year study on a group of teen girls (10) found that girls who were more comfortable with their bodies — regardless of their weight or size — were actually healthier over time. They were more likely to be physically active and pay more attention to what they ate. Meanwhile, the girls who were the most dissatisfied with their size tended to become more sedentary over time and paid less attention to maintaining a healthy diet. This makes sense. When you are ashamed of your body, how likely are you to go to the gym or go outside and be active? How much more likely are you to shut yourself inside with the TV and food that will do you no good?

This truth is why Beauty Redefined exists and why people are eager to get behind our messages: promoting positive body image is crucial to promoting health. Increasing positive feelings about our bodies and being able to see them as more than objects to be measured, judged and looked at are key to helping people make healthy choices – especially increasing their physical activity. You are capable of much more than being looked at. This is the year to end body shame and get on to bigger and better things – especially real health and happiness. This is the year of Body Hate Apocalypse 2012, where Resolution #1 is to choose a real health goal and achieve it! Lexie recently put this idea to the test by conquering one of her greatest fears: running. Long distances. In public. Breaking through this barrier helped her move away from seeing herself as an object, which too many females do to themselves all day every day.

From lost self-esteem, lost money and time spent fixing “flaws” and a well-documented preoccupation with thinness, the effects of profit-driven health information involve serious loss for women, while too many industries see huge economic gains. From the life insurance industry collecting higher premiums for those they deem “overweight” based on a standard they set themselves, to major financial savings for medical experts and the government using the profit-driven BMI, to the diet and weight loss industry raking in more than $61 billion on Americans’ quest for thinness in 2011, those who make money off the discourse surrounding women’s health are thriving unlike ever before.

Just your typical women's fitness feature.

There is so much at stake in turning this health crisis around. The current obsession with women’s bodies, from the obesity crisis to unattainable appearance-focused fitness ideals, can be viewed as a reflection of the economic interests of many: the insurance industry, the diet and weight loss industry, federal health agencies, medical practitioners, the beauty product industry and mass media (especially women’s magazines) that uphold the beauty ideals their paying advertisers depend on, among others. With so many power holders with serious capitalist interests at stake in maintaining the force of beauty ideology in women’s beliefs about their bodies, it is unlikely that media distorting women’s health will change anytime soon.

But we can change.

Dismantling and revealing harmful ideas about health must become the responsibility of everyone who recognizes their existence: health educators and practitioners who know the difference between thin ideals and indicators of physical fitness; parents, teachers, friends and other influential individuals who see signs of low self-esteem, distorted body perceptions and disordered eating in girls; media consumers who recognize negative feelings about their own or others’ bodies after reading or viewing media that represents ideals as normal or “healthy;” media decision makers who can disrupt the steady stream of idealized bodies with positive representations of more normative shapes and sizes; and activists who are willing to visibly resist messages that repackage women’s health in power-laden terms in any way possible, whether through volunteering to speak out against harmful ideals for any audience who will listen, or by attracting attention toward the dangerous link between beauty ideals, low self-esteem and serious health consequences.

Revealing the unrealistic nature of dominant ideas of “healthy” and their influence on the way girls and women view and treat their bodies is a promising step toward diminishing its power over us. This can be done in simple ways:

• By pointing out the difference between media representations of women’s bodies and real-life women’s bodies while watching TV or flipping through a magazine with friends or family
• By gaining better understanding of realistic and healthy standards of body weight and physical fitness for ourselves and others over whom we have influence (Reading Part 1 of this “Redefining Health” series is a great start)
• By posting links or starting discussions on blogs and social networking sites to continuously spark conversation about the dangers thin ideals and those who profit from our allegiance to them (join us on Facebook for regular ways to do this!)
• By reminding ourselves and encouraging others to engage in physical activity as a means for improving physical and mental health, rather than a strategy for achieving unattainable beauty ideals, among other practical options
• By using any of our tried-and-tested startegies to take back female beauty and health for girls and women or for boys and men.

Please join us in making this the year to end all body hate by following our healthy resolutions in Body Hate Apocalypse 2012! And if you need positive reminders for yourself or others in your life that they are capable of much more than being looked at, their reflection does not define their worth, and more uplifting truths, you can help us raise money to continue this fight buy purchasing our sticky notes and postcards (that have also been featured on billboards across the U.S.)!

Kite, Lindsay. (2011). Healthy Redefined Part 2: Forget About Fat and Get Fit! www.beautyredefined.net/healthy-redefined-part-2-forget-about-fat-and-get-fit

Georgia's "Strong4Life" Fat-Shaming Ad. "It's hard to be a little girl when you're not." Note: This young girl does not have any of the health problems the campaign is working to fight.

From unfortunate fat-shaming in Georgia’s “Strong4Life” campaign put on by Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta to kids being graded on their weight in public schools across the country via their BMI score on their report cards, we see well-meaning people using harmful and ineffective strategies like crazy to try and counteract this country’s weight problem. This overwhelming focus on body size has stolen the spotlight in mass media and scholarly research since the mid-‘90s, all citing an imperative to end an obesity crisis that has been championed by the federal health agencies.

With the health and fitness of the nation as the key justification for calling high levels of obesity a “crisis,” it is important to understand how bodily health is defined in research. How is health measured? What defines a healthy or physically fit body? In a country where both obesity and eating disorders have skyrocketed simultaneously, it is crucial to understand how physical health has been and is being understood, tested and promoted.

Scholars are concerned that very little evidence has been produced regarding the question of exactly how body fat is supposed to cause disease (1). With the exception of osteoarthritis, where increased body mass contributes to wear on joints, and a few cancers where estrogen originating in adipose tissue may contribute, causal links between body fat and disease remain hypothetical. Researchers are asking health professionals and policy makers to consider whether it makes sense to treat body weight as a barometer of public health. Despite this shaky foundation for defining physical health in terms of body fatness, much of current health and communication research measures health through simple measures of a person’s body fat, and that may be doing more harm than good for the health status of this country.

Defining Health: Body Fat = Body Health?

Researchers measuring health in terms of body fat generally rely on the American Council on Exercise’s guidelines to determine which percentages are healthy, with anything below 10% and above 31% in women (or below 2% and above 24% in men) considered a health risk. Direct measures of body composition estimate a person’s total body fat mass and fat-free or lean mass through MRI, underwater weighing, CAT scan, and other methods. Power, Lake & Cole (1997) said, “an ideal measure of body fat should be accurate in its estimation of body fat; precise, with small measurement error; accessible, in terms of simplicity, cost and ease of use; acceptable to the subject; and well-documented, with published reference values.” They go on to state that “no existing measure satisfies all these criteria.” Since these methods are expensive and invasive, they are rarely used in research. Because of this, scholars are much more likely to rely on indirect measures of body composition, including the most popular of them all: Body Mass Index (BMI).

Indirect techniques for measuring fat include all the most common ones: waist and hip measurements, skinfold thickness, and indexes of measured height and weight such as BMI. These measurements are only a surrogate measure of body fatness, yet they are commonly used to represent not only adiposity but also health and fitness in research and media discussion about healthy bodies. The life and health insurance industry, medical practitioners, researchers, health specialists and seemingly everyone else on the planet uses the BMI to measure people’s health. That’s because it is the international standard for judging healthy weight, as upheld and promoted by the CDC, NIH and WHO. This is bad.

Here are 10 quick reasons why the BMI is a shockingly terrible measure of health:

The equation used to calculate BMI (the ratio of an individual’s weight to height squared) was developed in the 19th century by Quetelet, a French scientist who warned the calculation was only meant to be used for large diagnostic studies on general populations and was not accurate for individuals.

The BMI’s height and weight tables used to tell you what your score means came from the life insurance industry. Yep. A standardized table of average weights and heights was developed first in 1908, when life insurance companies began looking for ways to charge higher premiums to applicants based on screening by their own medical examiners. By setting the thresholds for “ideal weight” and “overweight” lower than what mortality data showed as the actual healthy weight ranges, they were able to collect more money for those they deemed “overweight.” In 1985, the NIH began defining obesity according to BMI, which defined the 85th percentile for each sex as the official cutoff for what constitutes “obese,” based on the standards for underweight, average, overweight and obese that were set by the 1983 Metropolitan Life Insurance Company mortality tables (Williamson, 1993).

The NIH implemented the BMI standard under the theory that it would simply be used by doctors to warn patients who were at especially high risk for obesity-related problems (2). It was never meant for individuals to calculate their BMI and accept it as a diagnosis of whether or not their weight is healthy, yet that is EXACTLY how it is used today. Individuals are encouraged to easily diagnose their own BMI status through the NIH website-hosted BMI calculator.

Those weight tables are based on the unfounded idea that any weight gain after age 25 is unhealthy. Though weight tables before the mid-1900s allowed for increasing weight with age (which naturally occurs), the Metropolitan Life insurance Company became the first to deem an increase in weight after age 25 as undesirable and unhealthy – again, to collect higher premiums. Also, the BMI is advised to be used only for people older than 20, due to the changes young bodies undergo before that age, yet it is very often used to diagnose adolescents and teens. Researchers admit that it is unclear at what level of body fat health risks begin to rise for children (Denney-Wilson et al., 2003), so trying to define a standard of what constitutes overweight and obese for children is incredibly difficult.

Those weight tables also did not take into account body frame or build, unlike previous tables, which included “small,” “medium” or “large frame” due to demands from physicians who rightfully wanted to avoid serious miscalculations of body fat (Cziernawski, 2007).

Those same 1983 tables (and now our BMI) also failed to take gender into account, despite healthy levels of fat and weight distribution differing greatly between males and females (3).

BMI is based on a Caucasian standard. It is proven to be highly inaccurate for other races and ethnicities. In particular, in some Asian populations, a specific BMI reflects a higher percentage of body fat than in white or European Populations (James, 2002). Some Pacific populations and African Americans in general also have a lower percentage of body fat at a given BMI than do white or European populations (Stevens, 2002). Even the WHO has acknowledged the extensive evidence that “the associations between BMI, percentage of body fat, and body fat distribution differ across populations” (WHO, 2004).

In 1998, millions of people considered of “normal” weight were suddenly re-classified as “overweight” the next day when the NIH lowered the threshold for “overweight” and “obese” by 10 lbs. They based this change on the vague claim that studies linking extra weight to health problems warranted the changes (Cohen & McDermott, 1998). On June 16, 1998, the “average” woman was 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighed 155 pounds. On June 17, a woman of that same height and weight became “overweight.” The requirement for “average” dropped 10 pounds to 145, and a person of the same height who weighed 175 pounds was considered “obese.”

Experts say it’s “useless.” Dr. David Haslam, the clinical director of Britain’s National Obesity Forum, said, “It is now widely accepted that the BMI is useless for assessing the healthy weight of individuals” (). Despite extensive evidence proving the BMI lacks accuracy for calculating an individual’s body fat (4), A growing pool of evidence suggests that BMI is a “crude tool” for judging individual health that “fans fears of an obesity epidemic even as it fails as a reliable measure of an individual’s health” (Heimpel, 2009). Even the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force concluded there is insufficient evidence to suggest BMI screening can be used to prevent adverse health outcomes (4). Prentice & Jebb (2001) illustrated a wide range of conditions in which “surrogate anthropometric measures, especially BMI, provide misleading information about body fat content, including infancy and childhood, aging, racial differences, athletes, military and civil forces personnel, weight loss with and without exercise, physical training and special clinical circumstances.”

Despite all the evidence against it, government health agencies defend the BMI as the national standard for judging healthy weight due to the fact that it is “inexpensive and easy for clinicians and for the general public” (CDC, 2010). That’s exactly why researchers use it so consistently as a stand-in for “health.”

It is imperative to keep in mind that the much-publicized U.S. obesity crisis has risen to the forefront of national attention only since the late ‘90s, after the NIH changed the standard for what constitutes overweight and obesity. Using data gathered from 1976-1980 and comparing it to data from 1999-2002, the CDC reported that obesity doubled from 15 to 31 percent between 1980 and 2002 (CDC, 2007). It is unclear whether the data was compared using the same standard for determining “obesity,” since the criteria for fitting into this category changed in 1998 to include many more people that were previously considered merely “overweight.” Though obesity remains at the forefront of national health concerns and media discourse of Americans’ health, the rate of obesity hasn’t changed in a decade. It plateaued since the most recent CDC report, with no change between 2003 and 2006, when the most recent national data was gathered (Heimpel, 2009; CDC, 2007).

Unfortunately, heart disease, cancers and diabetes remain serious threats to public health, and obesity is considered a risk factor for these chronic illnesses. So if the BMI is worthless, then what do we use to measure or determine bodily health? One step in the right direction is just as easy to calculate and much more accurate than BMI: waist circumference (WC). It is a more specific marker of upper body fat accumulation than BMI and is correlated with lipid abnormalities (O’Connor et al., 2008). When the researchers were evaluating a weight management program for overweight and obese adolescents, O’Connor et al. (2008) found a significant decrease in waist circumference, but not BMI, in participants. Janssen et al. (2004) evaluated WC in assessing obesity-related health problems and found that waist circumference is more effective than BMI at explaining obesity-related health risk. They found that people who are overweight or obese according to the BMI often have the same level of health risk as normal weight people with the same WC value.

Though WC is a step in the right direction and closer to measuring health, it still isn’t quite there. The next step is to redefine what this crisis is really about. It’s about health, not body size. During the time the obesity crisis has been in the forefront of media and federal health agency initiatives, the diet and weight loss industries have thrived unlike ever before. Simultaneously, fat-shaming/thin-ideal-promoting media have also flourished, with female body image hitting an all-time low. With lost self-esteem, lost money and time spent fixing “flaws” and a well-documented preoccupation with thinness among females of all ages, the effects of profit-driven health information involve serious loss for women, while too many industries see huge economic gains. From the life insurance industry collecting higher premiums from those they deem “overweight” based on a standard they set themselves, to major financial savings for medical experts and the government using the profit-driven BMI, to the diet and weight loss industry raking in more than $61 billion on Americans’ quest for thinness in 2011, those who make money off the discourse surrounding women’s health are thriving unlike ever before.

