It’s Never Too Early To Hate Your Body

That certainly seems to be the not-so-subtle message, when a quick scan of the ether brings headlines of Abercrombie’s latest foray into the offensive — the padded push-up bikini top for girls… like, 7 year-old girls — and this little item:

A San Francisco mom admits to regularly injecting her eight year old daughter with mail-order Botox… the mom stated:

‘What I am doing for Britney now will help her become a star.

‘I know one day she will be a model, actress or singer, and having these treatments now will ensure she stays looking younger and baby-faced for longer…’

Her daughter replied:

‘My friends think it’s cool I have all the treatments and they want to be like me. I check every night for wrinkles, when I see some I want more injections. They used to hurt, but now I don’t cry that much. I also want a boob job and nose job soon, so that I can be a star.’

Well, I guess we know who that padded bikini top is being marketed to. But here’s the thing: while the Botox story sounds over-the-top outrageous, in a world where seven year old girls are being sold padded bikini tops, it’s not that over the top. The more we absorb the message that our bodies are something to do battle with–that can always be “improved,” well, the more this sort of freakshow story makes sense. And here’s the other thing: how many seven year-olds do you know who drive themselves to the mall, or have a credit card to plunk down for a pair of “Cute Butt” yoga pants? Why are moms willing to subject their daughters to this?

Worse than the message that your body is wrong, worse, even, than the sexualization of ever-younger girls is the message that underlies it: that you are nothing more than your body. That spending your time and energy forcing your body into what ‘society’ — or, less face it, the media — deems acceptable is more important than, well, anything else. And hey, after years spent buying into that and struggling to achieve the cultural physical ideal, I guess it’s no surprise that some moms think they’re giving their daughters a leg up when they’re buying them padded bikinis and injecting their foreheads with poison Botox. But: doesn’t it seem that all of this distraction is a pretty effective way to dilute women’s energy? Who has time to fight for equal pay when there’s so much physical maintenance to be done?

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Botox Feminism

This week’s Newsweek poses the interesting question: Is your booty in your beauty? That is to say, do pretty people make more money (short answer: yes), and if so, should women, to quote Ru Paul, work it at work?

An interesting debate, to be sure. Not least given feminism’s real–and imagined–history of trashing (and burning–that’d be the imagined part) their high heels, girdles, and bras in the name of freedom from a sexist culture. In one of the articles, “She Stoops to Conquer,” Jessica Bennett wonders if “real feminists use their looks to get ahead,” and launches the piece with a reference to the so-called “Bo-Tax”–an addition to the health care bill which would have (if passed, which it wasn’t) levied a tax on “injectables” and other elective cosmetic procedures, and the counterintuitive resistance to the Bo-Tax from no less than Terry O’Neill, the president of NOW, who, by way of explanation for her position, said:

“[Women] have to find work… and the fact is, we live in a society that punishes women for getting older.”

You might expect the National Organization for Women to have better things to do. You might expect them to look down upon things like injecting one’s face with a known toxin. But no. And you know, she has a point. Here’s a bit from Bennett:

Women may have surpassed men as the majority of American workers, but they’re no less slaves to the beauty standards of the day than they were during the Mad Men era. So while feminists of the past may have blasted plastic surgery as shallow, today even Gloria Steinem has admitted to an eye lift. Of course, buying into the belief that we must keep up with the Joneses brings with it a double bind: at work, women can be too attractive, and whether it’s by natural or artificial means, studies show they are faced with resentment, envy, often viewed as less intelligent or vain. In a corporate hierarchy still largely dominated by men, this is all the more exaggerated: women who reject the idea that they must plump and pull to get ahead resent the women who accept it; those women then resent those who don’t need surgical enhancement. And many women who indeed benefit from looking good face their own cycle of self-doubt: Did I really deserve that raise/promotion/recognition, or did he just like the way my legs look in that skirt? Is that what the rest of the office assumes? It’s insecurity at its worst, but it’s surely not for nothing: as one male Newsweek reader told my female colleagues and me, after reading our story on sexism: “No matter how much I respect my female co-workers, I eventually think about putting my hands on their chest.”

It’s hard to eradicate sexism; but in the face of it, maybe there really is a case to be made for using what we’ve got. That’s not to say we should tear off our tops in the name of “empowerment,” or bat our eyelashes at every middle-aged male manager who hovers over our cubicle… But making an effort to look good, because we know it helps us out professionally, and, well, maintaining that look, shouldn’t necessarily be shunned, nor should we be plagued by personal guilt. This is a conscious decision–and in an age where looks matter more than ever, it can be an economic one. Look at it this way: if you’re doing your job, who cares if your boss wants to promote you because he thinks you’re pretty? So what if you invest in a round of Botox because you believe–like 13 percent of women, and 10 percent of men–that it will help you in the long run?

Well, sure, so what? If you got it, flaunt it (and if you don’t anymore, umm, fill it?)–we are, after all, still paid only 77 cents to the man’s dollar, and there’s fewer of us at the tops of the ranks, so we might as well. By any means necessary, right? After all, a pretty woman earns a reported 4% more–and gets more attention from her boss–than her Ugly Betty counterpart. And then, there’s this: I think it’s safe to say that many of us prefer to look well-rested and perky than like we’ve been run over by a truck, so while the numbers show that pretty people do get ahead, getting ahead is likely not our only motivation. If we’re honest, I’m sure we’d all confess that a certain measure of our desire to look our best has to do as much with turning heads–not least the one who’s looking back at us from the mirror. And hey, what’s the matter with a little vanity? More power to us! But the one thing I do wonder about is this: Do you think your male coworkers ever worry about this stuff?

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