Recipe for stress: Take a young soul, a soul brand-new to
the world, and tell her that the most important work she’ll ever do—in fact,
her prime reason for coming into the world—begins with her ability to get
another person to fall in love with her. Then watch as she learns to manage her
body--something she has not much control over--her shape, her hair, her skin.
Watch as she practices and fails at, or gets very good at, flirting. The tease,
the advertisements, the come-hither. The thing is, she will probably succeed to
some extent (though she might not). Regardless, she’ll see the results as her
own doing: if she failed, she is a failure. If she succeeded, but if things
fall apart later or she realizes she succeeded at the wrong goal, that will be
her fault, too. Or it will be difficult to tell to what extent it was her
fault. Meanwhile, the habit of valuing herself according to her body will be
ingrained in her for her entire life. Even if she succeeds in separating
herself from the opinions of her husband and others around her, she cannot
separate her self-concept from her sense of her own body (weight, hair, skin).
She will then watch what happens to her body through and after childbirth,
middle age, menopause, old age with an increasing sense of waning power in the
world. It takes much training to counteract this.
So I cry when I hate my latest haircut/color. And I can’t
even be just sad about it, because there’s also the guilt: why not cry about a
real problem, you shallow woman? All this about your appearance?
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