One of our 4 billboard images available for purchase as sticky notes or postcards!

With so much evidence showing that our obsession with body fat is missing the mark for health and well-being of all sorts, I argue that we need to do away with the title “obesity crisis” all together. This crisis isn’t about too many people meeting an arbitrary standard of body fat, this crisis is about poor health due to unhealthy choices defined most prominently by inactivity and poor diet. Measuring health according to activity level is the most promising step for getting an accurate gauge of true wellness. But FIRST, we must focus on getting rid of barriers like “feeling too fat to exercise” and not knowing if you can be successful in order to make way for real success! Next Up – Healthy Redefined Part 2: Forget Fat and Get Fit!

Kite, Lindsay. (2011). Redefining Health Part 1: Measuring the Obesity Crisis. Beauty Redefined: www.beautyredefined.net/redefining-health-part-1

Under the belief that men are only interested in having model lookalikes and rail-thin trophy wives by their sides, too many women go to dangerous, unhealthy and exhausting extremes to become what they think men want. (And yes, I intentionally used the word “what” instead of “who.”) Whether it is disordered eating, exercise bulimia, life-threatening cosmetic surgery or just plain old body hatred that most girls and women live with on a daily basis, females are in an all-consuming battle for “beauty,” which today is equated with worthiness of male attention and sex appeal.

In media, male sex appeal is represented as being influenced by a huge variety of factors, such as humor, intelligence, charisma, athleticism, income, courage, etc., along with appearance. Female sex appeal is consistently and exclusively defined by appearance alone. That sucks. And though the body ideals perpetuated by media are frighteningly unrealistic, the promised reward of love and companionship that supposedly comes with attaining those ideals is all too real. Since the early days of mass media, the promise of love and desirability has been used by companies to sell everything from household appliances to cosmetics (think Betty Friedan’s “Feminine Mystique”), and now it’s used to sell anything you can think of, either subtly or blatantly.

Happy, satisfying romantic relationships are a highly sought-after aspect of life, so it’s no wonder the promise of male attention and love is a dominant theme in media that flaunts idealized bodies and the strategies to get them.

Thin Ideals = Sex Appeal

And to complicate matters further, beauty ideals today are defined most prominently by thinness. Usually extreme thinness. Fitness magazines and others like Cosmo regularly equate thinness with not only health, but also sex appeal, as do an infinite number of entertainment media outlets and advertisers. Whether in blatant verbal terms or by the use of images or bodies that exclusively represent thin ideals, the idea that female attractivness is defined by thinness is so pervasive that it now goes unquestioned. This extreme thinness = sex appeal idea serves a very lucrative purpose in every industry that makes money off women’s body insecurity: cosmetics, plastic surgery, weight loss plans and pills, clothing, so-called fitness magazines, beauty, hair and skin care products, and any media supported by advertising dollars from these industries.

These companies rely on women believing that everything is at stake in fixing their “flaws” – from their health and happiness to their worth as women, but especially their ability to be loved by a man. But by convincing us all that only women with very thin, idealized bodies are good enough to catch and keep a man’s attention, they’re selling dangerous ideals while also perpetuating a myth about who is behind this whole thinness=attractiveness idea: it’s not about men. It’s about money.

Is This Really What Men Want?

Studies show over and over that women constistently overemphasize men’s preference for thin bodies, which helps to prove the thin ideal is really media’s ideal and not men’s. Some of these examples are scientific and rigorous, some are simple surveys, and some are scholarly hypotheses, but they’re all pretty revealing:

• Numerous academic studies show that women overestimate the level of thinness desired by men. Past research has asked women to indicate the level of female thinness desired by men, and then separately measured men’s preferences for female thinness. Results overwhelmingly showed that compared to what women thought men wanted, men actually preferred a larger female ideal (1).
• An August 2004 study published by Cosmopolitan magazine (of all sources!) declared that a full 61.6% of men preferred a “curvy” female body type with an average bust size, with 20.4% selecting “svelte with big breasts,” 11.6% for “model-thin and small-chested,” 4.7% “other” and 1.7% “big and bodacious.” Obviously, those aren’t clearly defined categories for scientific selection, but the clear winner remains.
• Another 2008 study published in the UK magazine Fabulous showed that in surveys, the vast majority of women perceived the ideal body size as a size 6, while men believed the ideal female body looked like a size 10.
• In The Evolution of Desire: Strategies for Human Mating, psychology professor David M. Buss (1994) points out how in massive studies of all ages, women chose slimmer-than-average physiques as the ideal for both sexes. But once again, when men selected a female physique that they perceived as most ideal, they chose a body type that was more average and larger than what was chosen by women.
• A study reported in New Scientist revealed the body preferences of 100 men who were asked to rate the attractiveness of 200 female bodies of various sizes. The results showed that the men’s ideal most closely fit a normative body type represented by a U.S. size 10.

These examples help to refute the common belief among women that they need to achieve unrealistic thin ideals in order to be considered attractive to men. In all reality, those unnatural ideals benefit companies and not relationships. Too many industries thrive off women believing that they must continuously fix their “flaws” in order to be happy, healthy, successful and in this case, desirable or worthy of love. This is a lie. A profit-driven lie. Recognizing these dangerous messages found inside so many sources that claim to give women the tools to become sexy and successful is a major step toward rejecting them. We have to continuously reject harmful ideals that tell girls and women their sexuality, health and happiness is dependent upon whether or not they fit unrealistic beauty standards.

Andy Roddick, May 2007 Men's Fitness. He said later: "I’m not as fit as the Men’s Fitness cover suggests…little did I know I have 22 inch guns and a disappearing birth mark on my right arm."

Men Are Not Immune to Media Ideals

Interestingly, this for-profit lie isn’t reserved for just women. Scientific research has also discovered that men overestimate the degree of muscularity that women find attractive (2), assuming they need to have rock hard bodies and sport a six-pack to be found attractive. Just as so much research has demonstrated that females experience decreased body satisfaction after exposure to thin ideal media, studies also show that men’s body image satisfaction decreases after viewing images of the idealized male physique, such as in health and fitness magazines (3). Hand in hand with financial motivations, other factors are fueling the increasingly thinner female ideal and the increasingly muscular male ideal: competition for attention and selective media exposure. As proposed by David A. Frederick and several other scholars (2005), competitions for “prestige” in body shape often result in exaggeration of specific physical attributes over time as competitors strive to outdo one another. This idea also helps prove the power of media influence on our ideas of what is ideal and attainable, and on our own body dissatisfaction. Here is the UCLA scholars’ well-stated explanation of how this happens:

“The media highlights high-status individuals who display extreme versions of the bodily traits at issue, fueling prestige competition. In order to maintain their preeminence, celebrities must often work hard to manifest even more extreme versions of the attributes at issue. Similarly, magazines, videos, and TV programs frequently feature relatively unknown individuals who, because they display many other prestigious attributes (attractive faces, association with attractive members of the opposite sex, and a link to themes of sexual success), communicate the message that they possess a prestigious body form.”  Frederick et al., 2005

While the male examples of this phenomenon are hard to name outside of men’s health and fitness magazines (really – I can’t come up with any), the female examples of “otherwise relatively unknown individuals” who display extreme versions of body ideals and are constantly featured in media are endless: Victoria Beckham, Angelina Jolie, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Heidi Montag, Nicole Ritchie, Kate Moss, every Victoria’s Secret and SI Swimsuit Issue model, almost every single fashion, fitness and lifestyle magazine, every TV program or publication that highlights “success stories” of celeb weight loss, body transformations, etc. Basically, ALL media is guilty of this obession with thin female bodies.

Thin Ideals and the Way We Feel

One of our 4 billboard images!

Weights and sizes of women featured in ALL media – from Playboy and Vogue to fitness magazines and primetime TV – have shrunk dramatically over the past several decades. Extensive research on 18 magazines read by adolescent girls shows that 87% of the female models shown in the pages were below average in weight – a proportion that grossly overrepresents the percentage of such bodies in the real world. Similarly, women’s magazines almost exclusively use models who are underweight, with a focus on products and articles that tell readers how to become thin, and a blatant emphasis on weight loss as the key to health, happiness and success in relationships (4). Even media and products aimed at 3 to 5-year-old girls are selling scary sexed-up thin ideals these days. Street advertising exposes people of all ages to harmful ideals all hours of the day. Since it’s rare to see an ad that does anything positive for female body image, we at Beauty Redefined have launched a campaign to raise money for billboards that promote positive body image across the U.S. We’ve already put up 13 of them from Utah to Pennsylvania and we’d love to put up more! If you can help, please do!

We can’t pretend like media’s constant connection between thinness and sex appeal isn’t influencing women in really scary ways. Whether it is in blatant discussion focusing on their bodies or by featuring such thin bodies so frequently (as almost all media are guilty of today), the appearance of extreme thinness has become the norm, and average-sized bodies have been become the abnormal.

• The vast majority of girls and women now perceive underweight bodies and extremely low body weights as being ideally healthy (Kantrowitz & Wingert, 2007; American Academy of Pediatrics, 2010; Wiseman et al., 2006)
• Even underweight and average-weight females are striving for weight loss using dangerous and unhealthy means (Grabe et. al, 2008: Posavac, 1998; Eskes et al., 1998)
• 66 % of adolescent girls wish they were thinner, though only 16 are actually overweight
• 35 % of 6 to 12-year-old girls have been on at least one diet (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2010).
• More than half of adult women claim their bodies “disgust” them and 90 percent of women are dissatisfied with their appearance (Dove International, 2007)

If girls and women have such distorted ideas of what healthy and attractive is supposed to look like, then it’s pretty obvious males haven’t escaped these harmful messages about female bodies. Though the previously cited studies show promising differences between what women think perfect female bodies look like and what men think perfect female bodies look like, there’s still a big problem here. We can’t keep allowing female worth, health and desirability be defined by body size or shape.

One of our 4 billboard messages!

As long as media keeps perpetuating these myths about physical appearance, people are going to believe them. And as long as people keep believing that female desirability, worth and health are defined by thinness, media will keep perpetuating those myths. Clearly, this is a vicious cycle that is harming everyone in its path. Everyone. So what can we do to steer clear of its path and recognize its grasp on our thoughts and actions? A lot. Here are just a few strategies:

Unreal Ideals: Remember it is reasonable to assume no image we ever see of a woman in media has gone un-manipulated. Today, magazine editors refer to airbrushing as an industry standard. Plus, vertical film stretching to make women appear taller and thinner is a common technique, as are filtered lenses on cameras and soft lighting, which do away with wrinkles, pores, and other so-called “blemishes.” The next time you start comparing yourself to a woman in a magazine, remember that even she doesn’t fit the ideal she’s made to represent!

Go on a Media Fast: Choose a day, a week, a month, or longer to steer clear of as muchmedia as you can. That way, you can see how your life is different without all those messages and images, and when you return to viewing and reading popular media, you will be more sensitive to the messages that hurt you and those that are unrealistic. One group of male college students in Utah went on a “media fast” for three months, and at the end of that time, they claimed they found the real women in their lives more attractive while they were on the fast, and continued to find them more beautiful once the fast was over.

The Power of Kindness: Choose to compliment the girls and women in your life for character traits, actions or talents you admire about them. The compliments that stick with you for a lifetime are often those that acknowledge your valuable qualities, like a good attitude, selflessness, talents, honesty and so much more than beautiful hair or a cute outfit.

RUN from Normalized Pornography: Depicting sexual images and dialogue is now a normal part of media all hours of the day, and it is presented as “safe” in advertisements, catalogs, TV shows, movies, men’s and women’s magazines, books, video games, websites, billboards, etc. Research is very clear that pornography changes the way men and women view each other, it gets in the way of us forming loving and healthy relationships, it skews our perceptions of attractiveness, our sense of self-worth, and our sense of others’ worth. Do not just walk away – RUN from it!

Object to Objectification: Girls and women exposed to sexually objectifying messages (which are inescapable in today’s media landscape) prove to experience body hatred, and both males and females learn to primarily view and value women for their outward appearance and actually endorsed objectifying images in the future. And a particularly scary fact is that research proves these harmful messages leave females preoccupied with their physical appearance, which then hurts their performance in school (including mathematics, logical reasoning, spatial skills) and athletic activities. Yikes.

Be an Advocate: If our suggestion to turn away from media that degrades or otherwise hurts you is just not enough for you, consider your fierce influence as an advocate for women. When you come across a company’s advertising that fuels female insecurity or a magazine that objectifies women even as it claims to empower them, speak up! Blogging your disapproval is a great start, and so is posting links to news stories that reveal harmful ideals on social networking sites. Join us on our Facebook fan page for regular links to share and continue this conversation! We are currently working on raising money to promote positive messagse about female bodies on billboards across the country. If you can donate, please do!

Redefining Healthy: Getting back to reality involves figuring out what “health” really means – and it’s not what media shows us. For-profit media like fitness magazines or TV shows would have us believe health and fitness are all about what we look like, and any doctor can tell us that simply isn’t true. Talk to a doctor, nutritionist or other health specialist to figure out what healthy really means for you individually. Work with them to set healthy goals for yourself that aren’t based off profit-driven beauty ideals.

Emily, one of our 10 real, beautiful women who told the truth about weight.

Get back to Reality: Since we’ll see more images of women in one week of media viewing than we’ll probably ever see face to face, it’s important to give ourselves a reality check! When we look eye to eye with the women we know and love, we can remind ourselves what real women and real beauty look like. And this real definition of beauty is so much more than just looks! For a reality checkup, check out our project “Facts and Figures: 10 Girls Tell the Truth About Weight.”

Tell the Truth: Point out the difference between media representations of women’s bodies and real-life women’s bodies while watching TV or flipping through a magazine with friends or family. Saying these things aloud will help you train your mind and the minds of those you love to recognize what is real and what is far from the truth. Remember, honesty is always the best policy!

