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WHEN I HAPPENED upon the story earlier this week about Urban Outfitters and their now infamous ‘thigh gap’ photograph, the image in question sparked a visceral, irrational rage inside of me that is hard to describe. As my little girl inevitably becomes more and more aware of the world around her, and where and how she fits into that world, I realise that an awareness of her own shape and size is only just around the corner. And what hope has she if this is still the kind of image that is being projected as ‘the norm’? Why in 2015 have we not learned anything or moved on an iota? Why are we still being conditioned to believe that thin is the norm, when it clearly isn’t?
At present, my little girl judges people purely on the basis of how kind they are to her, and how much fun she has with them. Her eye may be occasionally turned by how much pink someone happens to be wearing, or by a particularly sparkly earring, but, by and large, she is still blissfully unaware of any other criteria by which to assess her fellow little (and big) beings.
However, over time she will start to notice. To compare. To judge. And I for one would prefer if the comparative images all around her reflected the world she actually lives in, rather than some fictional nirvana where every woman is comprised of ‘perfect 10’ proportions and non-existent thighs. ‘Dream on, Mummy’, I hear you say, ‘It has always been thus, and thus it will always be…’
But what if this generation could be different? What if their expectations and ideals could be reprogrammed? What if the imagery that is routinely projected at them could be consciously adapted to reflect the world they actually live in, not the one they are expected to aspire to? Because can you imagine all the good that could do?
If her formative years were focused on the development of her own little personality, rather than being unnecessarily preoccupied with the seemingly timeless lure of just ‘being thin’. How different a life she might lead, undistracted by preoccupations with size, shape and weight? Think how she might be allowed to flourish as an individual if the instinct to stunt her own physical mass was not indelibly implanted into her psyche by the time she was 12? What if she didn’t need to worry about morphing her body into something it never wanted to be? Now, that really would be heaven.
I have a very clear memory of the opening scene of ‘Pretty Woman’ where Julia Roberts (or possibly her body double) are filmed lying on their side in a bed. Hip bones positively scream out for attention from the screen, tanned skin stretched taut against bone, skeleton clearly visible with just the slightest amount of flesh allowed to differentiate that actress from one whose body had been entirely ravaged by some parasitic disease or famine.
I remember that scene because, as a chubby 15 year old, for weeks on end I used it as an ‘inspiration’ to lose weight. The message that was conveyed to me was strikingly simple. Pretty equals thin. You are not thin, therefore you are not pretty. Therefore thin is something you need to become.
And so my young mind lapped it up, and 20-odd years later has never really lost that hang up, like so many of us out there. The time we have available to devote to such vacuous endeavours as ‘being thin’ may have dwindled enormously as a result of the onslaught of life and career and kids – and the importance we attach to success on that scale may have reduced with maturity – but can any of us truly say that it ever really left us? I for one still carry an element of that neurosis around in my handbag, no matter how many achievements I have under my belt that tell me I am worth more than the fit of my jeans. How fantastic would it be if we didn’t lumber the next generation with similar infatuations with their weight?
This is not ‘thin-bashing’ – this about creating a platform for all body sizes
It’s not that I want to ‘thin bash’. Some of us are born that way, and bully for them, but the point is that most of us are not. And nowhere is the realities of our bodies reflected anywhere in the many mirrors held up all around us everywhere we turn other than in the one we dread within our own homes. As our models continue to remain the elusive size 8, they get more and more out of touch with the girl on the street. And far from inspiring, it becomes just plain depressing. Clearly in the interests of our own health, we shouldn’t all be aspiring to be a size 16 plus, but routinely pretending that we are all a size 8 does nothing to alleviate that problem.
We went shopping for a Christmas dress for my daughter before Christmas. I felt a rising sense of panic as we went up and up in size and I simply couldn’t get the waist to close on the style she had chosen. I scanned for any signs of upset on her part – for the potential for an any more significant issue to rear its ugly head over and above the simple fact that she couldn’t get the one she wanted. The fingers promptly went into the mouth and the eyes averted from both me and the many mirrors around her.
We settled for some leggings and a sparkly top instead. Avoided any ‘structured’ look. But that moment took me back to my own adolescence. And when I saw that ad earlier this week my maternal instinct just wanted to lash out at whomever it is that decides what size is ‘normal’. And show them that ominous image of my little girl sucking her fingers in the corner of a Marks & Spencer changing room.
