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Body; Image
2005-10-06 4:06 p.m.

I used to have dreams of desperate circumstances - situations in which I was confined to small spaces, unable to move or escape. My body was often useless against whatever ominous force was pressing down on me - I'd run and run but only move in slow motion, I'd want to scream but no sound would come out. Trying to throw punches was equally useless - it was as if my arms were moving under the weight of water, unable to gain speed, velocity or strength enough to defend myself.

I've had person after person (well, not too many persons, ahem) tell me that I'd murmur in my sleep, or grind my teeth so hard that at times, said person would wake up because of the noise. The dreams weren't constant, nor was my nighttime movement, but they were frequent enough for me to wonder if I should be mildly (or seriously) concerned.

An analyst would say I must be feeling helpless somehow; lacking strength and a feeling of power or control over my life and circumstances. Certainly at times that was true. But at other times, it wasn't. I'm a Freudie, and a Jungie and a Foucaultie, for that matter, but I just can't dig layered, abstract or analytical interpretations of things sometimes, especially dreams. Sometimes I feel compelled to look for the literal - it's usually staring us in the face and makes the most sense.

I've been thinking about this because I found an old dream journal I used to keep, and realized that it's been years since I've had those dreams. I don't think I was ever conscious of feeling "weak" or "soft", but I'm most certainly conscious of how strong I feel now, how fit and how capable I feel every time I challenge myself and come out surviving. Hmm, could the two be correlated? Feeling physically sound + self-reliant = no more powerless bad dreams?

I wrote here a few months back about living in a culture that encourages women to take up as little space as possible - metaphorically and literally - and nothing I've written in my three years blogging has ever generated such response. I got several emails from strangers or blogger friends who felt compelled to say "I hear that". Friends who read felt motivated to comment on that particular line next time they saw me or talked to me on the phone. I wondered and I still wonder why we all got so stuck on that comment, and why, if we feel the way we feel about women and space, that things shouldn't be the way they are, we're still faced with that restriction.

We all know that media pushes a certain body type; whether that's "be curvy" or "be skinny" depending on the year, the very notion of "trends" surrounding something as fixed as body type is illogical. But it's ever-present, and what's made me mad over the years is the frailty women are "supposed to" possess. Whether that frailty comes in the form of Western ideals of thinness for women or Eastern ideals of fleshy-ness for women, both push a certain model of physical passivity and restrict the strength a woman is perfectly capable of building.

Big breasts are ideal; big breasts can be restrictive to physical movement. High-heeled shoes are sexy; high-heeled shoes are extremely restrictive. I constantly hear women at the YMCA tell trainers or friends that they don't want to get "too bulky" by lifting ten pounds more than they already are. Shapely arms are ok - but I suppose muscular ones are unattractive. Teeny tops and low-rider pants only allow movement to a certain extent, lest one expose something they'd rather not. Burkas are the only option for women in some cultures, and I don't think I have to explain why those are restrictive. The list goes on, so I won't insult everyone by keeping the examples coming. After I heard that more women than men died in certain parts of Thailand during the Tsunami because their clothing kept them from running away fast enough, I realized this was a still relevant, cross-cultural issue.

That "ideal" body type for women, one that (whatever the trend) often implies some sort of passivity or incapability, is one I very much used to possess. Some years, I was down right scrawny, some years I was fleshier - never too much of either not to fit into some standard. Either way, my body was never quite powerful, and I had, on some level, an understanding that I didn't have to worry about power and function within my body as long as it looked good. Because that's really what my survival would be tied to, right? As long as I could land a relationship, friendship, or approval with my physical appearance what did use and function matter? Twisted thinking, but very encouraged by my culture.

Well use and function did matter apparently - a lot. Though I don’t ever recall feeling decidedly conscious of feeling powerless or defenseless, I strongly believe that my unconscious awareness of my physical incapability worked its way into my dreams. It meant that I couldn’t punch, kick, run, or even scream if I had to, and that I’d wake up never feeling quite rested since this little voice that questioned my defense system just wouldn’t shut up.