Be a Positive Example: Research and real-life experience make it clear that when women and girls speak negatively about their bodies and their appearance, they negatively impact those around them. That very much holds true for men and boys who make critical comments, whether jokingly or seriously, about real life women or media images. Start today with a goal that you will do your best to avoid saying anything negative about your appearance or other women’s appearances, either in your mind or aloud, and soon the negative self-talk that floats through your women’s minds will become less and less prevalent, too.

Be Critical of Media, Not Yourself or Others: While the U.S. is the No. 1 producer and exporter of media, we are also the only industrialized country in the world without some form of media literacy in public school curriculum. We need to feel an obligation to put media under closer inspection for the influence it has in our lives. Next time you are flipping through a magazine or watching a movie, train yourself to ask important questions about what you see. If you don’t like the answers you find, remember you can turn away from the messages that hurt you and those you love!

• Do you feel better or worse about yourself when viewing or hearing this media? Do you believe the females in your life would feel better or worse about themselves after viewing or hearing this media?
• Who is advertising in these pages or on this screen? (Look for ads and commercials and you’ll see who is paying the bills for your favorite media messages)
• Who owns the TV show, movie, magazine, video game or website you are viewing? (Research the company and its owners and you’ll find out who the powerful decision makers are behind the scenes of your media of choice)
• Is the media you read and view promoting real health or impossible ideals meant to make you spend money and time? Who are those messages promoting impossible ideals usually speaking to?
• How are women and girls presented here? Are they valued for their talents and personality? Do they look like the females in your life?

For more strategies to help take back beauty for ourselves, check out our list for girls and women and our list for boys and men.

By Lindsay Kite. 2011. “Sex Appeal and Thin Ideals: Are Men to Blame?” Published at www.beautyredefined.net/are-men-to-blame. March 15, 2011.

VF Hollywood Issue 2010

VF Hollywood Issue 2011

I guess the last couple years of backlash wasn’t enough to convince Vanity Fair to stop whitewashing beauty off the cover of its annual “Hollywood Issue.” The “Fresh Faces of 2010” featured a lineup of nine beautiful young stars, all of whom had one noticeable attribute in common: they were all white.

Keep in mind that was the year of Zoe Saldana in “Avatar” and “Star Trek,” Gabourey Sidibe in “Precious” and Freida Pinto of “Slumdog Millionaire,” among many other stunningly talented women of color who shared the Hollywood spotlight. The 2011 issue featured a slight improvement with the inclusion of Rashida Jones, though she was pushed to the far right of the tri-folded cover photo, which means one had to not only open the cover of the magazine, but also unfold the flap, in order to see the one and only woman of color. Perhaps not surprisingly, 2012 fared no better for the two women of color (the lovely Paula Patton and Adepero Oduye ) included in this much-anticipated issue, as they were also – you guessed it – relegated to the right side of the folded-over cover.

VF Hollywood Issue 2012

You’d think that with approximately one-third of the women in the U.S. representing an ethnicity other than Caucasian, media would wake up and catch up – both in terms of writing and offering film roles for women of color and in representing those women positively after they’re stars. In terms of capitalistic common sense, that’s an undeniably large segment of this country’s consumers who don’t see their own races, ethnicities, skin tones, hair colors and styles reflected in mainstream media. Does it matter that women of color are dramatically underrepresented in media, that they’re digitally and physically whitewashed when they do appear in media (by their own choices and the choices of stylists, editors and directors), and that the women we do see almost always already look like white women – with light skin tones, long, straight, lightened hair, digitally lightened eye colors (also achieved through colored contacts), traditionally Anglicized facial features, and slender (and shrinking) bodies? The answer is YES. It does matter.

VF Hollywood Issue 2009

It matters that Vanity Fair essentially refuses to feature a woman of color on the cover of one of their most popular issues of the year that names Hollywood’s newest, most important stars. Consider this in light of their own mission statement: “Vanity Fair is a cultural filter, igniting the global conversation about the people and ideas that matter most…Vanity Fair is the first choice and often the only choice for the world’s most influential and important audience.”

With an audience of 6.76 million readers, the one thing VF has right in their mission statement is that it is undoubtedly influential. But in its role as a “cultural filter,” we’re sorely disappointed to see the diversely beautiful faces of our culture filtered entirely out of the conversation. By repeatedly leaving women of color out of the conversation, and literally out of the picture, VF tells us over and over again exactly who and what “matters most.”

VF Teen Star Issue 2003

Regardless of the race or ethnicity of the women featured, the constant theme women’s magazines like VF teach readers is that your appearance matters more than anything. Fashion and lifestyle magazines have long been the target of research that demonstrating startling links between media viewing/reading and body hatred, eating disorder symptoms, drive for thinness, and other factors. Research shows us that females’ exposure to the beauty ideals in women’s magazines is consistently related to an increased perception of the importance of beauty and the centrality of physical appearance for women (1). This is achieved through images and editorial content that consistently emphasize thinness, weight loss, and the attainment of what the magazines define as “beauty” in order to achieve personal success, happiness, health and attention from men.

As if unattainably thin ideals (that look completely normal due to repeated exposure) across all genres of media aren’t enough of a strike against women’s perceptions of their own bodies, why don’t we throw in a skin color as the foremost standard of beauty – onethat at least a third of the women in this country don’t have. In addition to being extremely thin yet curvaceous in all the “right” places, the beauty ideal presented in mainstream media is almost exclusively white, making it all the more unattainable for women of color. But that doesn’t mean they don’t try. Even with the conspicuous absence of women of color from the highest-selling magazines, real life women of color suffer nearly the same effects as white women from our unrealistic, generally unhealthy, white ideals.

Lots of people assume women of color are more capable of resisting the influence of dominant standards of beauty than white women, but plenty of evidence shows otherwise. In studies where Latina girls under age 18 report greater body satisfaction compared to white girls, they still report comparable or higher rates of disordered eating (2). Latina adolescents frequently describe an ideal body type that is comparable to the white norm and report an interest in weight loss at rates similar to those reported by white peers (3). Same goes for African American females: Scholar Kristen Harrison conducted a study with 61 teenage African American girls, measuring the girls’ “thin ideal” television exposure (shows that emphasize thinness through characters’ bodies and dialogue) and how they thought their classmates expected them to look. She found that the larger girls who were exposed to thin ideal media consistently thought their peers expected them to be smaller than they were. For smaller girls, media exposure was strongly connected to the belief that they needed to gain weight and be larger (Harrison & Gentles, 2006).

Studies like this prove that profit-driven media is working exactly as it is intended to work. Beauty, cosmetic surgery, weight loss, fashion and media industries make billions by sparking and feeding into anxieties in women about their bodies. It’s the classic “grass is always greener” idea – white women need to be darker through tanning and dark women need to be lighter by any means necessary. As long as they can keep women dissatisfied with themselves, they can keep selling us the products and solutions to fix our flaws! Another study by Harrison (2003) demonstrated that female college students’ exposure to TV featuring idealized bodies was directly associated with small-busted women desiring larger busts and large-busted women desiring smaller busts. This is depressing. And it’s not isolated to skin tones, hair colors and textures or cup sizes. It strikes again in terms of body size and shape.

Sofia Vergara, with an arm reportedly Photoshopped to fit the Pepsi "skinny can" ideal

You’ve probably definitely noticed that Latinas are represented a little differently in mainstream U.S. media, and they always have been. You know, the ultra-sexy, seductive, curvaceous, va-va-voom, exoticized Latina lover – think Sofia Vergara, Eva Mendes, Eva Longoria, Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, Selma Hayek, Penelope Cruz – the list is seriously endless. In researching the effects of this, young Latina and black women are shown to describe an ideal body shape/size that has more “feminine curves” than the dominant white ideal. Instead of always subscribing to the thin ideal, girls and women of color, in some cases, value a “thick” ideal, comprising a slender but curvy body, with a thin waist, big breasts and hips, and a round behind (4). Greater acculturation into mainstream U.S. culture has been associated with preference for thinner body types among Mexican American women (5), Cuban American women and Latina adolescents. Chamorro and Flores-Ortiz found second-generation Mexican-Americans had the highest levels of disordered eating and acculturation among first- through fifth-generation Mexican Americans (Goodman, 2002). That means girls whose parents came from Mexico are more likely than those whose families had been here longer to starve themselves or binge and purge. THAT is what this culture does to women who have been in this country just long enough to figure out what to do to their bodies in order to fit U.S. ideals.

Penelope Cruz's rib cage appears to have been removed in the editing process! Yikes.

Essentially, “the feminine ideal is tanned, healthy slenderness, with no unsightly bumps, bulges, or cellulite, and bodily and facial perfection that results from hours of labor: exercise, makeup, and hair care” (Coward, 1985; & Kuhn, 1985), and 25 years later, plastic surgery and digital manipulation. Whereas Latina icons such as Christina Aguilera, Salma Hayek, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira have achieved renown in both mainstream U.S. media and media geared toward Latin audiences, media representations of these women have become increasingly anglicized within U.S. media, with shrinking figures and lighter-colored, straighter hair (6). Read more about this and see photos of several stars’ transformations in our popular piece “Beauty Whitewashed: How White Ideals Exclude Women of Color.”

Not too dark, but not too white; not too bodacious up top, but not too flat either; not too skinny, but not too fat. This vicious cycle of “never quite good enough” is fantastic for a consumer culture supporting $100+ billion beauty product and weight loss industries, but it is certainly not conducive to real progress as individuals or as a culture.

Judging by statistics that claim the average American is exposed to about 7.5 hours of screen media every day, and the average American is exposed to 3,600 daily advertisements (Jhally, 2005), constant images of ideal female beauty have potentially far-reaching consequences. Today, the prevalence of body dissatisfaction and related disordered eating is impacting females at younger ages and they are no longer confined to a particular class or ethnic group. Does being aware of the insidious nature of media’s representation of women – really its misrepresentation of women - make any difference? Absolutely. Recognize and reject those messages that tell us white actresses matter the most, that white features are the most beautiful, that large or small chests are ideal, that you need to be thinner or more curvaceous or that your skin needs to be darker or lighter. Reject messages that treat women as objects to be looked at, judged for their parts and relentlessly flawed. Take the words of awesome Chicana feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldua and consider what progress you can make armed with this knowledge:

“Every increment of consciousness, every step forward is a travesia, a crossing. I am again an alien in new territory. And again, and again. But if I escape conscious awareness, escape ‘knowing,’ I won’t be moving. Knowledge makes me more aware, it makes me more conscious. ‘Knowing’ is painful because after it happens I can’t stay in the same place and be comfortable. I am no longer the same person I was before.” -Anzaldua, 1999, p.70

At Beauty Redefined, we know there is a war being waged against females from all sides. We’re not being overly dramatic when we tell you this – it is at the heart of why we do what we do. We know how capable and powerful females across the globe are and can be, and we also know many big industries depend on women and girls forgetting that truth and believing their primary value comes from their physical appearance. As that appearance is perfected, females earn the right to be loved, to be successful, to be happy, to love ourselves. Billions and billions of dollars are invested in females believing we are a collection of parts in need of repair, from the tops of our heads to the bottom of our feet and everywhere in between (eyelashes, fingernails, teeth, lips, armpits, breasts, butts, thighs, etc.).  These major industries include but aren’t limited to diet and weight loss, cosmetics (including hair care, skin care, makeup, etc.), plastic surgery, pornography, medical aesthetics (laser hair removal, botox, collagen, etc.), women’s magazines, entertainment television, the music industry, etc.

When we grow up surrounded by profit-driven media’s “Weigh Less, Smile More!!” and “Perfect Your Parts, Perfect Your Life!!” headlines plastered across the globe, those messages rake in billions and get us nowhere closer to real health and happiness.  Instead, these messages become so normal – SO unquestioned – that we believe and act as we’re told. The point here is not to villainize makeup or hair care or any industry, but to understand the ways these ever-present messages ask us to view ourselves. That view: An outsider’s gaze – from the outside looking in on ourselves. It’s called self-objectification and it’s a normal part of most females’ lives whether we know it or not. Years ago, this cool scholar, de Beauvoir, understood this point. She pointed out that as girl grows up, “she is doubled; instead of coinciding exactly with herself, she also exists outside” (1952). Foucalt, another pretty cool scholar, talked about self-objectification as a way we imprison ourselves: “There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by [internalizing] to the point that [she] is [her] own overseer, each individual thus exercising surveillance over, and against [her]self” (1977).

What research and real-life experience make very clear is that when we can begin to see ourselves for more than our parts and respect our bodies as beautiful gifts that can do amazing things for us and for those around us, we find health, fitness and happiness. But in the meantime, millions of us cannot break through the constant messages telling us to survey ourselves at all times and spend all the time, money, and energy necessary to perfect the parts of us in need of perfection.
Can you even fathom what that is doing to females everywhere? It stunts our progress in every way that really matters - it keeps us from getting awesome grades, reaching for the coolest possible jobs, being active because we respect our bodies, running for political offices, loving each other and loving ourselves. And that’s not just Beauty Redefined’s take on things. Research shows us that when we live “to be looked at” instead of living to LIVE, we are left with fewer mental and physical resources to do what can really bring happiness. We perform worse on math tests, logical reasoning tests, athletic performance, we have lower sexual assertiveness (the ability to say “no” when needed), and we are left so unhappy.*

And the reason Lindsay and I do what we do with Beauty Redefined is because there is so much power in understanding these truths! All hope is not lost! Actually, there is SO MUCH hope to be had. We know the power and potential of females everywhere to break free from lies that constrain us and move on to happiness and light and love and success.  We know this as scholars, as activists, and on a very personal level. Have you read our post on this years’ theme: Body Hate Apocalypse 2012: The End of Body Hating as We Know It! The first resolution we highly suggest is there for a reason – I’ve been testing it out and I swear on everything important to me that it works! Resolution #1: Set a true fitness goal: If you’ve held yourself back from running, biking, swimming, etc., because you felt self-conscious about what to wear, how red your face gets from the workout, sweating in public, (the list goes on), it’s time to set a goal and fight to achieve it!  Make this goal about your abilities and you’ll be much less inclined to care about what you look like doing it.

