Of Meat Markets and Monstrous Men

[Tabouli]

Sheryll:
> My worst enemy on all this is not myself, but my
> sister. Those of you who were in chat yesterday, I
> only have one sister, so yeah, it's the same one. She
> is obsessed with weight, runs every night (10 km) and
> has a Nordic Track in her bedroom. She does things
> like pokes my stomach and says 'what's that?' 

I got subjected to this sort of thing from my mother and brother in my teens, and it was vile.  Getting poked in the bum by my mother ("Hee hee, your botty *sooo* bick!  Maybe you have to find Italian man..."), ridiculed by my brother for being "fat" (for God's sake.  At 15 I weighed under 8 stone), told ominous tales by my grandfather about women he'd known who'd wrecked their looks through overeating, etc.etc.

Frankly, people who treat the young women in their family like dolls that have a duty to look as pretty as possible and, worse still, play them off against each other ("Look at Susannah, so slim and elegant, how come you don' know how to be elegant like that?") deserve a slap in the face.  Young women do NOT need any more people making them feel bad about their bodies, the majority of them are *already* wasting hours and energy every day on being miserable about their looks in some way.  As for those with fashionable body shapes who want to rub in their victory to those who don't, find some other way to feel good about yourself, thanks.
 
This is another price for beautiful women to pay: constantly being defined by your looks and being surrounded by jealous people who want to find fault with you is enough to make anyone obsessive and self-conscious about the least "flaw".  I once met a very beautiful model who had a positively wretched body image, fuelled by none other than her modelling agent.  "He tells me that unless I lose another half a stone, I won't get any work, and he said that if I had a coke habit like the other models I wouldn't have a weight problem, but when I do lose weight my boobs shrink and sag and I just hate the way I look, and all the 13 year olds are on E to make them seem more cute and sassy, and now I'm getting so old and fat no-one wants to hire me..."  This from a 22 year old woman who was tall and slim and willowy with a beautiful face, C cups and gorgeous thick shiny hair, who was constantly subjected to abuse from other women, ogling and resentment from men, and had a classic MMI trophy hunter boyfriend ("Other guys feel too insecure to ask out the best looking girls," snooted this frightful specimen, "but I don't have that problem.").  So yes, Suzanne, I, at least, sympathise!

David:
>> I want a partner who wants me for who I am as a unique person, my 
>>absolute value, not because I'm about the highest on the MMI he 
>>thinks he can catch.  How insulting.  These days I have very little 
>>time for men who run their love lives according to the MMI, and 
>>assume women do too.  There *are* people out there who don't buy into 
>>the MMI, and they're the people I now cultivate in my life.  
>
>I'm sure you will succeed if you keep your nerve.  There's obviously 
>a lot about you (I mean as well as the hazel eyes, the sylph-like 
>figure, the exotic looks, the vivacious manner...).
 
Hey, thanks David... most flattering!  OK, now that Suzanne has Spoken, I feel brave enough to mention the bit I chopped out of my previous post for fear of (a) undermining the point I was making, and (b) appearing arrogant.  The truth of the matter is that prior to the Two Awful Men, I considered myself to be rather (if not spectacularly) pretty.  An imperfect size 8-10(Australian sizes: not sure what this translates to in the US) , I carried myself with bounce, and had an interesting face: dark hair, large eyes, full lips and the not-to-be underestimated Exotic Eurasian Bonus Points factor.  Moreover, I was never short in the male admirers department, specialising in the intellectual man.  At 20 I was positively cocky about this, and was even known to cutely dub myself "The Thinking Man's Pin-Up" (don't worry, I got over that stage).  Needless to say, I must have been trying, and a lot of other women loathed me, slashed my photo on the wall of the common room, annihilated my character, etc.etc.  Yea, verily, I have some inkling of the Curse of the Beautiful Woman.

However...
 
A couple of years later, Awful Man 1 turned up on the scene (he was in fact the first and worst of my tragic penfriend romances), all tall and blond and muscly, and his sneering put paid to my cockiness in a matter of weeks.  After a few months of torture from him, I crawled up to the mirror for a terrified reassessment and was humiliated to think that I had once considered what I saw to be pretty.  Broad, sallow, pimply face, bags under the eyes, short heavy legs, A cup breasts, stretch marks, five foot one...  (sobbing yourself to inadequate sleep for months on end does nothing for your looks)  who was I kidding?  As for those former admirers, just how low were their standards?  Attractive women were tall, with large perky breasts and long slender legs and flawless skin and slim faces (0 out of 5 there).  He was embarrassed to be seen with me and, I now realised, no wonder.  I became embarrassed to be seen with *him*, convinced that everyone was staring at us because they couldn't believe how such a plain, dumpy little woman caught someone that looked like a surfwear model (he of course agreed on this point, and reminded me regularly that I was Not Worthy of him, and then proceeded to explain to me I was therefore not entitled to fidelity from him, and should help him figure out ways of seducing my better-looking friends).

After he left the country (yes, he actually flew to Australia to meet me, and I cringed to think how disappointing I must have been for him), I spent a few months averting my eyes from mirrors and crying and hating myself, and then, in a moment of extreme folly, took up with Awful Man 2 to regain my self esteem, who proceeded to tell me that All Men prefer big breasts and smooth skin, and that he'd apologised to his best friend for me being so ordinary looking, and that Any Man would of course trade in his girlfriend for a better looking woman if he thought he could get one.

Fortunately, once I kicked him out (it's easier when you haven't been in love with someone via letters for 10 years), I went on a world trip, where I regained some of my old liveliness and found myself once again rather popular with men, particularly in Japan (the Eurasian factor at work) and continental Europe (the intellectual factor), which had the effect of generating a bit of perspective.  I've never quite recovered my early 20s confidence (still retain the acne though, dammit!  I am *29*, can't it leave me alone now?), but these days I'm cheerful enough about my looks, and realise that there's a lot more to attraction than the Meat Market Index the Two Awful Men were measuring me by.  Sure, if you assess me in bits, you wouldn't put any of them on a catwalk, but looked at holistically none of the "flaws" make me ugly.  Besides which, in retrospect I'd actually been more "attractive", in a quantity of men attracted sense (though see my diatribe on quality vs quantity a couple of weeks ago) that women scoring much higher on the MMI for years before I had my self-esteem scuppered, which suggests that there are definitely men who see other things as more important, aren't there?

Tabouli.


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