Myth Debunked: the "Real" Versus "Ideal" Woman

"Real women have bellies." "Real women have curves." "Real women aren't perfect."

Isn't this obsession to define "real women" appealing to the same logic that marginalizes women with curves, or women with stretch marks, or women with small boobs or big asses? Because really, this whole rush to define "real" seems like the race to establish just one more ideal for women. Are you "real" enough? Can you be proud of curves? Imperfections? A belly? It's a constant cycle of insecurity.

The comments on a Lemondrop post entitled "Are Thin Women Not Real?" show some serious contention behind the notion of a "real" woman. One commenter says real women have bellies, the next lashes out by saying she doesn't have a belly, so does this mean she's not real?

Many women weigh in saying they're naturally thin and are constantly asked what's wrong with them for not eating enough; larger women point out how so much of society is structured to make them feel guilty and ugly. Women suffering from eating disorders talk about struggling to feel real after having vacillated all over the spectrum of thinness and largeness. Athletic women wonder where they fit on this spectrum between constructed skinny "beauty" and "real" curves. Nearly all make solid points.

But perhaps the best point is this one from commenter jamiclough: "There is only one kind of "woman" who is not real, and that is a two dimentional [sic] representation of a woman,(i.e. photo) that has been changed by artists and photo-shoppers until it becomes an artist's representation of the real deal."

Hear hear! So much of this debate about real-vs-fake and skinny-vs-fat seems to get mired in the same assumption that women should adhere to one singular beauty ideal instead of simply being themselves, belly, hips, ass, boobs, skinny, fat, whatever.

So what I love about Elena Rossini's video is that in lieu of pitting larger women against thinner ones, it emphasizes how beauty is constructed. The video points out again and again that both women in paintings from centuries ago and women in magazines today are conforming to an ideal -- an ideal of perfection, an ideal of female beauty.

That ideal may have changed drastically over the years, but the driving force behind it has stayed the same: the assertion that women should fit whatever the current male-driven cultural definition of perfection is.  How about replacing that assertion with one that says, you know what?  Real women are just that: Real, live women living their lives, walking down the street, drinking coffee, laughing, peeing, talking, sighing, eating fruit, watching movies, worrying, and doing a bazillion other things every day. The end.

Image: Christopher Peterson's Photostream