Here’s how I know it works:

I'm on the far left :) I faced all my fears – sweat, red face, running, etc.!

In the three years since Lindsay and I founded Beauty Redefined when we graduated with our master’s degrees, my body confidence has improved by leaps and bounds, but I recently realized one way I was letting self-objectification hold me back from awesomeness.  You see, I’ve never loved running. Before September, the most I’d ever run outside was one mile.  Somehow, in October (and again this month) I got talked in to running a half marathon.  If you’d have told me a few months ago that I’d run 13.1 MILES outside, I’d have laughed in your face. But when I signed up for that Halloween half marathon with a few amazing friends, I knew I had to begin training.  I was terrified – not only is running really hard on both a physical and mental level, but I realized I was possibly more terrified of being looked at while running. I spent the first few weeks of training on a treadmill at my gym, hoping no one was on the stair climber right behind me to stare straight at me.  I felt self-conscious that my face got really red from hard workouts. I felt self-conscious that I wasn’t wearing the right outfits for running. (Is spandex a necessity?!?!) I felt self-conscious that the runners next to me were going faster and further and they were thinking I was lame.  When I forced myself to step off the treadmill and run outside, my fears only escalated.  Now I was stressed about all the people that were watching me run past their cars, and I chose parks that weren’t heavily populated instead of busy roads.  But as I trained and built up my endurance, something inside me changed.  Instead of picturing myself running, I started just running. I stopped worrying about being a good vision of me and I gave myself all of me.  Before, I used to do cardio in an effort to burn fat and fit into those jeans I’ve been keeping in the back of my closet.  Now, I do cardio to build up my endurance, get my heart rate up, and prove to myself I can do it.  I used to do weight workouts and sit-ups to tone up the parts of me I thought were just awful to look at.  Now I do strength training to build muscle I use to carry myself through long runs and workouts – and it really helps.  Running now makes me feel really happy because I can set a goal and get there, and working toward that goal allows me to release all those happy endorphins, feel more energy and motivation, and see what my body is capable of.  I have quite literally begun to run away from self-objectification.

And research backs up my own experience. A U.S. National Physical Activity and Weight Loss Survey found that body size satisfaction had a significant effect on whether a person performed regular physical activity, regardless of the individual’s actual weight (Kruger, Lee, Ainsworth, & Macera, 2008). So, those who were satisfied with the way their body looked were more likely to engage in physical activity than those less satisfied.  The problem is, research also shows us MOST females are unhappy with their bodies – even disgusted with their bodies.  The “I feel too fat or too ugly to work out” mentality is rampant and it keeps us from moving, living, doing, and being.  But guess what?! When we push ourselves to break free from that prison of being looked at and just move, something miraculous happens. Just like my experience of learning to run from self-objectification, studies show us that when females engage in physical activity, increased self-efficacy, or confidence in your abilities and your body, is the beautiful outcome.

So our Resolution #1 is there for good reason – it can lead you to real health, happiness, and confidence in a  way that working toward a number on the scale or a clothing size never, ever will. My New Years’ resolutions used to revolve around clothing sizes, measurements or numbers on the scale, and I don’t think I’m alone in realizing that even if the number got smaller, it had little to do with my actual health or happiness.  I can look back in old journals and see that sometimes I resorted to extremes in eating and exercising to get to that random number I thought would bring with it all the joy I could imagine: “If I can just lose this much weight, I’ll be SO happy!” or “I’ll love myself if I can just lose this many inches.” But personal experience, academic research and body image advocacy have taught me something very different: An arbitrary number is never the key to happiness, confidence or even health and fitness. A fitness goal focusing on achievements is key!

So here’s the goal: RUN. or swim. or bike. or dance. or jump rope. or climb stairs. or do sit-ups. or push-ups. or play basketball. or soccer. or volleyball. Just MOVE and LIVE and BE and step outside the prison of watching yourself being looked at. You’ll be so happy. You’ll also be blessed with the opportunity to share this truth with those you know and love that need it. Are you with me? You’re sooo with me. And if you need to remind others in your life of these happy truths, we’d love if you clicked here to purchase our sticky notes and cards!

*Fredrickson et al. 1998; Fredrickson & Harrison, 2004; Gapinski, Brownell, & LaFrance, 2003; Hebl, King, & Lin, 2004

From the ESPN 700 Facebook Page

Every week, Utah-based sports radio station ESPN 700 takes a break from sports commentary to host a forum for objectifying, degrading, insulting and marginalizing women called “Hot or Not Wednesday.” Three weeks ago, after receiving a sincere and eloquent e-mail from one of our fans (the lovely Laura Henriksen), we decided to voice our own opinion that their weekly poll is sooooo not hot, in different terms. It turns out, many of these sports fans don’t like to have their opinions on objectification challenged by hordes of smart, beautiful ladies. On a photo of the stunning actress Paula Patton, amid dozens of comments debating whether or not she looks like The Rock’s younger sister and the sexuality of men who disagree with her hotness, we left this comment, which received 160 “likes” in the next couple of hours:

Hi ESPN 700, we’re also based in Utah and we are fully in support of good sports programming and commentary. What we don’t love is your “hot or not” series. Beauty Redefined works to fight the view of women as objects (from men’s perspective and women’s own perspectives), and helps women to fight negative body image and shame so they can move on to bigger and better things like health, happiness and contributing to the world. So…campaigns like yours about whether amazingly beautiful, scantily-clad celebrities and models are “hot” is doing a huge disservice to real life girls and women who see those posts, the comments, and the men in their lives who participate in it. Further, it is alienating your current and potential female fans (like us). We got this e-mail from one of our fans and wanted to share it: “ESPN 700, a Sandy, UT-based sports radio station posts pictures regularly and asks their facebook followers to vote on the woman’s attractiveness. A nice man in my life voted on the picture by “liking” it and thereby all his friends and family were confronted with the image. He’s in his late twenties, married, educated and generally not the sort that would consciously demean a woman in real life. It got me to thinking about how many of the respectful, intelligent men in our lives are rating women by their looks first and everything else second? Worse, how many of them think it’s harmless? I suggest that you encourage your readership to post on ESPN 700′s photos with quotes that remind them that women are not objects. I believe this would make many of the “nice guys” realize that this isn’t harmless fun.” We hope you’ll reconsider the “hot or not” tradition, or that your fans – who are likely great guys who don’t mean to purposely degrade the women in their lives – will reconsider participating in it. Thank you!

Screenshot from ESPN 700's Facebook page, including a tab titled "How to take a screenshot on a Mac" (Hah!)

Our fans left dozens of subsequent comments supporting this sentiment, and a few of ESPN 700′s own fans even chimed in with some much-welcomed self-awareness and support of our fight against objectification of women in general. Among sooo many insightful, powerful opinions, a guy named Adam said, “The harm that comes from this that people are talking about is that men may start to value women based only on their looks, and that women will base their own value on that same attribute; that it is their physical appearance that determines whether or not they are worth the consideration of others. Since we can’t sit down and have conversations with these people to see what they look like (sans Photoshop) and see them for their other qualities and beauties, maybe we should stop spending our time passing judgment on these women (and I might argue that the judgment is on all women), not only in this small weekly post, but in other venues as well. If this focus on the physical causes a woman to only want to be an object to be had, and a man to see the women around him as faulty, then the harm of which we speak has already come to fruition.” Love it.

Unfortunately, several more comments illustrated the hateful, degrading attitudes that are naturally cultivated by any “hot or not” poll targeted at either men or women: you know, the regular “you must be on your periods,” “go back to your embroidery,” “you must all be ugly fat chicks” — the most mundane, predictable insults you could imagine being hurled at women who oppose sexism. 

This happened two weeks in a row, though we decided to take a much smaller role in the Week Two installment featuring a more fully-clothed Lori Laughlin, but also featuring the same awful, losing-faith-in-humanity type of comments on her looks. This week (Jan. 18), the station thought it would be fun to feature Ricki Lake, since “no one would want to objectify her.” They also mentioned the name of our organization at least 100 times on the air, saying they have “redefined beauty” by choosing this “big-boned,” “lumptuous – not voluptuous” woman since we were all “so intimidated by beautiful women.” They also repeatedly mentioned they hadn’t heard from us, so naturally, we decided to call in. Lexie was told she’d be on the air at 3:30. At that time, the show hosts (after asking every caller what they thought of Ricki Lake’s looks) said a woman from Beauty Redefined was on line 2, but there was no way they were going to let her on the air and we all need to “get a life.” The person who answered the phone told Lexie they weren’t going to let her on after all, since this has “nothing to do with sports.” If they don’t understand the irony in that excuse, then things are worse that we even thought.

Our wonderful fans weren’t so pumped about that angry on-air rejection, despite the hosts continuing to talk about us and misconstrue our message, and have left hundreds of comments on our Facebook page and ESPN’s in the last few hours. It is absolutely fantastic that people are talking about this stuff! A couple of network TV stations here in Salt Lake City have already contacted us to potentially air the story, and we’d love to be able to speak our side rather than be misrepresented as angry, beauty-hating, jealous women. With or without further media coverage, we know some good has definitely been done here. The targeted actresses have gone from the nearly nude Hilary Swank to the fully clothed Lori Laughlin in a shockingly short amount of time. And even if they never stop doing the poll, there are definitely fans of their page who will think twice before participating in it. We realize it’s often unlikely that we can make major changes in media, but we can most definitely spark changes in real people’s minds and behaviors.

We’ve tackled this local example of objectification in a small way, and we realize most media will never change its degrading, woman-dismissing ways, but we can change what we’re exposed to, how we view the world, how we view ourselves and how we treat others. This work isn’t about shutting down all the media that hurts us – that’s a losing battle, thanks to the billions of dollars made off women’s anxiety about their bodies. But good men and good women can have an infinitely positive influence by questioning crap like this “hot or not” poll that is presented as innocent and harmless, but in all reality just promotes harmful attitudes toward women and body hatred in the women exposed to it. Harmful attitudes that damage relationships between men and women, parents and children, and women to themselves. Body hatred, or disgust with one’s own appearance -regardless of what that person looks like - is a major contributor to some of the most pressing mental and physical health issues of our day, from obesity and disordered eating to anxiety and depression.

“Hot or Not” and Viewing Women as Objects: So What?
Our work makes one thing very clear: Part of growing up female today means learning to view oneself from another’s gaze, and public polls encouraging the view of women as objects to be judged encourage that view. As psychological researchers Fredrickson & Roberts describe it, self-objectification is manifested as “the tendency to perceive one’s body according to externally perceivable traits (how it appears) instead of internal traits (what it can do).” Research shows young girls and women “self-objectify” when they think of themselves mostly or exclusively in sexual terms and when they equate their “sexiness” with a narrow idea of physical attractiveness (generally achieved through extremes like disordered eating and cosmetic surgery). And what do you know? Young women experience appearance-related anxiety the majority of the time, especially after viewing media images of sexualized female bodies or language so normalized today.

Dozens of studies show people suffer in very literal ways when sexualized female bodies inundate our media landscape*.

• Research tells us girls and women who learn from media to pay extra attention to the way they look have fewer mental resources available in their brains for other mental and physical activities, including mathematics, logical reasoning and athletic performance.
• Hospitalizations for children with eating disorders went up 100 percent in the last decade – 92% of those being little girls.
• Further, cosmetic surgery increased 446 percent in the last decade to reach $12 billion in 2010, with 92 percent of those voluntary procedures (mostly liposuction and breast enhancement) performed on females – some younger than 18. No wonder that is the case when even the “mildest” of entertainment represents females of any age as sexual objects made up of digitally and surgically enhanced parts, and even they, are often publicly discussed as being not hot enough.
• Females as young as 12 years old place greater emphasis on their body’s appearance than on its competence and girls and women self-objectify more than boys and men do. Much research has documented losses in self-esteem for girls the moment they reach adolescence, and perceived physical attractiveness is closely tied to self-esteem.
• Females with a more objectified view of their bodies have diminished sexual health, measured by decreased condom use and diminished sexual assertiveness.

In terms of sexually objectifying media, studies show men and women who viewed just six hours of pornography (one hour each week for six weeks) reported significantly reduced satisfaction with their present relationship, both with their partner’s sexuality and appearance. Participants also reported being faithful to their partner was less important by study’s end and their view of sex without emotional involvement rose in favor (Bryant & Zillman, 1988). In 2003, the top 1,600 U.S. divorce attorneys submitted data showing 62% of the divorces they handled claimed the Internet as a major cause of divorce and 56% of those went further to claim “one party having an obsessive interest in pornographic websites.” Keep in mind the current no-fault divorce statute in place makes it advantageous for attorneys to entirely ignore and never record the causes of divorce, which means this 62% statistic is shocking and most likely drastically higher. To clarify, we’re not asserting that the photos posted by ESPN 700 in the last 3 weeks were pornographic, but we are asserting that the act of viewing sexually objectifying media (or media that reduces a woman’s sexuality and worth to her appearance) like the “hot or not” poll, which are frequently discussed in terms of whether or not the men would sleep with her – is harmful to men, women and their relationships with each other.

Alleviating the influence of objectification is a crucial fight for both males and females, and there are countless ways to start. We generally address females, but the ESPN controversy offers us a perfect opportunity to engage more men and boys in strategies to redefine beauty for themselves and the girls and women they’ll love and associate with their entire lives. We are so grateful to the males who already stand with us in this battle against objectified appearance-obsessed ideals that limit and marginalize females. Here are several ways to continue this battle:

Be a Positive Example: Be especially cautious when making comments about girls’ and womens’ appearance, even if they are celebrities in magazines or on the big screen. Even if you say something you think is positive about a woman, like “She is so hot!” it is likely that the girls and women in your life will automatically make judgments against themselves based on what you said. Even if they don’t tell you, most girls and women care very much about the way the men in their lives treat, view and speak about other women. Your example can have a profound effect for good or bad. When girls and women see or hear your negative comments about other women’s bodies, especially those bodies commonly considered to be attractive like celebrities or models (like, for example, in a “hot or not” poll on Facebook), those comments may have a lasting effect that could contribute to body hatred and distorted body image so common among females today.

