In order to sell something that thing has to be useful to someone, it has to have some value, it has to look a certain way, perform a certain way or have certain functions that make it attractive to a particular person.
We understand this and therefore we set our own expectations and judgements around things, we set parameters around what we like and don’t like and what we value or need. Therefore when it comes to buying things or choosing things for our life we know what we are looking for and we can simply pick them out and away we go.
The thing about ‘things’ is that they have no feelings, thoughts or emotions. They just exist as they are. They don’t care if you pick them or not. They are not reacting to your judgements and expectations. They are just there and they just are.
Bodies are not like that. And guess why…
Because bodies are not ‘things’ bodies are HUMANS. Real life human people.
When we try to make our bodies a certain way in order to ‘sell’ ourselves to the world we are DEHUMANISING ourselves.
When we mess with our food through excessive dieting, bingeing or over-exercising we are treating our body as a commodity.
We are saying to ourselves that our body is an object that must be changed to look or function in a certain way in order for it to be ‘sellable’, i.e. acceptable, to the world.
This is not necessarily our fault. We have been trained to think about our bodies in this way by a lot of mass market media. We are shown that legs should look long, slim, white and tanned, that waists should be slim and trim and breasts perky and perfectly round. We are told we need to make our bodies look like that in order for people to buy into us as women.
This is disturbing for many reasons and something that might not change in the media for a while. But something we can change is the way we react to this.
Ladies, we can say no. We can stand up and say I am a woman and my body is my home. My body is perfect exactly the way it looks naturally. I refuse to cause myself harm through unhealthy behaviours to try and make my body look a specific way.
This is about reasserting ourselves as whole people. Your body is not something to be judged and scrutinised or compared with an unrealistic ideal. Your body is a living, breathing, moving, sentient being, the home of all your hopes, dreams, wishes and future plans. It is not something to be destroyed, trashed, terrorised all in the name of someone else’s beauty ideal.
We have a right to live freely and happily in our bodies, exactly as they are. Our bodies are not a commodity.
TW: For another post on our bodies as home related to sexual trauma check out my post here