COLUMN: The role model of perfection

From Karen Pasternack's, "Effectively Immediately," Fall '97 From Karen Pasternack's, "Effectively Immediately," Fall '97My friend threw up again yesterday. Listening to the gagging sounds coming from down the hall, I could only think how ironic it is that we attend a school where the president has a doctorate in body image, yet our community is guided by a voice that encourages self-deprivation. I don't mean to be harsh, but it's difficult to be positive when my friend heaves her guts out and the University community applauds her continual deterioration. When I was in high school, a woman working on her doctorate in psychology decided to conduct an experiment on how eating disorders are connected to achievement-oriented young women in society. I filled out her questionnaire along with all the other girls in my health class, but was never really phased by the hypothesis. The results of the woman's study showed in my extremely competitive high school. Girls were suffering from more eating disorders than in other less achievement-oriented schools. I still did not spend much time considering the evidence. It wasn't until my "super mainstream" friend at Penn developed an eating disorder that I realized this "fat-free/working out/super thin" role model of perfection targeting young women needed to be aggressively recognized. Of course, eating disorders are not unique to the Penn student body, but the reality of the situation is most of the people catching this "plague" are upper middle-class Americans who can afford it. I lived in Europe for four months and observed the way European women conducted themselves around food. Through my experiences in a British dorm, I began to notice the different eating patterns of my female British friends. They were not conscious of every morsel of food put into their mouths. Sure, they did not spend every moment of the day consuming food. But there was less of a constant dialogue surrounding calories or fat or how many hours people spent at the gym. Why would they concern themselves with that? These young women were not raised with the same mentality about eating, body image and exercise. And as a result, they appeared to have more average weights than the underweight look of many women at Penn. Not that these women weighed 400 pounds. They just didn't waste time worrying about every inch of flesh on their bodies. So what is keeping upper middle-class America, and therefore Penn stuck in this anorexic age? The media is probably the most powerful example. I recently watched two of my favorite movies, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless, back to back, and what I saw startled me. I could not believe how differently the women were portrayed in the older Fast Times compared with the recently released Clueless, even though both were written by Amy Heckerling. The young women in Fast Times looked much heavier on average than the young women in Clueless. In fact, the main character in Fast Times, Jennifer Jason Leigh, probably could never be cast in movie such as Clueless because she would be considered too chubby. Also, the women in Fast Times were often depicted eating, whereas the women in Clueless constantly talked about how fat they felt, while consuming celery sticks. These comparisons made me realize how the "norm" of yesterday, which was still amazingly thin, has been replaced with an even "thinner" norm. So while Heckerling's screenplays are witty and amusing, Clueless continues to perpetuate the message that a successful '90s woman is a size two. Although I'm bothered by the media and the fashion industry's creation of these burdening ideas of beauty, I'm more disturbed by the fact that many Penn students don't seem to discourage it. Last spring, during Body Image Awareness Week, I could not believe the overall indifference to this major issue. One would imagine that groups of women would come forward together to speak out about the rampage taking place on our bodies. Yet these circumstances are far from accurate. The issue of eating disorders is one of the most widely talked-about ones at colleges, yet the people with true power -- the women -- are not making their voices heard. The passive acceptance of this "norm" makes me wonder if there is any hope, or has Penn been successfully brainwashed by the enemy known as thinness? One of my female English professors has a poster on her office wall that reads "No woman is required to build the world by destroying herself." I am proud to be a woman at Penn, amidst some of the most intellectual and determined women in the world. But simply observing a poster on a wall or listening to a speech about body image doesn't seem to prevent women from deteriorating by the decade. Call out the troops, Judy. We're not dealing with an after-school special anymore. This is war.

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