Check Your Vision: Be conscious of the vast amount of media we consume each day, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. In fact, the average American spends about 7.5 hours each day with at least one form of media, and is exposed to about 3,600 advertisements each day, from every angle. As you go through your day, pay attention to what you see and what messages go against what you know be true about yourself and others you love. Recognize that those images far outnumber the women we see in real life, which creates a distorted idea of what women do (and should) look like, thanks to unavoidable Photoshopping, profit-driven ideals of extreme thinness and surgically enhanced curves.

Unreal Ideals: Remember it is reasonable to assume no image we ever see of a woman in media has gone un-manipulated. As early as 1991, a media industry insider referred to the digital alteration of women as a “retouching epidemic.” And today magazine editors refer to airbrushing as an industry standard. Plus, vertical film stretching to make women appear taller and thinner is a common technique, as are filtered lenses on video cameras and soft lighting, which do away with wrinkles, pores, and other so-called “blemishes” for women on TV and in movies. The next time you start comparing the females in your life to those you see in media, remember that even the beauty ideals don’t actually fit the ideals they are supposed to represent.

Go on a Media Fast: Choose a day, a week, a month, or longer to steer clear of as much media as you can. That way, you can see how your life is different without all those messages and images, and when you return to viewing and reading popular media, you will be more sensitive to the messages that hurt you and those you love and those that are unrealistic. One male college student in Utah went on a “media fast” for three months, and found that one unexpected side effect was that he found the real women in his life more attractive throughout that time, and continued to find them more beautiful once the fast was over.

Turn Away From Harmful Images: The girls and women you know and love are hopefully trying hard to remember that the women they see in media are digitally manipulated to appear “perfect,” even though they don’t really look that way. When you put those types of pictures in your locker or subscribe to magazines that depict women in unrealistic and degrading ways, the females in your life may then believe those are the types of women you value most. Turning away from media images that hurt women (and men) is a perfect way to help the females in your life understand what you really value in women – real women you see face to face.

Object to Objectification: Pay attention to media that is objectifying to women, which means it shows women and girls as just PARTS of themselves. That happens when the camera pans up and down their bodies, or zooms in on certain body parts. This also takes place when magazines or movies and TV talk about women’s bodies in ways that degrade them and turn them into just body parts instead of thinking, feeling humans. Boys and men exposed to sexually objectifying messages (which are inescapable in today’s media landscape), learn to primarily view and value females for their outward appearance and actually endorse objectifying images in the future. Turn away from objectifying media – it is harmful for you and for the females you love.

Show Them What You Value: Most girls and women claim they’re trying to achieve these beauty ideals in an attempt to become more desirable and attractive to men. If the things they are trying so hard to obtain are not actually all you value in a woman, be sure to make that known by speaking about women in positive ways and referencing their characters, personalities and talents as things you admire and seek in girls and women you want in your life. Choose to compliment the girls and women in your life for those things, too. The compliments that stick with you for a lifetime are those that acknowledge your valuable qualities, like a good attitude, selflessness, talents, and honesty.

Be Critical of Media, Not Yourself or Women: While the U.S. is the No. 1 producer and exporter of media, we are also the only industrialized country in the world without some form of media literacy in public school curriculum. We need to feel an obligation to put media under closer inspection for the influence it has in our lives. Next time you are flipping through a magazine or watching a movie, train yourself to ask important questions about what you see. If you don’t like the answers you find, remember you can turn away from the messages that hurt you and those you love!

• Do you feel better or worse about yourself when viewing or hearing this media? Do you believe the females in your life would feel better or worse about themselves after viewing or hearing this media?
• Who is advertising in these pages or on this screen? (Look for ads and commercials and you’ll see who is paying the bills for your favorite media messages)
• Who owns the TV show, movie, magazine, video game or website you are viewing? (Research the company and its owners and you’ll find out who the powerful decision makers are behind the scenes of your media of choice)
• Is the media you read and view promoting real health or impossible ideals meant to make you spend money and time? Who are those messages promoting impossible ideals usually speaking to?
• How are women and girls presented here? Are they valued for their talents and personality? Do they look like the females in your life?

Get Back to Reality: Since we’ll see more images of women in one week of media viewing than we’ll probably ever see face to face, it’s important to give ourselves a reality check! When we look eye to eye with the women we know and love, we can remind ourselves what real women and real beauty look like. This real definition of beauty is so much more than just looks! It is your best girl friend’s basketball skills, your sister’s hard work on her English paper, the lines on your mom’s face from years of beautiful smiles and laughter, and so much  more.

Take Media Into Your Own Hands: Post links or start discussions on blogs and social networking sites to continuously spark conversation about dangerous ideals (like the thin ideal, surgical enhancement, white ideals, etc.) and to bring to light those who profit from our belief in those ideals. And when thinking about your future college studies and/or present career, consider going into journalism, advertising or media production so YOU can produce messages that uplift rather than degrade. Since it’s rare to see an ad that does anything positive for female body image, we have launched a campaign to fund a billboard promoting healthy body image here in Salt Lake City. If you can help, please do!

Be an Advocate: If our suggestion to turn away from media that degrades or otherwise women is just not enough for you, consider your fierce influence as an advocate for truth and uplifting messages. When you come across a company’s advertising that fuels female insecurity or a magazine that objectifies women even as it claims to empower them, speak up! Blogging your disapproval is a great start, and so is posting links to news stories that reveal harmful ideals on social networking sites. Join us on Facebook for regular links to share and continue this conversation! If you’d like to go a step further, write to and/or call your local cable company, TV station, newspaper and any other media outlet perpetuating harmful messages. Get the word out that the media message you have seen is inappropriate and dangerous and threaten to boycott if it is not removed. If your complaints are not heard, do NOT patronize those institutions and suggest the same to your loved ones.

Redefining Healthy: Getting back to reality involves figuring out what “health” really means – and it’s not what media shows us. For-profit media like women’s fitness magazines or TV shows would have us believe health and fitness are all about what women look like, and any doctor can tell us that simply isn’t true. If you know a girl or woman who believes her health and fitness depend on what she looks like, encourage her to talk to a doctor, nutritionist or other health specialist to figure out what healthy really means for her individually. She can then work with them to set healthy goals for herself that aren’t based off profit-driven beauty ideals.

The Power of Media Makers: Media decision-makers like editors, producers, writers, directors, and web developers can and should disrupt the steady stream of idealized bodies with positive representations of more normative shapes and sizes, with positive dialogue or editorials regarding those images that does not focus solely on appearance.

If you or the girls and women in your life could use a positive reminder that their reflections do not define their worth, that there is more to be than eye candy, that they are capable of much more than being looked at, then look no further! We’re selling post-it notes and postcards with these messages (which appeared on 12 billboards in Utah and currently on the Pennsylvania Turnpike!) as a fundraiser to help us become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

17-year-old Dakota Fanning on the Jan. 2012 Cover (Image from NYmag.com)

With its notoriously racy covers and highly sexualized content, Cosmo has been the highest-selling women’s magazine since 1972. It boasts more than 3 million in paid circulation each month, which is estimated to reach 20 million when considering how many readers actually peruse each copy. As the best-selling magazine in college bookstores and the No. 1 magazine for women with children, Cosmo shows and tells its increasingly younger readership (and likely their families) what it means to be attractive, desirable and successful through its glossy pages each month.

Since plenty of work in this realm has focused on advertising, I’m offering a descriptive analysis of the editorial content and images of a selection of Cosmo issues spring 2005 to spring 2011. Plenty of research has demonstrated links between women’s magazines and body image disturbance, disordered eating, drive for thinness, appearance obsession and other scary factors (1). These factors are related to images and content that rely on photoshopping images, consistently emphasize thinness, weight loss and the attainment of what the magazines define as ideal beauty in order to achieve health, happiness and relationship success. Interestingly, Thomsen (2002) found that women’s magazines specifically influenced body image concerns by contributing to the belief that men expect and prefer women to be thin.

What Men Want

This emphasis on how others – particularly men – perceive women’s bodies is extremely prevalent throughout women’s magazines, and strongly contributes to “body surveillance,” or the tendency to constantly monitor one’s appearance. As Fredrickson & Roberts (1997) described it, this self-objectification is manifested as “the tendency to perceive one’s body according to externally perceivable traits ‑ (i.e., how it appears) instead of internal traits (i.e., what it can do).” They argued that objectified media portrayals play an important role in socializing girls and women to perceive their own bodies from the perspective of another’s gaze. This aligns with Laura Mulvey’s (1975) concept of the “male gaze,” which serves to marginalize and oppress women while “reflecting and satisfying the male unconscious.”

The male gaze is demonstrated in media when women are positioned as objects for male enjoyment, through:

1. The look of the camera – panning up and down female bodies and zooming in on specific parts
2. The look of the spectators – where others are depicted as constantly looking at the women or commenting on the appearance of the women
3. The appearance of the women themselves – clearly dressed or posed to attract stares

Unfortunately, this “male gaze” is so prevalent that we hardly even notice it anymore if we’re not careful, as discussed in our recent analyses of Victoria’s Secret’s faux-empowerment messages and normalized pornography packaged as “safe” in mainstream media, including the cultural event of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. But this same powerful, degrading influence rules the popular market of women’s magazines, including the health and fitness genre, and it is particularly prevalent here in Cosmo. Though it thrives as a self-proclaimed women’s lifestyle and relationship magazine, it is hard to pick any issue of Cosmo out of a lineup of men’s magazines, which are notorious for featuring objectified portrayals of women on their covers. In fact, Cosmo covers regularly feature the same women as the SI Swimsuit Issue, Esquire and GQ, with the same racy poses, come-hither stares and very scantily clad models.

In the popular market of women’s magazines, those idealized and objectified bodies are presented as necessary for sexuality and desirability, which qualifies this medium to be deemed “sexually objectifying media.” Sexual objectification is accomplished in media by the visual presentation of bodies and content that emphasizes the importance of appearance in sexuality – where a healthy sex life is dependent upon what a woman looks like. As a magazine by women for women, Cosmopolitan has the potential to serve as a source that breaks free of stifling, degrading representations of sexuality that are found everywhere today. But perhaps not surprisingly … it doesn’t. In the world of Cosmo, “beauty” is necessary to be worthy of and enjoy an intimate relationship with a man. In fact, beauty in the form of thinness and bodily “perfection” is the key component of desirability, health AND sexuality.

“The Natural, Healthy Girl”: Normalizing Unnatural Beauty and Health Ideals

It’s no surprise that every cover I analyzed featured full-body depictions of very thin, big-breasted, seemingly flawless, young white women in low-cut, tight, short, revealing clothing and long, flowing hair. In a clear example of making unnatural beauty and health ideals appear normal, the April 2008 cover featured Marisa Miller, who came to fame through her notorious topless debut as the cover model for the 2008 SI Swimsuit Issue. The buxom blond is positioned with her back arched and chest protruding, along with the headline “Flatten Your Belly! Marisa’s tips make it easy.”

Strikingly similar to Shape and Self’s representations of healthy bodies and practices, the April 2008 Cosmo included a “fitness special” featuring cover model Marisa Miller in a full-page photo posed on a bed, back arched, chest pushed out, wearing only a top and a come-hither look. Readers are reminded twice that Miller has a body “women dream of and mean dream about,” along with the prominently featured quote: “I always wanted to represent the natural, healthy girl, and I didn’t care if it was cool or trendy to look like you hadn’t eaten in two weeks.” With eight tear-out cards displaying the scantily clad supermodel in various workout positions and repetitive reminders about how easy her “stay-slim” plan is, readers are presented with another highly sexualized and normalized view of thinness as “fitness.”

Interestingly, the first cover I analyzed from April 2006 featured then 19-year-old Lindsay Lohan, who, at that time, was in the midst of a media firestorm regarding her sudden and extreme weight loss. Vanity Fair reported the year before that Lohan admitted to “making herself sick in order to lose weight,” which she denied in her interview with Cosmo. In the inside feature story about her, Lohan was quoted as saying she lost all the weight by “not eating right,” but that she wanted to maintain her weight loss, since she liked the way she looked and felt. “I’m healthy. I don’t diet. I eat what I want to eat … and I’m stressed a lot when I’m working, so that keeps me thin,” she explained. In conjunction with images of thin (often extremely thin) women in sexualized poses, messages like “Marisa’s Supereasy Fitness Plan” and Lindsay Lohan’s claims of sudden, extreme weight loss with no effort serve to normalize an unrealistic standard of idealized beauty that is constantly represented as natural, attainable and “Supereasy.”

Appearance is Everything.

In Cosmo‘s regular workout and health sections, readers are once again sent the message that weight loss = fitness = sex appeal. The emphasis on appearance rather than health or abilities is reinforced in every issue by the “You, Even Better” section and regular fitness and health features. For example:

• “The Ultimate Sexy A** Workout” (“to kick your booty into shape in time for skinny jean season!”)
• “45 ways to instantly feel sexy and healthy” (with a young woman in a short, flipped-up dress, exposing her legs and breasts)
• “Diet Dangers,” featuring “The Dumbest Thing You Can Do to Your Boobs,” on how yo-yo dieting “will make your twins less perky” instead of “gorgeous and firm” (with an extremely thin and almost completely nude young woman covering her breasts with her hands and posing in the mirror)
• “Can Getting Fit Get You a Date?”

Each of these (and sooo many more) are examples of how Cosmo combines health-oriented terms with oppressive, objectified terms that forfeit real fitness in favor of a sexualized male gaze. When the most popular magazine for women 18-49 marginalizes actual health and fitness by focusing exclusively on what they claim will increase sex appeal, there’s a problem. Counteract this messed-up fitness perspective in your own life by joining us for a NEW kind of New Year’s resolutions (no matter when in 2012 you start) in our Body Hate Apocalypse!

