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BY TAMAR LERER

In print | September 11, 2008

If you could have any shitty superpower, what would it be? Conditions: It can’t make crime or fight crime, and if you applied to the X-men they’d reject you. Some responses I’ve heard are the ability to be instantly groomed, the ability to sleep only five hours a night and yet be completely refreshed in the morning, and the ability to have everything taste like what you thought it would when you first saw it.

Like most silly questions, it’s pretty revealing. My answer after a semester abroad? To always have a phone card on you (one that you paid for with your own money) whenever you really need to make a call to a friend 7000 miles away. My answer two years ago? To be able to chose my own body weight and stay there. Unfortunately, that would have been the same weight I was sophomore year in high school.

I’m not the only one who has held unrealistic, unhealthy desires regarding her weight. And yet, two years ago, dealing with my freshman fifteen, I felt completely alone in my struggle.

When I came home for Christmas break that year, having gained 15 pounds on my very slight frame, my best male friend called me “plump”. Numerous people told me I looked “mature,” which I, of course, took for an insult. The amount of attention that was paid to a few late-night pizzas and celebratory Cheng Heng brought me to the point that vacation that every time I went out to eat with my friends, I ended up crying. To take the food would make me feel awful about myself later, and to sit there not eating while everyone else was made me feel like a freak.

It wasn’t until my best female friend came home that I realized that something bigger was going on. Julia is 5’10’’, blonde, and applied to be on America’s Next Top Model. She’s that girl and she’s dealt with a lot of hate from other women because of it. Yet, when we went to 7-11 her first night in and I was eying the donuts, she walked straight to the back and made herself a cup of tea. “Every time I’m hungry,” she told me “I drink tea instead.”

Whoa.

And yet, no one is talking about it. That’s why I’m writing this column. For a school teeming with dialogue, safe spaces, and support groups for almost ever conceivable group or issue within the population at large, in my time here the campus has been almost silent on the question of body image issues.

The little public discussion I’ve encountered is well-intentioned, but the message has been unfortunately simplistic, to a point where it’s almost dismissive: Love your body just the way it is. Thanks. If it were that easy, I’m sure we’d all do it. So, many of us are left still feeling bad about our bodies, but now also feeling bad that we feel bad.

Which is maybe why there has been so little dialogue on campus. As a school, we value intelligence, passion, world-shaking drive. We value alternative culture so much that we look down on people who we see as “mainstream”. And what could be more mainstream than a 20-year-old girl complaining about her weight?

I’m sick of the stigma and sick of the silence. I have not had a serious conversation with a girl about how she feels about herself who hasn’t revealed that she has her own body image issues. I encountered so many confessions of “disordered eating” — that grey zone before “Eating Disorder” when eating and thought patterns aren’t quite right but there’s nothing officially wrong with what you’re doing — that I’ve stopped being surprised. A new survey by Self Magazine and UNC Chapel Hill found that “75 percent of American women surveyed endorse some unhealthy thoughts, feelings or behaviors related to food or their bodies.”

And while I’m sure exceptions exist, my experience says something: there is a huge problem with how we, as college-aged females, view ourselves and our bodies. And it’s not the dramatic appearance of Anorexia or Bulimia that we usually limit our notice of these issues to. It’s subtle, it’s complex, it’s nuanced, and I’m going to talk about it. If only to let someone who is reading this and struggling with his or her own weight know that he or she is not alone.

There are two main viewpoints I take on this subject, that seem contradictory, but I believe are inherent to any healthy approach to understanding ourselves and our bodies. Firstly: Our society holds unrealistic images of beauty that we should not try to live up to because they are unhealthy and impossible.

Secondly: It is okay to want to lose weight for purely superficial reasons. Foremost, I believe that it is most important to be healthy — and in many cases making healthier choices will lead to weight lost.
I want this column to be positive, because that’s the first step to feeling better about ourselves: a positive attitude. I’m far from perfect (just ask the lovely editors of this paper), but when I think about how low I felt about myself two years ago, I’m pretty shocked at how far I’ve come. I hope that together all of us who struggle with our bodies can take a step towards shocking ourselves.

Tamar is a senior. You can reach her at tlerer1@swarthmore.edu.

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