As a society we bear collective responsibility
But then who decides what’s normal? Am I not just as bad for worrying about it at all? For feeling prickly whenever a comment is made about her fine ‘healthy’ thighs. For being foolish enough to pick up on it when someone mentions that I’d ‘want to watch that…’, or worse still, the patronising reassurances to ‘worry not’, that no doubt she’ll soon ‘take a stretch’. Maybe as a parent it’s my job to shield her from all that? Ensure that she’s comfortable enough within her own skin that it simply doesn’t matter?
Well I’m sorry, but that is just not possible. As a society we bear collective responsibility to ensure that the images that are projected back at our children are diverse and real and appropriate. That there isn’t some form of social Darwinism at work whereby only the elite of the species are reflected back at them whenever they turn on the telly, or look at a billboard, or play with their dolls. Why should parents have to shoulder this burden alone? Why should we be forced to fight against a rising tide where all around us our children are flooded with unrealistic messages around how they ‘should’ look?
Children are inherently naive. Easily influenced. Impressionable. It is all our responsibility what impressions are left on young, sensitive minds and what lasting effect those impressions have. Not just mine alone. The reality is that the Barbie in her hand or the skinny lady on the telly have as much influence upon her as what her silly old Mum’s got to say. And that kind of damaging influence has got to be acknowledged and changed. For her sake, not for mine. My mind was already made up back in 1991. And there’s no undoing that, unfortunately.
Claire Micks is an occasional writer. Read her columns for TheJournal.ie here.
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Does anyone really give a fiddlers about Stormont ? Its a failed entity, probably designed to fail, a bit like Cyprus this will never end, groundhog day for the last 20 years, parties are just drawing their money, its like signing on the dole but with extra benefits for them. The Brits should just withdraw all funding, our crowd the same and let them off, they won’t be long talking then.
@zippo: Its a circus alright but extremely entertaining. Nordies exist purely for r ouentertainment, they never disappoint LOL
@frank murphy: that is not true. N.I is at the frontline between two conflicting states. The Irish Catholic one and the British Protestant one. The people are caught in the middle.
N.I people are talented and hard working and they will sort out their differences.
Two protest parties treating responsibilty like a hot potato.
@Cheeky Bums: Ah the ‘they’re as bad as eachother’ line. An easy one to trot out but it does demonstrate a shockingly gross misunderstanding of the reasons for the collapse of Stormont.
@Tír Eoghain Gael: Which, obviously, are all the fault of the DUP according to you.
@Tyrone Brit: The only thing as bad as the shinners is the DUP. It’s a perfect marriage and beautifully entertaining. Never have two cults deserved each other more.
@Brendan O’Brien: Ah if if it isn’t my little shadow.
To answer your question: Primarily, yes. Unless SF also reneged on what they promised to do in commitments made as preconditions to power sharing, back at St Andrews? And unless SF is also refusing to enact a Bill of Rights as was agreed in 1998 in the GFA? And unless SF is blocking sex marriage, despite the majority of MLAs being in support of it? And unless SF also took £500m of tax payers money and burned in in wood pellet boilers and then refused to see their leader, who oversaw this scheme, to take responsibility for it and resign?
@Tír Eoghain Gael: foreign country, thankfully :)
Good article. The assembly is unstable by design.
@Shane Gleeson: but very funny
April 10 is the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. And it’s going to look very silly indeed without the Stormont Assembly restored.
@Mick Tobin: i think it should be renamed to something more suitable like ‘The Pancake Tuesday Agreement’ LOL
The voters were sold a pup for the GFA. All the side deals to appease the paramilitaries were never included in the agreement put to the electorate. SF, what is basically a Northern party, are in the South trying to tell us how the govern and at the same time avoiding their responsibility to the Northern electorate.
@Sam Alexander: Have you nothing to say about the side deals which saw the security forces receive an almost blanket amnesty for their murders throughout the entire 40 year conflict?
@Sam Alexander: The DUP are PUP’s
I’ve met plenty working in Dublin over the years.
At first all smug and cocky, after they realise nobody gives a damn about them the embarrassment creeps over them when they realise nobody entertains their baby like attitude in the canteen. Seen it first hand
@Tír Eoghain Gael: Yes but many IRA murderers got amnesty out if this deal too. Personally I think anybody who pulled a trigger during the troubles needs to face a jury.