But it’s not just Cosmo‘s “health and fitness” content. From making “attitude adjustments” to wearing “trendy orange accessories,” it seems nearly every aspect of a woman’s life can and should be tweaked to increase her sex appeal and better please the men in her life. “The new attitude that drives men wild” (May 2008) details how women can learn to gain a “powerful” type of female allure that “guys really respond to.” This new kind of confidence was supposedly demonstrated by singing sensation Madonna, who used it to draw pro baseball player Alex Rodriguez away from his wife, Cynthia, and toward the iconic performer. This enviable power to attract unwitting men was described as self-contentment and self-assuredness, but the article concluded by warning readers of the negative effects of too much of these qualities: “Be aware that while guys like a chase, they ultimately want a reward. By maintaining a you-can’t-touch-this vibe for even a bit too long, you might just drive him away.” Though this article appears to promote female independence and confidence, it slyly privileges male pleasure above all else.

Similarly, in the April 2006 “blow his mind tip,” readers are told, “Your body confidence is a huge turn-on, and …will amp up his anticipation.” Again, confidence is portrayed not as something empowering for women, but as something men desire – a “turn-on” for someone else, rather than a source of personal power and self-esteem. The September 2009 issue advertised a very interesting hairstyling tip titled “Fun Little Tricks Guys Love,” which encouraged women to use thong underwear to tie their hair back. (What??)

The October 2010 “You, Even Better” section titled “7 Cool Tricks You Need Now” starts our by making a great, non-objectifying point: “Scientists have found that the more stuff you can do, the more you’ll love life.” Excellent! Sounds like they’re encouraging women to do things for themselves, not to be things for someone else. But it takes a turn for the worse pretty quickly. Like in the next sentence: “So we’ve supplied you with a mix of crafty moves so fabulous, you’ll have a blast showing them off.” There’s that persistent male gaze again, with its focus on teaching women to be on display at all times. “Adding abilities to your already awesome repertoire makes you happier and healthier.” Yay! “With that in mind, we consulted experts to come up with the following sexy, smart, and stylish tips to make you even more impressive.” Ugh. Happier and healthier went out the window once again in favor of sexy, stylish and impressive to others.

The Look of the Spectators: The Male Gaze Demonstrated in Images

Even if the actual editorial content of the articles didn’t promote self- and sexual objectification, the images often did the trick. A 2006 story called “Get a grip on PMS” would be useful and free of any degrading influence if the accompanying photo wasn’t entirely unrelated and seemingly ripped straight from a Playboy. It featured a very thin and heavily made-up young woman in skimpy lingerie, posed seductively, lying across a couch. Similarly, a relationship piece on how to make staying in and watching a game with your spouse or boyfriend enjoyable featured a drawing of another young, blonde, very thin, busty woman in skimpy lingerie sitting alongside a fully clothed man while watching a sporting event on TV.

Another drawing depicts a thin yet curvaceous woman with her back to a man, but turning her head toward him so they are making eye contact and talking. The accompanying description instructs readers that wearing something low-cut or backless, or “playing up your hottest asset,” signifies “body confidence.” The overlaying image caption says, “He can’t hear a word she’s saying.” Again, the take-away message is that what a woman looks like always trumps what she says or does.

The literal “male gaze” of spectators within the images is another tool for objectification that was used in almost every image that included men. A four-page feature on catapulting your career, called “How to get ahead fast” (April 2006), included a full-page drawing of a thin woman in a cleavage-bearing strappy top working in a copy shop on one side of the page and then as an interior designer on the other side. Though the story’s long list of tips for success were free of objectifying ideas, both sides of the artwork included one lone man in the background, smiling and admiring the working woman from behind. This clear depiction of the male gaze implicitly tells readers that achieving success at work includes obtaining approval from men – or at the very least, that gaining male attention is an outcome of career success! Hmmm.

Another particularly noticeable example of a woman posed solely for the male gaze, despite its accompanying article that has nothing to do with appearance or sexuality, is from a 2006 story titled “Why you MUST trust your gut,” about listening to your intuition to avoid dangerous situations. Great idea, but it came with a terrible image. The photo depicts a young, thin woman in a low-cut, midriff-bearing top and low jeans, with her legs spread far apart and her thumbs in her front belt loops, pulling her jeans low in the front. The top of her head and her eyes are cut out of the shot, and a small icon of an alarm bell is imposed over her bare stomach. (Huh?) Again, a sexualized image is made to represent an otherwise non-objectifying message.

Is This Really What Men Want?

Through an emphasis on appearance, male pleasure, sexualized images, and exclusively thin models, Cosmopolitan is reinforcing objectification through the male gaze in every issue. It may as well be lumped with degrading men’s magazines, stuck on the newsstand next to any other title that unapologetically displays and describes women as objects to be looked at and nothing more. These coherent, degrading messages about women serve to normalize unnatural expectations of extreme thinness, idealized beauty and objectified sexuality. It is oppressive to show readers that female worth and happiness is dependent upon physical appearance – or most prominently, what men supposedly think about their physical appearance.

Very often, females cite a desire to be attractive to men as their reason for wanting to achieve unrealistic beauty ideals. We can’t ignore that factor. Lots of women want male attention – whether they’re looking for companionship or a committed relationship – and we can’t pretend like that isn’t also a major factor in the huge sales of Cosmo, since that’s what the magazine claims to offer. But by convincing women that men prefer very thin, idealized bodies – as Cosmo does over and over and over again – they’re selling dangerous beauty ideals while also perpetuating myths about what men “prefer.”

Studies show that women consistently overestimate mens’ preference for extremely thin bodies. That means, compared to what women thought men wanted, men actually preferred a larger female ideal (3). In The Evolution of Desire: Strategies for Human Mating, psychologoy professor David M. Buss (1994) points out how in massive studies of all ages, women chose slimmer than average physiques as the ideal for both sexes. But again, when men selected a female physique that they perceived as most ideal, they chose a body type that was more average and larger than what was chosen by women.

These examples help to refute the common belief among women that they need to achieve unrealistic thinness ideals in order to be considered attractive to men. In all reality, those unnatural ideals benefit companies and not relationships. Too many industries thrive off women believing that they must continuously fix their “flaws” (by losing weight, gaining weight, changing their hair color, getting a tan, lightenting their skin, whatever)in order to be happy, healthy, successful and in this case, desirable or worthy of love. This is a lie. A profit-driven lie.

Recognizing these dangerous messages found inside Cosmo and so many other sources that claim to give women the tools to become “You, Even Better” is a major step toward rejecting them. Reject harmful ideals that tell girls and women their sexuality, health and happiness is dependent upon whether or not they fit unrealistic beauty standards. Be aware of the male gaze and its objectifying influence in media that is supposedly “by women for women.” It’s really more like “by people for money.”

For more repeat offenders from popular media, check out our other case studies HERE. To help counteract Cosmo’s appearance-focused messages and the many others we are surrounded by every day whether we like it or not, we have printed colorful sticky notes and postcards featuring phrases like “You are capable of much more than being looked at” and “There’s more to be than eye candy” and we’re selling them here as a fundraising tool!

of a different kind is right around the corner: The end of body hating as we know it. Body Hate Apocalypse 2012 

If you’re a longtime friend of Beauty Redefined or a new fan, you should know the four true statements we’ve taken to the streets (literally, through billboards and postcards): You are capable of much more than being looked at.  Your reflection does not define your worth.  If beauty hurts, we’re doing it wrong.  There is more to BE than eye candy. We shout these truths from the rooftops because females don’t get to hear these messages very often in the profit-driven media world we’re surrounded by. Lindsay and I are committed to teaching media literacy — the ability to critically understand and analyze the power of inescapable media messages in our lives.  We speak, write, research and do interviews about learning to recognize harmful messages and reject them so we can grasp our beautiful realities, and today is the day we want you to join us in ushering in the Body Hate Apocalypse of 2012.

Every new year, females come up with resolutions that often have a lot to do with how we look and little to do with getting on to real health and happiness.  My New Years’ resolutions used to revolve around clothing sizes, measurements or numbers on the scale, and I don’t think I’m alone in realizing that even if the number got smaller, it had little to do with my actual health or happiness.  I can look back in old journals and see that sometimes I resorted to extremes in eating and exercising to get to that random number I thought would bring with it all the joy I could imagine: “If I can just lose this much weight, I’ll be SO happy!” or “I’ll love myself if I can just lose this many inches.”  But personal experience, academic research and body image advocacy have taught me something very different: An arbitrary number is never the key to happiness, confidence or even health and fitness.  While profit-driven media would have us believe the “Weigh Less, Smile More!!” and “Perfect Your Parts, Perfect Your Life!!” headlines plastered across the globe, those messages rake in billions and get us nowhere closer to body loving happiness.  What research and real-life experience make very clear is that when we can begin to see ourselves for more than our parts and respect our bodies as beautiful gifts that can do amazing things for us and for those around us, we find health, fitness and happiness.

I spend a lot of time writing and researching about the ways media objectifies females and asks us to view ourselves (to self-objectify) as parts to be ogled by those around us, perfected and shaped by surgeons, judged by each other, and constantly in need of repair with the help of makeup, waxing, tanning, bleaching, plucking and posing.  Watch a Blockbuster movie and see how the camera pans up and down the females’ bodies, zooming in on their parts.  Drive past billboards that cut the heads off of women and invite them to give themselves the gift of implants this year – “Do it for YOU!”  You get the idea.  In a media world more powerful than ever before, girls today grow up viewing themselves as parts to be looked at and we spend our lives perfecting those parts and feeling bad when those parts aren’t yet perfect.  Because of that, our New Years’ resolutions often reflect our self-objectifying views that often don’t get us to real health and happiness and don’t last too long (ex: “Fit into my jeans from 2003″ or “Lose 20 lbs.”).  Have you ever reached one of those goals and then realized you still weren’t happy with where you were?  It’s because the ideals we see in media and set for ourselves are designed to be unattainable – we’ll work forever trying to reach them but they’re forever out of reach so we’ll spend all our money, time and energy working toward them!

Instead of Photoshopping ourselves out of reality, 2012 is our year to take back beauty for every female that needs to grasp her beautiful reality. These days, when we hear the word “beauty,” it doesn’t feel like a  happy word.  It feels like work.  The youngest of girls on up to the oldest of women often hear the word and immediately think of all the work it’ll take to get there.  But beauty should be a happy, all-encompassing word – it’s something we have and are — not something we have to fight for to never obtain!  When you think of the females you love, you see their beauty for what it is; it is smile lines from years of laughing, scars from playing, freckles from the sun, stretch marks from growing, the list goes on.  The Body Hate Apocalypse is upon us and in this beautiful new year, our resolutions reflect the fact that the end is near – the end of body hate, self-objectification, body shaming, self-obsession and extremes that hurt our bodies, minds, souls, pocketbooks and power.

This year, we challenge you to join Lindsay and I in pledging to fight toward reaching goals that have little to do with the way we look and everything to do with what we can accomplish. We urge you to pledge resolutions that reflect how valuable, capable and powerful you are.  We beg you to join the battlefront and link arms with females around the world to end body hatred and begin a life of loving yourself that will be reflected in your healthy choices and happy smiles.  Here are 15 empowering, achievable goals we came up with, and we’d LOVE for you to either choose a few below or come up with your own and pledge to meet those goals in our comments section below.  We, in turn, promise to do our best to support you, encourage you and cheer you on as we all usher in the Body Hate Apocalypse together.  Are you ready to battle?!

Set a true fitness goal: If you’ve held yourself back from running, biking, swimming, etc., because you felt self-conscious about what to wear, how red your face gets from the workout, sweating in public, (the list goes on), it’s time to set a goal and fight to achieve it!  Make this goal about your abilities and you’ll be much less inclined to care about what you look like doing it. Run a certain distance without stopping. Swim 10 laps faster than ever before. Do a certain number of crunches, push-ups, pull-ups, new dance moves – any fitness achievement measured in actions and not numbers on a scale, measuring tape or clothing tag.

Leave your keys at home: If you drive or take public transportation to work, school, or elsewhere when you could be walking or biking instead, why not give it a try? Increasing activity is a beautiful way to release endorphins to feel happier, get your heart pumping and enjoy the outside world!

Forget your number: If you tend to fixate on your weight, measurements or clothing sizes, pledging to leave those numbers behind is your key to freedom!  Make a goal to stop or limit the number  of times you weigh or measure yourself.  It turns out that when we fixate on arbitrary numbers, that often gets in the way of our health.  Start judging your health through your activity level by setting a fitness goal (see No. 1) instead of a meaningless number, and you’ll get somewhere great!

Can the tan: Studies show the first time you set foot in a tanning bed, you increase your chances of skin cancer by as much as 75%! This stat alone is good enough reason to set a goal to limit the time you spend tanning or stop it entirely. The tan skin ideal is fleeting, leads to other “beauty” problems like wrinkles and skin spots, and is achievable through much less harmful means if it’s a look you just have to have.

Stop negative self-talk: Too many girls and women have a constant script of mean thoughts about themselves running through their minds. Recent studies show us that girls who don’t like their bodies become more sedentary over time and pay less attention to having a healthy diet. If you think you’re gross and worthless, why would you take care of yourself? Set a goal to stop saying negative things about yourself. Start with a day, a week, a month, whatever you can do, and make it a permanent practice!

Think nice thoughts instead: On the flipside of the last study, research has found that girls who respect their bodies are more likely to be physically active and eat healthy. They are less likely to gain unnecessary weight and they make healthy lifestyle choices way into the future.  Since what we THINK about our bodies has a strong connection to how we TREAT our bodies, set a goal to shut out negative thoughts as they come and replace them with positive truths!

Put your $ where your mouth is: Make a goal to only shop at stores that treat females respectfully in their advertising and products.  Speaking up with your pocketbook is one of the most powerful ways you can show retailers what you will and will not put up with.

Speak up: When you see a media message that goes against what you believe about girls and women, let your voice be heard. Make a resolution to write to companies that produce and distribute offensive messages, as well as those that you appreciate for showing females as valuable for more than being looked at. This year, we’ve seen major companies pull advertising and products that were offensive because girls and women speak up!  Let this be the year you let your voice be heard.

