Taryn Brumfitt, naked and soft, no makeup. Taryn Brumfitt, lean, fake tan, onstage in a sparkling bikini. It’s a before and after picture, but the before pic is Brumfitt at her thinnest. This isn’t proof of post-birth weight loss; this is proof of her “loving [her] body wholeheartedly”.
After receiving huge amounts of media attention and emails from hundreds of women, Brumfitt expanded her message to a documentary, Embrace, which follows her around the world. She is on a mission to uncover the origin of body hatred, and find out how we can heal ourselves. She talks to magazine editors, plus-size models, and photographers.
The map to loving yourself is simple, according to the doco. Photographer Jade Beall advises the camera: “Look at yourself naked. Call it beautiful, even if you don’t think so.”
Embrace fits squarely into the self-love movement; we’ve seen it before, in the documentaries of Cherry Healey, and in Dove’s Real Beauty campaigns. Apparently, the key to happiness is swimming against the current. But these investigations ignore structural sexism and deeper issues at work. The real question is: how do we change the current’s direction?
So take a mirror to your nether regions, like Auntie Germaine told us, and have a good looksee. Say I love you to the shining light between your legs. And once you’re done with introspection, it’s time to focus on the collective good.
Say No to Moisturiser
While Embrace rightly stipulates that women’s social worth is dependent on our beauty, Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth (1991) introduces the idea that so is our economic worth.
“Woman in her role as consumer has been essential to the development of our industrial society,” Wolf writes, claiming the cosmetics industry (“a $20 billion-a-year fraud”) relies on body dissatisfaction. Consider then, whole economies (or at least the basement level of David Jones) would collapse if we stopped buying creams to slather on our skin.
On the road to radical self-love, throw your habit of buying beauty products out the window. Because the money we give to cosmetic companies is then spent on advertisements that perpetuate unachievable beauty norms. These ads inspire familiar insecurities which compel us to buy and that is a fiery circle of hell, my friends! Without consumers of these products, there would be no ads, and a whole lot less unrealistic images of women.
Advocate for Women’s Health Services
The roles that women have in society keep them “from growing to their full human capacities”, wrote Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique. Her book documented how constrictive gender roles impacted on women’s mental health.
Similarly, Embrace links anorexia and bulimia to the unrealistic beauty ideal. In her essay collection about hunger, Small Acts of Disappearance, Fiona Wright claims, “No state has more than about eight public hospital beds for adult eating disorder patients.” Eating disorders are the third most common chronic illness in young females yet the government refuses to fund adequate services. Yep. So that needs a little work.
Destroy Lazy Brands
Rape culture is an environment where sexual violence against women is normalised. It’s propelled by male entitlement to the female body. “The motive for rape,” writes Rebecca Solnit, “is the idea that a man has the right to have sex with a woman regardless of her desires”.
A landscape of naked, yielding women – on television, magazines, billboards – educates men that we are objects for their pleasure. Vote with your money – don’t buy products that use these ads, and let marketing companies know that we actually like seeing women as human beings.
Check Yo Privilege
In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove wants to have blue eyes like Shirley Temple. She is marginalised by depictions of physical beauty, and worships white beauty; the novel tells the story of internalised self-hatred by black women.
So let’s be aware of the dual oppression of women of colour by the beauty norm. Discover and look into how social media is helping to redefine our narrow representation of beauty with hashtags. Try and empathise with different groups struggling in a world that reveres one beauty standard. Instead of complaining that you can’t find the right shade of foundation, consider that for some women of colour, there occasionally isn’t a shade on the scale that even comes close to their natural colour. Or consider that size 14 women in Australia might struggle to find clothes that fit them, furthering the idea that there is something wrong with them (when there’s actually) something wrong with brands and their sizing). Understand that some women are made to feel outside the so-called “norm” as a result. Be aware of how a perceived idea of “normal” can affect others.
-it's meant to promote pride, positivity, love and respect inside of the Arab community as well as outside. So feel free to post under-
— #FreeAshraf (@saradmahmoud) September 6, 2015
Burn Everything To The Ground!
The policing of women’s bodies, says British feminist Laurie Penny, is designed to control us, to force us to conform. “We consume only what we are told to, from lipstick to life insurance, and only what will make us more consumable ourselves, the better to be chewed up and swallowed by a machine that wants our work, our money, our sexuality.” To fight female obedience, I think we’re gonna need some firepower.
So go ahead. Watch Embrace. But let self-acceptance be only a starting point. ‘I am not free,’ wrote Audre Lord, ‘While any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.’
The World Profits From Your Self-Hatred, So Here’s How To Fight It And Love Yourself For Real appeared first on The Vocal.