@phil: The thing is, Phil, you are not exactly comparing like with like. Approximately 25,000 republicans spent over 100,000 cumulative years in prison during the conflict. Care to guess how many British Soldiers saw the inside of a cell for murders committed during the entire 40 years? To give you a clue, you won’t need all of the fingers on one hand to count them. People talk about the so-called ‘comfort letters’ sent to OTRs as though Republicans got some sort of blanket amnesty. I demonstrated above how utter fantasy talk. The only blanket amnesty of the troubles was decided upon in July 1972. That year, 79 Irish people were shot dead by the British Army. The vast majority of these were civilians. That July, a strategic government and security meeting at Stormont Castle was held, involving the Secretary for State William Whitelaw MP, the North’s most senior British Army officer the General Officer Commanding (GOC) General Ford, the Deputy Chief Constable of the RUC, plus Lord Windlesham the British government’s representative in the House of Lords, British MP’s, and senior civil servants from the NIO. Relatives for Justice unearthed a document from this meeting. One of line from the minutes states that: “The (British) Army should not be inhibited in its campaign by the threat of prosecution”. As mentioned, that year 79 people were shot by the British Army. The meeting took place in July. That month the British Army killed 20 innocent civilians. Not one British soldier faced a conviction for ANY of these killings throughout 1972.
@Tyrone Brit: i herd all those british soldiers got medals. How does that make you feel :D
Did you know any of the 8 terrorists that Baron Adams set up in tyrone? excellent work by the british agent LOL
@Sam Alexander: Soon be all the 1 Sam, no more worries then.
Yawn yawn yawn.
@nelly: Did you not know the article was about a subject that didn’t interest you when you read the headline and opened it?
@Tír Eoghain Gael: the subject is laughing at nordies…. as always :D
The DUP and SF are too similar. They both think their side is in the right. The DUP are bigots there is no doubt about that. SF do not want to govern. The DUP will not move on LGBT rights. SF know this so instead of looking for compromise they will hold the whole thing up.
They say they want equality but by not including Ulster Scots in a Language Act they are anything but.
What is the problem with an all encompassing language act for the north ? Where the two languages are protected ?
@phil: Ulster Scots is not a language.
@phil:
“SF do not want to govern”
An odd claim given that that SF have been governing for the best part of the last two decades.
“The DUP will not move on LGBT rights. SF know this so instead of looking for compromise they will hold the whole thing up.”
Bearing in mind that the SF position is shared by a majority of the MLA’s in the assembly, exactly what compromise should they make on equality for the LGBT community?
“They say they want equality but by not including Ulster Scots in a Language Act they are anything but.”
SF have stated they have no issue with a dedicated Ulster Scots act. To quote Michelle O’Neill: “Let’s respect everybody’s identity. Let’s bring forward legislation for Ulster Scots alongside legislation for the Irish Language. They can be two pieces of legislation”
“What is the problem with an all encompassing language act for the north ? Where the two languages are protected ?”
See above. SF are happy for legislation for both languages. You conveniently also ignore the little area of trust being required for a mandatory coalition to work, and the DUP are showing they cannot be trusted, as they already committed to an Irish Language Act at St Andrews, then reneged on it once they got their bums in ministerial seats. I suppose that is just SF’s fault too though?
@Tír Eoghain Gael: Still you have not answered the question. Why not one Language act ?
@phil: Because that is not what has previously been agreed. The two parties made a series of compromises during negotiations in 2006 in order to get the assembly up and running again. One of the DUP compromises was a stand a alone Irish language Act. They then reneged on that agreed commitment. That is where the problem lies. What part of that is so hard to comprehend? When two sides make compromises, it is incumbent on those two sides to stick to their compromises. When one doesn’t, it’s a problem. When the two sides are in a post-conflict mandatory coalition, it is a major problem, and the stability of a mandatory coalition relies entirely on both parties showing that they can trust the other.
Aside from that most fundamental reason – even most unionists admit that Ulster Scots is not a language by any accepted definition. So to lump them together as one piece of legislation, would mean that the level of Irish Language protection would be diluted down to the same as required to protect a dialect spoken by almost nobody, or else money would be wasted in trying to give Ulster Scots the same level of rights that the Irish Language needs in an Act. Given that one is a language, and one is a dialect, then the most effective protection, and most cost-effective protection, would be two separate pieces of legislation.
@Tír Eoghain Gael: poor shinner :D
They should leave it as it is. the sectarians on both sides don’t deserve to be in power.