Go on a media fast: Choose a day, a week, a month or longer to steer clear of as much media as you can. That way, you can see how your life is different without all those messages and images, and when you return to viewing and reading popular media, you will be more sensitive to the messages that hurt you and those that are unrealistic.

Just say “no”: Set a goal to cancel out any media choices you view or read that tell you lies about what it means to be a female. You’ll thank yourself!

Picture perfect: If you are a photographer or like to take pictures, set a goal to steer clear of any Photoshopping or image manipulation that Photoshops those in your pictures out of reality. Signs of life are important and we need to see reality!

Mother knows best: If you are a mother, set a goal to never speak negatively about your appearance in front of your children — especially daughters. Your kids are listening whether you like it or not, and they will learn how to view themselves from your example.

Mirror, mirror: Critically analyze how much time you spend in front of the mirror. Could any of that time be better spent? If you see a need to cut back, set a goal to shave off a few minutes in front of the mirror each day and set it aside for something more meaningful for yourself or others.

Be an advocate: If you teach or lead a youth group of any sort, set a goal to integrate body-positive messages, media literacy and real health goals into your curriculum. Young people are in desperate need of positive, empowering messages to counteract the harmful ones they’re surrounded by each day. It will absolutely take extra time and effort, but we promise it will be well worth your while.

Compliments that count: Make a resolution to compliment girls and women for more than those easy comments on pretty hair, weight loss, clothing, etc.  When we minimize other females to just their bodies, we forget to remind them of their beautiful talents, characters, and gifts!

One of our favorite things to do is slap our sticky notes with awesome phrases like “There is more to BE than eye candy!” on ads (or storefront windows, or catalogs, or mirrors…) to remind those who pass by that it’s OK to question media messages that hurt us. It’s OK to push back with a positive message. It’s OK to speak up and take your happiness back! Also, it’s pretty fun. Lindsay had a great time adding a little uplifting rear-end coverage to this very public Victoria’s Secret sign! If you feel inclined to join this movement, you can buy our sticky notes or postcards to help us spread body positive messages far and wide while helping us continue our work with Beauty Redefined.

Join us today in welcoming the Body Hate Apocalypse of 2012! We’d love to hear your body-positive resolutions, and we’ll do our best to remind, encourage and support you all year long!

If you’ve ever read our work, there are a few things you know (and if not, here’s a quick lesson in all things Beauty Redefined!): 1.

We echo the words of the always fascinating documentary filmmaker Elena Rossini of “The Illusionists” who reminds us who the real illusionists are: the beauty, diet, and mass media industries. “They create, shape and maintain our shared beliefs, values, and rules, promoting aspirational ideals of female beauty that are very difficult – if not impossible – to achieve, in order to create new needs and apprehensions that fuel a 500 billion dollar industry.”

Yes, you read that right! 500 billion dollars every year is devoted to you feeling like you must live up to an illusion in order to be happy, loved, beautiful, and successful. Oh, the lies we buy! Oh, how normal these lies appear when they make up the very day-to-day messages we hear, see, and read. Oh, how we must fight against this illusion and grasp hold of our beautiful realities. And that is our task today and every day. Rossini quoted the American anthropologist Margaret Mead as one of her top 30 reasons for making her documentary, “The Illusionists,” to help the world understand “how mass media, advertising and several industries manipulate people’s insecurities about their bodies for profit” and we stand beside her in this fight. Mead said, “A small group of thoughtful people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Do you believe this? If I didn’t believe it, I surely wouldn’t be writing this right now. If Mead doesn’t mind me adding to her quote, I’d say, “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. That small group could rid the world of the physical and emotional pain of seeking beauty in all the most painful places. That small group could redefine ‘beauty’ back to its original place as a term that encompasses us all – that gathers us in with loving arms instead of pushes us apart. Beauty should never hurt – that is an illusion. If beauty hurts, we’re doing it wrong.”

I’ve been thinking of how painful, yet so normal, some of our pursuits toward beauty are. Our billboard campaign that started this summer in Utah and continues through winter and spring 2012 on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (and more with your help!) feature four phrases. One of them is: “If beauty hurts, we’re doing it wrong.” We are in the midst of a beautiful reality that is ours once we recognize it, grasp hold of it, and back away from living a painful illusion where achieving “beauty” so often hurts. Particularly, I want to bring to light a few of the most physically painful ways we are asked to change ourselves to meet an unattainable standard, and hopefully we can critically consider why we elect to participate in them and why they feel so normal and natural to us: breast enhancement, all-over hair removal and the HCG diet. My goal here is to help us critically consider the painful and often incredibly dangerous illusions we subject ourselves to – for ourselves, for our mothers, for our daughters, friends, sisters, co-workers, and the strangers on the sidewalk. My goal is never EVER to shame or blame anyone who has elected to these pursuits or is going forward with them. We can’t look down on anyone for their own beauty pursuits because we all undergo our own pursuits toward perfection – the line is just different for all of us. The point here is that when we grasp the reality of our beauty, we begin to see ourselves for what our beauty really entails, and not what industries would have us believe is normal, attainable, and the only pathway to beauty, love, and happiness.

When the digital world of female faces and bodies looks nothing like the natural world, is it any wonder that women have turned to physical alterations like breast augmentation, all-over hair removal or the extremes of the HCG diet to meet these unreal standards? The possibility of achieving unnatural ideals through enhancements, procedures and products is a game-changer for what women today are capable of looking like. But what about our daughters, nieces, students, coworkers, etc? What will their own developing, aging, otherwise “flawed” forms look like in comparison to the realities we are manipulating? Next time you hear floods of radio ads asking you to come in for all-over laser hair removal, see billboards for breast enhancement or magazine ads for extreme diets, consider this info and remember, beauty doesn’t have to hurt.

Enhance Your Breasts, Enhance Your Life?:Just a few months ago, the Food and Drug Administration stated in a report that breast implants are safe but WILL fail within 10 years. “[Women] need to understand they’re going to need many removals and replacements for the rest of their lives,” states Zuckerman, president of National Research Center for Women & Families, a group that examines the safety of medical products. The FDA says up to 40 percent of patients who get silicone implants will need another operation to modify or remove them within 10 years. For women with implants for breast reconstruction, the number is even higher, at up to 70 percent. The biggest issue was scar tissue hardening around the implant, while pain, infection, ruptures and asymmetry followed close behind. Women with breast implants are also more likely to be diagnosed with anaplastic large cell lymphoma, a rare form of cancer.

Did you know silicone implants were pulled off the market in 1992 after concerns were raised about their safety and that leaking silicone was linked to dangerous immune-system disease? In late 2006, the FDA returned the implants to the market after clinical trials couldn’t find a clear link to the diseases. Plastic surgeons were clamoring for the return of the silicone versions because they say they look and feel more real than saline. (Which makes our billboard messages “You are capable of much more than being looked at” and “There is more to be than eye candy” especially pertinent!) After 14 years of no silicone implants, plastic surgeons breathed a sigh of relief and silicone implant procedures skyrocketed: “This is a great day for plastic surgeons and especially for their patients,” said Dr. Phil Haeck, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

It might be a great day for you, doctor, because you and your fellow surgeons will make billions off these “temporary devices,” (as they’re called by the FDA) but do your patients know what they’re in for? The FDA report states patients must get MRIs every two years to screen for “silent ruptures” of the silicone implants, which don’t deflate when they tear like saline implants so you don’t know when they’re leaking. That’s an extra $2,000 biannually for women who have elected to breast enhancement! Add it all up and the original $5K to $10K procedure will now cost a 25-year-old woman at least another $35K for re-implantation and $30K for the recommended number of MRIs throughout her life! And that is not including any health complications from all those surgical procedures, anesthesia, potential leaking or disease, time away from work, family, and life, etc. With plastic surgery up nearly 500% in the last decade as it becomes a normal part of our beauty pursuits, we must know the potential danger of our choices, and we want women everywhere to be happy and healthy – first and foremost.

HAIR-FREE: The NEW way to be!: Did you know the ideal of being totally hairless from the neck down has only happened in the last couple decades? While American women have been shaving leg and armpit hair since the 1920s, and shaving the bikini line since at least the 1950s, the completely “bare” look has only been in style since the early to mid 1990s. If you research this, you’ll see many attribute this new beauty ideal to pornography that hit the Internet in the late 90s and sent billions of images of women across the world in an instant.

Here’s the thing: getting waxed anywhere can be excruciating. On your eyebrows, lips, underarms or anywhere else, waxing hurts! And the latest new procedure, laser hair removal, is an unavoidable new standard if you listen to radio advertisements or see billboards. For thousands of dollars, women (and men) elect to multiple procedures to have their hair burned off by lasers to meet the latest standards of “beauty.” Of course, those who have this work done can’t be shamed or blamed for electing to it – many say they save time in the long run by not having to shave like they used to. But it’s important to pay attention to how quickly beauty ideals change. If it were 1995, we wouldn’t feel the pressure to be hair-free from our eyebrows down because our standard of beauty hadn’t narrowed to the degree it has today, and billions of dollars are invested in us believing hair-free is the only way to be!

HCG: Starving for Beauty: The Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) diet is a very restrictive, low-calorie diet (and it happens to be No. 1 in Utah, where we currently research and reside). HCG is a hormone produced by pregnant women in the cells that produce placenta. For those electing to the HCG diet, daily hormone injections and a restricted diet of 500 calories per day is required. Marketers of the diet claim you can lose one to three pounds per day on the diet, but the FDA has not approved of HCG because there is no evidence to support it is a weight loss aid at all. Instead, the injections help decrease hunger and discomfort while consuming very few calories. The basis of the diet’s effectiveness is starvation.

The thing is, consuming only 500 calories per day forces your body to compensate by using stored glycogen, muscle and fat. Using these resources actually lowers your metabolism, which makes it harder for you to lose weight and metabolize properly. A bit of research shows many people on the HCG diet suffer side effects including headaches, dizziness, depression, mood swings, blood clots and confusion. Some women develop Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome. And no wonder these side effects occur when you restrict your body to ¼ of the calories dieticians ask you to consume to live a healthy existence! You are capable of much more than being looked at, but on this diet, being looked at is about all you can muster. If this is a diet you are on or considering, please speak with a doctor or dietician who does not profit from backing the HCG diet to know what is most healthy for you. Be safe! We love you and want you to be healthy and happy!

Back Away from the Illusion…

The reality is, when we begin to back away from the illusion and embrace our beautiful realities, we might end up looking a little different than the rest of the world. We certainly won’t look like the unreal women across advertising-fueled media. Our joyful smiles, scars, freckles, wrinkles, hair, curves, laughs, and confidence can and will be a beacon of light to a world of women, girls, men and boys desperately in need of light. Desperately searching for reality in the midst of an often painful illusion. Desperately in need of the hope that your beautiful reality can bring them. Do you grasp the power you hold? Can you begin to understand your unique ability to bring peace, happiness, and beautiful reality to those you pass by each day?

When we recognize the pain we cause to ourselves and the pain we experience in the name of beauty, we can begin to fight back. Have you undergone an elective surgical procedure in the name of beauty? Have you ever binged, purged, or starved yourself on an extreme diet? Have you painfully experimented with removing hair from your face or body to meet an ideal that only recently became a new standard of beauty? Have you believed these “beauty hurts” lies and constrained your true happiness, health and worth? Well guess what? “A small group of thoughtful people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Let’s band together and change the world – beginning within ourselves and branching out to encompass all those we love, whether we’ve met them yet or not. Let’s help every one of us understand our beauty lies in our reality, and the illusions we strive for aren’t necessary for us to find happiness, love, health and beauty.

If you’re reading this, you’ve joined the fight to take back beauty :) And as always, we at Beauty Redefined have a few more ways you can change the world in thoughtful ways. Here you go:

Life is Rough – Be a Diamond in the Midst of It!

Join with us, and with at least four other girls or women that you know – whether in daily life or online – and BOND together by recognizing, rejecting and honestly sharing your own struggles with the pressures our cultures place upon women. Find strength and power outside your own capacity by networking together and openly discussing the dangers of appearance-obsessed society. Escape the dark, pressure-filled circumstances that we – at one time or another – struggle through alone by banding together and bringing those shames, anxieties, angers, successes and joys to light. Read our inspirational post on this very subject to learn more about your very diamond-like self.

Shine with Positivity

Research and real-life experience make it clear that when women and girls speak negatively about their bodies and their appearance, they negatively impact those around them. That goes for women talking about themselves in hateful ways in front of their children and family members, girls that degrade themselves in front of their friends, or any other time a woman or girl says awful things about herself in front of anyone near. Start today with a goal that you will never again say something negative about your appearance aloud, and soon the negative self-talk that floats through your mind will become less and less prevalent, too. To remind strangers and those you love of these positive truths, feel free to buy our beautiful sticky notes or greeting cards with phrases like “If beauty hurts, we’re doing it wrong!” Find them here!

For many more thoughtful strategies to take back beauty, click here.

Have you thought about this statement? Do you understand the gravity of it? This was the first of the four messages Lindsay and I carefully chose for our billboard campaign that went up in June and continues today, and it will show up on the Pennsylvania Turnpike next week! This phrase gave me goosebumps when I let it sink in. Women are always being looked at. And when we aren’t being looked at, we are too often envisioning ourselves being looked at, as if an outsider’s perspective has become our own. In fact, our work makes one thing very clear: Part of growing up female today means learning to view oneself from another’s gaze.

Ever heard this quote? Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision: a sight. (John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1977).

