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It's good to be fit; fitness gives you more energy for your daily tasks, it is a resource when you face big stresses like illness in the family, unemployment, or even just a big wedding to plan. Fitness feels good.
But that doesn't explain why about 10% of middle-aged women have eating disorders. It's not just teenage girls who hate themselves if they don't look like ballerinas. In her forties, my dear friend Y is miserable when she has a cute roll of belly on her slim, lithe body. She hates it so much that she'll complain about being "fat" to woman who are obese, which is simply rude.
What she's really saying is, "I don't feel valuable in the world. I don't feel I can compete."
The ultra-fit look has nothing much to do with your real value in a competitive world, unless you're an athlete. After all, women who actually labor--cleaning ladies, waitresses in not-so-fancy restaurants--are less focused on fitness. They don't have the time.
Y's worries come from her desire to be valuable in a world where we actually sit all day--and into the night--on our butts, except when we're at the gym.
My friend Alan Kornheiser, a psychologist, wrote me a fascinating email on this subject not long ago. He said:
"Every day after work women clench their teeth, run one more mile on the treadmill, and go home to eat a teeny salad. They could be enjoying a glass of wine; instead, their work day has expanded into their evenings. If fitness were a paid job, women everywhere would be looking for a union organizer.
Men are busting their balls, too; the gyms teem with them. But most men have positive images of their bodies; and most women do not. Even though sophisticated women know that the beauties of other eras didn’t fit into skinny jeans, that Marilyn Monroe was fleshy, and untanned, and even had cellulite (just watch Some Like It Hot!), they still struggle and sweat to look like Halle Berry and fit the current feminine ideal of ultrafitness.
What most of us don’t know is that the drive for physical perfection comes from two ancient ideas few people would sign on to today, even as those ideas drive our behavior. The ancient Greeks thought that your physical beauty reflected the state of your soul. The Calvinists thought you could tell who would be damned and who would be saved by worldly success. Following this logic, it wasn’t superficial to judge people by appearances: appearance was the truth.
Today, as women compete in the upper levels of the job market, and employers value discipline and drive, a fit body connotes a dedicated worker. Women need to look more like soldiers--hard-bodied-- in order to qualify as colleagues. And again the outside represents the inside. Oscar Wilde put it best: “I always judge by appearances; only shallow people do differently.”
Alan, I think you're right.
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