Skinny Bitches' Body Image

Patricia Leavy, Andréa Gnong, and Lauren Sardi Ross introduce in their article “Femininity, Masculinity, and Body Image Issues among College-Age Women” the notion that female and male bodies are associated with the physical body and the mind, respectively, according to Cartesian Dualism’s mind-body dichotomy. In a feminist approach, the mind-body dichotomy separates the mind and the body as two separate entities in which men and masculinity are associated with the mind and women and femininity are associated with the body. Their argument claims that the mind-body dichotomy constructs a “hierarchy between the two categories….Mind, and those things associated with the mind are placed on a higher plane than its oppositional form: body,” and thus “conclude that the current standard of femininity disproportionately associates women’s worth with their bodies” (261). However, Leavy, Gnong and Sardi Ross acknowledge that men’s bodies are at times connected with the body, but in a way that associates their bodies with power and privilege, unlike the female body. The feminist critique of this theory asserts that the superior subject in the mind-body hierarchy is “inherently masculine,” and that the mind-body dichotomy “falsely segregates” the two planes that in turn allows for gender inequality and body image issues among women (262). Leavy, Gnong, and Sardi Ross further develop their thesis by reviewing the ways in which social institutions reinforce the mind-body dichotomy in regards to gender by pointing out the “social rewards for conforming to femininity ideals” that exist as long as “narrow oppositional conceptions of femininity…locate femaleness within the body” (263).

            The aspect of femininity-rewarding social institutions I am interested in at this time is the practice of dieting. Leavy, Gnong, and Sardi Ross emphasize the “significant socio-cultural pressures on women to be thin” through which “women attempt to achieve [the] ideal through self-imposed body-based controls,” like dieting (264). They point out several “primary agents of socialization,” like the media, which would include magazines such as Cosmo and Seventeen as well as diet books such as The South Beach Diet or The Atkins Diet, that they call “femininity how-to manuals” that have an instrumental role in the practice of dieting (265). To conclude results from their suppositions, Leavy, Gnong, and Sardi Ross conducted a series of interviews among college-aged women and some college-age men to gather the nuanced responses in which these socio-cultural pressures manifest themselves. They state that the conversations quickly “shift to a focus on the physical body, flesh, and appearance” when the women were questioned about femininity (271). This emphasizes the connection between women and femininity with the body, as well as anxieties about body image where “in order to succeed, women understand they need to be thin, but not too thin; athletic, but not masculine,” etc (272). An interesting point Leavy, Gnong, and Sardi Ross make is: “Women are taught to use their bodies to get what they want,” which I feel links women and bodies to dieting practices (272). A particular diet-book came to mind when I read this: Skinny Bitch. Leavy, Gnong, and Sardi Ross also assert that “American culture places an emphasis on a woman’s weight over their personal characteristics,” a notion I think is communicated through the pages of Skinny Bitch (274).

            Skinny Bitch touts a vegan-oriented diet/lifestyle, a self described “no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous!” The message clearly promotes food practices (dieting) as a way to control body image in order to receive validation, from the self or otherwise. Quoted in Caroline Heldman’s article “Out-of-BODY imaGe” in Ms magazine, Sarah Murnen makes an interesting statement: “girls are taught to view their bodies as ‘projects’ that need work before they can attract others, whereas boys are likely to learn to view their bodies as tools to use to master the environment” (54). I think Skinny Bitch turns women’s bodies into projects in a way with declarations like, “Are you sick and tired of being fat? Good. If you can’t take one more day of self-loathing, you’re ready to get skinny;” and “This knowledge [in the book] will empower you to become a skinny bitch” (Freedman and Barnouin 10). Statements like these suggest that a certain body image, the body image promoted in society and the media as the standard feminine ideal, is something to be learned through a set of steps, or in other words, a “project” to be completed so as to earn an “A” in society’s classroom. Leavy, Gnong, and Sardi Ross suggest there is a “cost-reward system” at work in obtaining society’s ideal feminine body, an idea exemplified in Skinny Bitch’s opening pages: to avoid “self-loathing” one must become skinny to at once satisfy the self and society at large (274). However, the authors of Skinny Bitch, Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, do make a point to declare: “you need to get healthy if you want to get skinny,” and provide several chapters that explain the evils and dangers of simple carbohydrates, refined sugars, dairy products, and meat (11). But again I have reservations about the underlying messages in Skinny Bitch; while promoting the idea that their suggested diet/lifestyle changes will give women better health and confidence, Freedman and Barnouin also write “better sex, great abs, [and] a tight ass” are to be had by making the changes in eating habits they have proposed (117). They also exclaim, “You are worthless to your colleagues, friends, and family if you do not value yourself enough to take excellent care of you” (117). But all these rewards and motivations are concerned with the physical body. It seems as though being healthy and intelligent and confident are not enough, but one has to be healthy, intelligent, confident and skinny. Freedman and Barnouin make an interesting comment, “We are the commanders of our bodies” (126)—but are we (women) really commanding it when so many influences around us are telling us how to command it?

Works Cited

Freedman, Rory and Kim Barnouin. Skinny Bitch. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2005. Print.

Heldman, Caroline. “Out-of-BODY imaGe.” Ms. 18:2 (2008): 52-55. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 27 September 2011.

Leavy, Patricia, Andréa Gnong, and Lauren Sardi Ross. “Femininity, Masculinity, and Body Image Issues among College-Age Women: An In-Depth and Written Interview Study of the Mind-Body Dichotomy.” The Qualitative Report 14:2 (2009): 261-292. JSTOR. Web. 27 September 2011.