Rockwell’s “Girl at the Mirror”

This insightful man was referring to the idea of “objectification,” which we’ve all heard once or twice. But when we think of the term, we probably think of sexualized female bodies, or sexualized parts of female bodies…which isn’t the whole idea here. When we understand the whole of objectification, we can better grasp the role it plays in our daily lives and the ways it may keep us from fulfilling all we want to do with our days. When we travel around giving our one-hour Beauty Redefined visual presentation, we explain to our audiences that objectification takes on many roles:

Say you’re walking down the sidewalk on a beautiful day. Someone who has internalized an outsider’s perspective of herself will often spend more time adjusting her clothing or hair, wondering what other people are thinking of her, judging the shape of her shadow or reflection in a window, etc. She will picture herself walking – she literally turns herself into an object of vision – instead of enjoying the sunny weather, looking around, thinking about anything else, etc. If you find yourself thinking and acting like this, you aren’t alone. In fact, you are just one of millions of females growing up in a world that teaches us to survey ourselves every waking moment. Profit-driven media tells us how we can “Look Hotter From Behind!” in fitness magazines, “Look Wow Now!” on makeover shows every hour of every day, “Look 10 Years Younger!” using every anti-aging procedure and product under the sun. Notice the emphasis on looking … Do you find you survey yourself as you move through life? That you ever turn yourself into an object of vision: a sight?

By Raquel Aparicio for Beauty Redefined

You are capable of much more than being looked at. Do you know who you are? Have you grasped the powerful role you can play in a world so badly in need of your unique talents, wisdom, and light? Are you aware of your unique mission at this point in your life? You’ve got something great to do, that only you can do. And if you are here to be looked at, to appear, to survey yourself, instead of do an inspirational work that only you can do, you are not fulfilling your mission. Cheesy? Yes. True? Oh yes. More true than you know.

I see objectification playing out in my own life in many ways. Here are two: When I’m walking past people, I often catch myself imagining what I look like to them – from the front and from behind – and think irrational thoughts about what the people walking behind me or past me think about me. I often adjust my clothing to what I assume is the most flattering position as I walk. I can admit I’ve been known to look at my own Facebook profile to see what I look like to the cute guy who just added me or the friend I just added. I look through my photos and try to gauge my looks from the perspective of someone who is not me. If that isn’t self objectification, I don’t know what is! Tell me I’m not alone in doing this…?  I am a body image activist and I’m getting a Ph.D. in research on self-objectification, yet I still catch myself envisioning myself from an outsider’s perspective instead of moving on to so many things more meaningful and productive. This just goes to show it’s a constant battle. I am constantly working to remind myself I’m capable of much more than being looked at. My self-objectification is complicated by the fact that I am an identical twin, so in some ways I see a body of a person with identical DNA in real life in a way that most people cannot experience. Unless you have an identical counterpart, your vision of yourself comes from photos, videos, and your two-dimensional reflection.

So let’s talk about mirrors, shall we? Even as I sit in my bedroom typing at 2 a.m., I see a full-length mirror peeking through the closet door, one with hooks hanging all my jewelry, five small decorative mirrors, and an IKEA centerpiece mirror above my bed. While I don’t think I’m necessarily vain or image-obsessed, I spend about 45 minutes in front of the mirror every morning, keep a compact in my purse at all times, and apparently have about 100 in my room for safe keeping. I am surveying an image of myself for at least one of the 24 hours in my day, and imagining that image of myself as I move throughout my day. What role do mirrors play in your life? “Women are constantly being looked at. Even when we’re not, we’re so hyperaware of the possibility of being looked at that it can rule even our most private lives. Including in front of our mirrors, alone,” says Autumn Whitfield-Madrano at her always inspirational website, The Beheld.

The thought-provoking Autumn recently undertook an experiment that I was amazed by: A month-long break from mirrors. Thirty-one days of no mirrors, store windows, shiny pots, spoons, or the dark glass of the NYC subway she rides daily. In her own words: There’s nothing wrong with looking in the mirror. There’s nothing wrong with sometimes looking to your reflection—even when it is impossibly subjective, and backward at that—for a breath of fortitude, centeredness, and assurance. I just want to see what life is like when I’m not using that image as my anchor; I want to see how it affects the way I move through the world, the way I regard myself and others. I want to know what it’s like to sever a primary tie to one of my greatest personal flaws—extraordinary self-consciousness—and I want to discover what will fill the space that the mirror has occupied until now.

She goes on:  Sometimes I look in the mirror and see myself, or whatever I understand myself to be. Other times, I distinctly see an image of myself. When I see my image reflected on a mirror behind a bar I think, Oh good, I look like a woman who is having a good time out with friends. Or I’ll see my reflection in a darkened windowpane, hunched over my computer with a pencil twirled through my upswept hair, and I’ll think, My, don’t I look like a writer? You’ll notice what these have in common: My thoughts upon seeing my reflection are both self-centered and distant. I’m seeing myself, but not really—I’m seeing a woman who looks like she’s having a good time, or a writer, etc.

Autumn’s insights echo Berger’s powerful words. Too often, we travel through life with an outsider’s vision of ourselves. We are to be looked at. We watch ourselves being looked at. We become objects of vision: sights. But isn’t there so much more to life than watching ourselves self-consciously stroll through it? Life is beautiful when you live it – really experience it – not when you are more concerned about appearing beautiful as you try to live. When you think of your happiest times, were they in front of the mirror? Were you happiest when you were working to appear happy or attractive or beautiful to others? Happiness and beauty come from doing, acting, being – outside the confines of being looked at. So, today, what will you do to shake off the outsider’s gaze you envision of yourself? Will you do as Autumn has done and experiment with what your life becomes when you spend less time with your reflection and more time doing, acting and being? Will you enjoy the world around you instead of hoping others are enjoying their view of you? Will you do something your self-policing outsider’s gaze kept you from doing before – like speak in front of a group of people? Run without worrying about the jiggle? Go to the store even if you aren’t all made-up?

Today is the day to remember you are capable of much more than being looked at. And when you begin to realize that, you can start realizing the power of your abilities and the good you can do in a world so desperately in need of you. NOT a vision of you, but ALL of you.  What will you find you are capable of?

And if you’d like to slap a beautiful sticky note on a mirror, advertisement, forehead or send someone a greeting card to remind other females they are capable of more than being looked at (or that “if beauty  hurts we’re doing it wrong,” “your reflection does not define your worth,” and “there is more to be than eye candy,” we’ve got what you need here!

I wrote this piece with the intention of providing girls and women with a more empowering and uplifting alternative to the popular “you’re not married or dating because you’re not trying hard enough to be hot” sentiment expressed in this piece. When young, single women (the intended audience of his piece) read and hear well-intented messages like this man’s over and over again, reminding them that they need to try even harder to look even better, and reminding them THAT’S probably why they aren’t in a relationship – it stings. They already know how much their appearances matter. They already know how much men care about how they look, and how they won’t get asked out if they don’t fit those men’s ideals. They already know their health and well-being is important for themselves and for the men evaluating whether or not to ask them out or commit to them. They don’t need any more reminders that their inner beauty and never-quite-good-enough outer beauty are not enough. This rebuttal has absolutely nothing to do with advocating giving up on health goals or standards of appearance for ourselves. It has everything to do with questioning where those standards come from and if they’re really about health or if they’re about fitting a fleeting, ever-changing physical ideal to attract a mate.

We’ve all probably encountered this perspective on “inner beauty” vs. “outer beauty.” As proponents of all things beautiful, we have GOT to address this backlash against self-esteem-boosting and body-image-boosting campaigns like ours. In a prime example of this thinking (and one of many), a young, single, man in Utah has written this instructional opinion piece from a Christian viewpoint for girls and women everywhere. Here’s the bulk of it, titled “Inner Beauty is Not Enough.”  

“Inner beauty is vastly important, and I’m not saying every person needs to look like a model in order to find someone, but let’s not forget – outer beauty is important, too. 

Yes, these are flying stilettos. Mine.

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among women. On Facebook and in conversations with girls, I’ve heard girls embrace supposed feminine liberation and tell us that they’re beautiful no matter how they look. Before I have to dodge a flurry of thrown stiletto heels, let me clarify: Yes, you are beautiful. You’re a daughter of God, and don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise. But . . . you shouldn’t let the “beauty on the inside” argument hinder your quest to achieve your physical ideal. Some girls I know tell themselves it doesn’t matter how they look because they’re beautiful on the inside, and then they just . . . well, let themselves go.

I’m a single male and that reflects in the audience I write to, but regardless of our marital status or gender, we should all take care of our bodies. After all, aren’t they gifts from God? We’re instructed to abstain from tattoos and extra piercings in an attempt to show respect for our bodies, and shouldn’t that respect be extended to how we treat the body itself? We are stewards of our mortal shells, and as such should care for them like the prized possessions they are. 

For those who are still dating, failing to take care of yourself can easily delay association with potential mates. The right person will love you eventually, but it’s your physical aspect that often catches the eye. If you don’t take the time to care for yourself, that doesn’t exactly encourage anyone else to care for you, either. How many people who would love you once they got to know you have passed you over? Maybe you’ve even been the one who’s passed on someone because that person failed to care for his or her God-given body.

If you are truly happy with the body you have, I’m glad for you. We should recognize that none of us is going to have a perfect body, at least not at this stage in our existence. (Or maybe you already do have a near-perfect body. Congrats. You should still keep reading.) Women, we guys will accept that not all of you are swimwear models if you accept that few of us have managed the abs of a certain werewolf from Twilight. 

I’m sorry if I come across as harsh. There are also plenty of people who go the opposite direction and become Barbie dolls with personalities as bland as the plastic dolls they so resemble. In our journey to improve our inner and outer selves, we should seek balance. We should be satisfied with who we are, but we should strive for healthy improvement. This principle applies to men as well. So how do both genders reconcile this paradox? How do we attain the right body while neither being satisfied with the sub-par nor going too far?

I propose that we find a realistic perception of the person we can become on the inside and outside. Discovering our exact physical potential may take some time, but we can gain a reasonable expectation of the best we can be. Then we simply become content with the progress we’re making toward being our best selves.

Girls (and guys), a little regular exercise and some healthy eating habits will be a good start toward becoming that reasonable paragon. Go running. Take a racquetball class. I think you’re capable of filling in the rest of this list yourselves. I really believe that as we all set attainable physical goals and work to reach them, we can be satisfied both with ourselves and with what we’re becoming.

“What do you think? Am I off base? Do I have unreasonable expectations for girls?”

Well, he asked for our thoughts! My shamefully long and quickly composed response comment is this:

“But…you shouldn’t let the “beauty on the inside” argument hinder your quest to achieve your physical ideal.” This is a clear and blatant example of media beauty ideals being conflated with health and shockingly enough, morality. Has the author stopped to think about where these “physical ideals” came from or how who they benefit? They physical ideals that dominate media and public consciousness today are unlike any the world has ever seen before, thanks to the wonders of Photoshop, pornography, cosmetic surgery and the normalization of extremely, thin, tall white “idealized” bodies to sell any product you can think of – all based on creating an unachievable ideal to drive profit. No one will ever reach those “physical ideals,” and that’s their purpose.

The author is equating “taking care of your body” with achieving “physical ideals,” which is a dangerous message. The idea that one’s health and fitness can be perceived from their appearance is another of those profit-driven myths designed to sell $61 billion in weight-loss aids in 2010 alone, and a 446% increase in the nubmer of cosmetic surgeries performed in the last decade (with 92% on women). Countless medical studies prove that a person’s appearance, specifically their body weight and shape (including their BMI) are an extremely poor indicator of their health or physical fitness – unless they are at a dramatic extreme on either end of the weight spectrum.

Articles like this do NOT help SLC move away from its title as ‘Vainest in the Nation,’ as ranked by Forbes magazine based on studies showing we spend 10 times as much as other cities of comparable size on all beauty products, we have more plastic surgeons per capita than ANY city in the nation, including L.A. and NYC, and other shameful stats. For the attitude in this article to be perpetuated here, especially through the lens of Christian values, is ironic and shameful. This is literally the last place in the country that women need to worry any more about their appearances.

Sticky note or postcard available for purchase!

We have more than enough reminders at every turn that we aren’t hot enough, and that if we aren’t hot enough, we better run on the treadmill longer and buy more makeup and wear better clothes in order to get that way, and that we aren’t worthy of love until we drop another 30 lbs. to look a LITTLE more like the “physical ideals” you are invoking. We don’t need any more reminders. What we need a reminder of is that our perceptions of beauty and ideal bodies – even healthy bodies – are skewed by forces that no other generation has had to deal with. Taking care of your body is a wonderful responsibility that we all must take seriously. But if we do it in the name of looking hotter or to get more dates, we’re being motivated by external factors that don’t provide long-lasting motivation and only seek to propel more body hatred in this world that is being CRIPPLED by body hatred. You might scoff at messages telling women they’re beautiful and that there is more to be than eye candy, but you should also know that girls and women who feel OK about their bodies, regardless of what they look like, are proven to take better care of their bodies through physical activity and healthy eating choices. Those who are disgusted with their bodies (as you seem to be reminding women they should be) are much more likely to lead sedentary lifestyles and make poor eating choices.

We at BeautyRedefined.net will continue convincing girls and women that they are worth more than what their bodies look like. P.S. I realize my comment is shamefully long. Sorry. I also want to note that I don’t mean to direct anger toward the author, since he’s not at fault for this distorted way of thinking. But it takes effort to think critically about this stuff, and helping people to do that is a promising goal.”

Whew. We have to think harder about where our ideas about beauty and health are coming from. We have to talk back when people try to use shame and warnings about not finding love to remind women to “take care of themselves.” This is not constructive thinking, nor will it contribute to healthy lifestyles and satisfying relationships. Another useful follow-up to this type of backlash is our response to being interviewed for a story in Reuters, the international news organization, and then having the story killed because the editor claimed body image advocates like us were “promoting obesity.”

Beauty Redefined does not take those types of accusations lightly! Please join us in this fight to take back beauty for girls and women everywhere by promoting strategies to recognize and reject harmful messages about our bodies! Start by joining us on Facebook to continue this conversation regularly, join us by supporting our cause through purchasing sticky notes and postcards with true and uplifting reminders that “You are capable of more than being looked at” and “If beauty hurts, we’re doing it wrong.” These messages are true, and they will encourage health and “taking care of your body” better and for longer than any appearance-focused message ever will.