Attitudes to female appearance and body stereotyping: what can women do?

In my first blog on women in sport, I suggested that attitudes to female appearance and body stereotyping present barriers to girls’ acceptance in sport on their own terms. What I didn’t do was consider what women ought to do about appearance/body stereotyping in general.

Perhaps, we could begin by finding a vision to inspire us all? Personally, I’m inspired by the simple ideal espoused by singer and actress, Ariana Grande. In a tweet two years ago, Grande expressed frustration at the continual media focus on issues like her appearance, the boy she might be dating and what she saw as an ever present misogyny in the American film and music business. Her longing was for a world where every woman would be far more valued for their personal accomplishments and who they are as individuals. Who could argue with that?

The only question, then, is how women get themselves there. Perhaps the answer lies in more and more women, as a collective, forcing change by resisting gender stereotyping from cradle to grave? Many feminists, for example, claim that individuals, almost from birth, undergo a process of socialisation through which they are taught “gender appropriate” behaviours, attitudes, roles and activities. According to this theory, girls are generally conditioned to value appearance, while boys are encouraged to value strength and material success. This is revealed in the toys girls and boys play with: the Barbie doll vs. the action figure (or, as feminists might see it, the pretty girl vs. the strong man). Such toys, coupled with parent encouragement, subtly teach girls that their most important attribute is their appearance.

For many feminists, therefore, the notion that girls are normally interested in appearance and boys are strong and competitive is not natural. It is instead artificially inculcated from birth. To feminists, this gender socialisation undermines the natural individuality of both girls and boys. Thus, as girls grow into women, they are encouraged to believe that they will be more widely accepted when their physical appearance conforms to what society values. Since, as feminism argues, we live in a patriarchal society, the valued female appearance and body type is shaped by the contemporary preferences of heterosexual men. This “ideal” is then propagandised through the media and popular culture. The consequences of such valuation, feminists often maintain, is that women, whose appearance does not conform to patriarchal preferences, are more likely to be marginalised and to struggle to earn public acceptance.

For some, the best way for women to overcome appearance and body stereotyping is through what is popularly known as ‘body positivism’. “Embrace”, a Netflix documentary directed by body positivity activist, Taryn Brumfitt, suggests that women, are culturally conditioned to hate their bodies, and that their approximation to beauty is far too often allowed to define their social value. The body positivity movement seeks to challenge this by encouraging women to learn instead to “love their bodies”. Body positivism is not an expressly “feminist” movement and not all the women featured in “Embrace” would necessarily identify as feminists. Yet, I couldn’t help but notice the clear parallels between feminist and body positivity gender conditioning theory. Could this, then, be the action women need to take to break down gender stereotyping and attain the Ariana Grande vision of being valued for her personal accomplishments and who she is as an individual?

Perhaps or perhaps not. I would contend that the modelling industry ought to be regarded as the common arch-enemy of both the feminist and body positivity movements. This is because it is a leading propagator of female body stereotyping in magazines and on TV. Body positivism is rightly critical of the modelling industry for that reason. Yet its attempts to “change the face” of modelling to bring it more into line with the values of the body positivity movement have been, at best, feeble.

In ‘Embrace’, Brumfitt interviews Mia Freedman, former editor of women’s magazine Cosmopolitan, who describes some of the barriers she encountered during her quest to diversify the female body images used in her publication. Freedman banned diets and tried to include more women of different races and body shapes. However, retail brands refused to provide clothes for her non-stereotypical models because they didn’t want anyone bigger than a size 8 (AUS) associated with their products. Photographers and makeup artists also refused to take part in shoots on the same basis.

For me, the obvious conclusion from the Cosmopolitan story is that body positivism’s idea that women can successfully overcome female body stereotyping by learning to love their bodies is wrong headed. Sorry body positivity, but that is not, I believe, what women primarily need to do. What women need to do first is to recognise that the problem here is not their attitude, rather it is the attitude of society as a whole. Therefore, it is society that needs to change, not women. Society should instead be encouraged to ‘embrace’, from cradle to grave, the Ariana Grande vision. All parts of society must learn to respect every girl’s (and boy’s) individuality. It should never be allowed to compress children psychologically into standard, stereotyped gender roles that are, more often than not, entirely unnatural to them as separate and unique human beings.

This, to me, is what feminism is all about. And it is only when society is fully altered through feminism that women will truly become more ‘body positive’. Feminism therefore, to me, is exactly what women ought to do about appearance/body stereotyping and is the true path to the Ariana Grande vision.