Finalpaperpilotenglish

Final Paper
Pilot English
Ali Fisher
May 2016
"Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and
therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging." ~Brene Brown
For this study, I read four books focused around the theme of growing up in today's
society as a woman and the unique challenges women face. The first book I read
was The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, and was part of the book group I was
facilitating. She focused mostly on our inequalities as women, with a large amount
of fact based information. The next book I chose to take on was Reviving Ophelia:
saving the selves of adolescent girls by Mary Pipher, which is focused on the sad
change in adolescent girls, growing up in a media obsessed culture that has
unrealistic images of beauty at every corner. The third book I choose to look at is
called I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isnt) by Brene Brown. This book focuses on
the causes and effects of shame, and how common feelings of shame about who we
are is so common among men and women, but not always for the same reasons or
with the same impact.
"You all die at 15."1 said Stendhal, a 19th Century French writer who is referring to
girls psyches and is quoted by Pipher in Reviving Ophelia. Personally this quote
really hit home. I feel like I lost myself around this age, maybe even closer to 11 or
12. I became deeply unhappy with the person that I was; I started to feel like the
only thing I needed to do was look good because I felt it was the only thing I was
going to be valued for.
The four major things I learned this semester from the books, discussion group and
Below The Surface project were where our poor self image comes from, how it is
reinforced by the culture: society, family, media, school, etc., why it is so
destructive and what I, as a woman, can do about it to resist the negativity.
Where does our poor self esteem coming from? And how are we still letting the
media profit off of all of our insecurities? Women are still being socialized at an
early age to not take themselves as seriously as men. We are led to look to others
for direction and approval.
1 Reviving Ophelia, pg.19
"All geniuses born women are lost to the public good.2 This quote is important
because It shows how much society can twist women's ideas of what's important
and whats not. We are taught to focus on the way we look above anything else.
Even if you take pride in how smart you are, you quickly realize how hard you
would have to work in order to do as well as a man with half your knowledge and
intelligence.
"...women are allowed a mind or a body but not both."3
In Reviving Ophelia, Pipher talks about going to the drugstore and shuffling through
some magazines to pass some time ...The models all looked 6 feet tall and
anorexic. The emphasis was on makeup, fashion, and weight. Girls were
encouraged to spend money and to diet and workout in order to develop looks that
would attract boys." We are exposed to fake images of women that we so badly
want to look like.for what purpose exactly? Even after we are all taught that these
arent real women, that this or that isnt a real body shape, that this isnt natural,
Americans spent more than $12 billion on over 10 million cosmetic surgical and
non-surgical procedures (like botox) in 2014 alone.4 No matter where you go, you
see woman plastered on walls or in magazines or on TV or in ads that are edited to
perfection. It's become so normal that it's not even that crazy to hear anymore. But
somehow, even though we all have a knowledge that we are aspiring to look like
something or someone that doesn't exist...we still try.
The idea of perfection, as communicated through movies, music, television, and
print media, is unattainable and even destructive (from Teen magazines to
Pornography).
"Be thin, but don't be weight obsessed. Be perfect, but don't make a fuss about
your looks, and don't take time away from anything like your family, or your
partner, or your work, to achieve your perfection. Just quietly make it happen in the
background so you look great and we don't have to hear about it.5 We are told to
suffer in silence. We are told that self confidence is sexy, but only when youre
beautiful, young and fit.
I think that it's really hard for many people in our culture to see someone acting so
rebellious, that they can outwardly love themselves, even when they arent what
society tells us is beautiful.
2 Reviving Ophelia, pg. 22 Pipher is quoting Stendhal (19th century French writer)
3 Beauty Myth, p.g.59
4 Data from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
5 Reviving Ophelia
In our book group we talked a little bit about the importance of empowering women
that choose to stay on the modest side and women that choose to show their
bodies because they love themselve and are happy in their skin (not to say the
women that choose to stay modest are not). "Sexual explicitness is not the issue.
We could use a lot more of that, if explicit meant honest and revealing; if there
were a full spectrum of erotic images of un-coerced real women and real men in
contexts of sexual trust, beauty pornography could theoretically hurt no one." 6
We need to learn to love who we are as we are, which can feel like an act of
rebellion- And thats why these issues are so important. As a young woman in
today's society, I feel both empowered and disenfranchised when it comes to the
person I think I can be/want to be, in this world that I live in. I am thankful that
these books describe my experience (and the experience of other women) in so
much detail, explaining why we feel the way we feel. But the everyday struggles
and challenges still stand. Thats why this book group is so important to me. It has
been a small act of self-compassion, trying to give myself and other girls a feeling
of empowerment and love for ourselves and one another, every single week.
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a
right to be here, and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is
unfolding as it should. 7
6 Pg. 135, The Beauty Myth

7 C***: A Declaration of Independance, pg. xxx (Preface)

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Final Paper

1 Reviving Ophelia, pg.19

6 Pg. 135, The Beauty Myth

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