I wasn’t concerned with muscle, with endurance - with strength, period when I was younger. I was just concerned with fitting into a certain size and how my body looked to others. When I fit a certain size or set of standards, I created the illusion of satisfaction with my body. But still the dreams would persist, revealing an inner refrain of dissatisfaction, one that, as I said, I probably wasn’t ready to accept.

But slowly starting to consider health over appearance, function over form, and strength over standards made me feel a hell of a lot more powerful, even though I was far from the strongest or fastest, and lifted teeny amounts of weight. Ironically, I felt better about my body despite not “working” on particular “problem areas” or pushing myself very far. I don’t know that my move toward athleticism even had very visible effects on my appearance, since I’ve built an active lifestyle so slowly and still loves me some Fettucini Alfredo. But appearance became less and less important over time. That I haven’t had bronchitis – which I used to suffer from chronically – in years, now that’s sexy. That I can stand and talk and teach all day with out running out of breath or my back hurting is real progress, even if my dress size hasn’t down, or up, for that matter – which ever MTV says is “best” for that particular year.

It took a good deal of training to conceive of weight gain as a good thing, to further this example; there are days I still struggle with the concept. The first time I talked to my very athletic brother about weight training and how to enhance whatever muscles I needed to help me climb mountains in Peru or surf in South Africa, he gave me a once over and said “gain some weight. You’ll never be able to build up what you don’t have.” I was horrified by this answer, conditioned like everyone else to see the scale numbers increasing as inherently bad in any circumstances. “You have to ask yourself what you’re doing this for,” I recall a dear friend saying to me when I admitted my fears of gaining weight to build muscle. “Do you want to be strong? Are you after endurance? Or have you come to lose weight?” I’m ashamed that it was hard for me to choose an answer – ashamed because despite my intelligence and cultural awareness, I became a capitalist and patriarchal beauty industry’s dream: pliable and insecure enough to have beauty defined for me, taught to buy products to temporarily patch my lack of self-confidence. My brother was right – and I somewhat resented the luxury afforded him because of his sex: that was an easy, logical thing for him to do – gain weight to build muscle. But for me? It brought up a whole set of psychological, societally constructed ideas about teeny, soft and “feminine” females who must always try to lose weight, not gain it.

The metaphor of being trapped by one's own body is nothing new in Western culture; in fact, it has become so cliché that it's a tired thing to bring up with classes who have heard it all before when discussing literature, film, or human behavior and political infrastructure. But if it’s so tired, why does it persist in women? We must look past the individualism we try to assign circumstances like this; I’m sorry, I just don’t buy that women individually struggle with weight and body image issues because they have daddy issues or they have low self-esteem. WE still have a big problem – one that affects women, and men by proxy – and the confinement and insistence on women’s limited power and capability persists.

That insistence on limitations has never been as visible to me as it is now: the current administration has been making some bad, frightening decisions and policies that, despite doing my best to rationalize their reasoning, seem almost deliberately created to ensure an old-fashioned status-quo that leaves women out of the equation. I feel like people are returning to the days of throwing their hands up and saying “who cares?” about equal rights and representation. I feel like something as mild as Sandra Day O’Connor’s advocating the lobbying power of NOW in a recent interview renders her a “radical feminist” or even “communist” in too many people’s eyes – I don’t have to listen to Pat Robertson’s show to know that’s how he and his large (and growing) listening audience responded to her statement.

So in dreams, now, do I fight? I wish. I wish I dreamed of a video game world in which I took on ninjas (corporate ninjas) and came out with nary a scratch. But the dreams didn’t reverse power direction, they just went away. I still clench my teeth sometimes, but I have the sneaking suspicion that has more to do with my anger over feeling marginalized politically rather than inept physically. And believe me, the former is much easier to channel into productive means. Hence my writing this.

I’m over my distracting hurdles of conferences, meetings, New Orleans-refugee visiting friends, research proposals and manuscript deadlines. I promise I’ll write again soon. Gweeeee, it’s Fall!

xoxo