This is a podcast by Dr. Lindsay Kite, author of the book Beauty Redefined. She is a very accomplished woman with a PhD in female body image, and she works to help women reject being treated or viewed as objects and reconnect with their own bodies. In this podcast one of the main things that are talked about is how as women we grow up with images and are told to treat our bodies as objects which leads to self objecification which lead to them looking from the outside and only caring about looks, this is something that starts happening from the age of 5 and 6 because of the society or the social construct we are around this is something that makes people feel less than others or as not good enough not just fiscally but also in their humanity as people and personalities and who they are at their core.
There is also the talk of the “Split” from the human bodies, which is something that starts after childhood, when we are always in our bodies, and it’s because we use it as a tool in running, playing, and swimming without thinking about how we look while doing all of the different activities. After a while, and from the social world we live in, there starts to be objectification, and this leads to them feeling as if they are something to change or fix and need to reach perfection, which is not realistic, and this is something that has been seen by the media, as well as what adults say and the social norms we live by.
A personal exhale she shared is how she was a competitive swimmer and loved it as a child but when she was in high school she became very self concious and ended up quitting because she felt a fear of being judged and seen differently by the boys because of how she looked in a swimsuit and this lead to her starting to hate the sport and stop enjoying it, This is something that is seen in a lot of young girls because they decide to hide instead of participating.
It is not just men but also women who are enforcing the different beauty standards, as women at times we start to internalize the patriarchy and the beauty standers that are set because women are taught from a young age that beauty is power and they also start to see each other as competition for male approval and also women trying to protect mean and boys from being tempted by the female body. Which means women criticizing each other feeds into the same system.
There are many comments made to women and girls which hit them in very emotional ways and it is important to understand it, first of girls are raised to think that are only worth what they look like and it is different for boys because they are praised more by their actions and what they are able to do while girls are only looked at by their appearances and this changes the different gender identities as a whole.
It is important to know that when people just compliment female bodies, we are more than just our bodies; they are tools to get through life. It is not just about self-confidence and loving what we look like, but about getting back to experiencing life in our bodies.
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