@Sean Conway: Another genius, trotting out the ‘both sides are as bad as eachother’ line. Take your head out of your @r5e and look into why the assembly actually collapsed, like a good man.
@Tír Eoghain Gael: Or could it be that a dyed-in-the-wool tribalist like yourself will always see ‘his’ tribe as being in the right and ‘the other’ tribe as being in the wrong?
Let’s not forget that you are a Provisional IRA supporter who claims that the Provos were far less ‘depraved’ than Loyalist terrorists and the British army, in defiance of all known facts. That is naked tribalism.
@Brendan O’Brien: You haven’t yet replied to my previous comment, challenging the notion that the assembly collapsed cos ‘both sides are as bad as eachother’. So I’ll just copy and past my previous response here and maybe this time you can read it and stick to the topic, instead of raving about the IRA:
To answer your question: Primarily, yes [it is the DUP's fault]. Unless SF also reneged on what they promised to do in commitments made as preconditions to power sharing, back at St Andrews? And unless SF is also refusing to enact a Bill of Rights as was agreed in 1998 in the GFA? And unless SF is blocking sex marriage, despite the majority of MLAs being in support of it? And unless SF also took £500m of tax payers money and burned in in wood pellet boilers and then refused to see their leader, who oversaw this scheme, to take responsibility for it and resign?
@Tír Eoghain Gael: There was never any good reason for an Irish Language Act to be a sticking point. The wood pellet scheme is not a good reason to refuse to form an executive: matters like these could be addressed within an executive. SF have a responsibility to try to make the system work, just as the DUP have. The two worked together for 10 years or so in circumstances that were really not any less challenging. Both sides are letting the people of NI down.
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/sinn-f%C3%A9in-has-never-wanted-an-irish-language-act-1.3144266
@Tír Eoghain Gael: SF/DUP is an arranged marriage made in heaven, never have two groups of deplorables deserved each other more.
@Brendan O’Brien:
” There was never any good reason for an Irish Language Act to be a sticking point.”
Except for the small fact that it was a commitment made by the DUP at St Andrews in efforts to get into power, who then reneged on that commitment as soon as they got into power. That despite the fact that an Irish Language Act is backed by 5 parties (and a majority of MLAs), not just SF. That you can’t see how that is not a significant breach of trust in a post conflict, mandatory coalition, says a lot about your understanding of it.
“The wood pellet scheme is not a good reason to refuse to form an executive: matters like these could be addressed within an executive.”
OK, so aside from the fact that to anyone else on the planet, a £500bn burning of tax payers money IS a bit of a major issue and would see the person responsible held to account (resign), the problem was then that the DUP leader, who was responsible for the scheme, refused to resign, was a decision made by her and her party, the DUP. The executive had absolutely ZERO power over DUP party decisions.
“SF have a responsibility to try to make the system work, just as the DUP have”
They have been in government for the best part of the last 20 years trying to make it work. Or did you forget that?
So in your rush to claim that both sides as as bad as eachother, then again tell me, which of these widely accepted reasons for the assembly’s collapse was SF’s fault:
1. The DUP reneging on it’s previous commitment to an Irish Language Act, as supported by the majority of other MLAs and parties
2. The DUP refusing to enact a Bill of Rights as was agreed to in the GFA, and as is supported by a majority of other MLAs and parties
3. The DUP’s denial of equal rights for the LGBT community, by their blocking of equal marriage, as is supported by a majority of other MLAs and parties
4. The refusal to resign from the now DUP leader, for her formation of a scheme which saw £500bn of tax payers money burned into ashes.
5. The ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ decision by DUP minister Paul Givan, to cut the £50,000 Liofa grant scheme for sending children to Gaeltacht courses – which, because of the relatively tiny amount of money, was widely accepted, even amongst basically every unionist political commentator, as a move motivated purely by naked sectarianism.
6. The DUP community Hall grant scheme, which saw the same DUP minister, Paul Givan, decide that of the 90 successful applications, almost all went to Orange Halls, with only two GAA clubs being awarded any grant aid.
So, which of the above were as much SF’s fault as the DUPs?
@Tyrone Brit: your persecution complex is absolutely hilarious
The nationalists of N.I are a bit like the Sudentan Germans and the Palestinians. They are/were on the wrong side in a war- and ended up on the wrong side of a border. I don’t like Southern Unionists and their N.I brethern. Reason, they are self righteous. They have God on their side. LOL
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