Thanks for the compliment...or not

"to say something nice may be worse than saying nothing at all when the content of the comments is about the appearance of women’s weight or shape."*


This is the conclusion of a study done recently by psychologists at the University of Kent and the University of South Florida. They were studying the effects of compliments and negative comments about appearance and weight on women, testing such factors as varying levels of self-objectification, varying levels of appearance monitoring (thinking about the way you look to other people), and the degree of importance subjects gave to their appearance vs. their competence. The results of the study suggest that even women who don't regularly self-objectify have higher levels of body consciousness and a more negative sense of body image after receiving not an insult about their size/weight, but a compliment (i.e. "Have you lost weight?" or "I wish I had your body.")

The reason, the researchers suggest, is likely that a compliment draws attention to the fact that a woman is being assessed for her physical appearance and not for her competence, and raises her awareness that her body is on display and available for evaluation by others.

This is something that I've thought about before, though under different terms. It is a popular way of expressing a compliment to someone to say, "Have you lost weight?" or "Have you been working out?" but it raises a lot of questions about what one values about the other person. Do we truly value a persons weight or appearance above their competence or, to be more theological, the fact that they are children of God and made in God's image? Should we even be assessing how heavy or light a person is and commenting on it? (as an aside, I think that if a friend is showing signs of hurting themselves by being terribly underweight or overweight, then it might be important to intervene in their lives, but not by making body-related comments)

Women are exposed every day to images that proclaim society's idolization of the "perfect" female body. We have to cope all the time with ads, television programs, movies, music videos, video games, and magazines that make the point that a woman is her body and that certain bodies are more valuable than others. So even receiving a compliment that suggests that we have "made it" closer to the thin ideal turns on the switch in our brains that makes us aware that we too are on display, just like an ad, just like a tv show.

I'm not saying we shouldn't compliment one another. I am suggesting that we should try some creativity in our compliments, and work towards finding things we value in other people that aren't expressly appearance related. Examples might be: "You are really happy today; it's very inspiring" or "I just love the way you laugh!" or "Your friendship is really important to me."

It's a popular notion, even (especially?) among Christians that a woman's essence is "beauty." I think that putting emphasis on something that, by nature, calls to mind physical beauty (I think most people, when asked to define beauty would start with things they could see, like trees and mountains and art and then move on to the other senses before finally coming to the more esoteric notions of truth, etc) is a way that we continue to buy (literally) into a culture that wants women to think about physical beauty above all.

I think that because our culture poisonously focuses on a woman's physical beauty (or lack thereof as defined by rigid and unrealistic standards), Christians should be very circumspect about how much we value physical beauty. Do we as Christian women strive to fit culture's perfect thin, youthful, white ideal? Do we then (even subconsciously) apply those standards to others? Who are the lepers amongst us in a world that raises up fitness and thinness to a moral duty? How can we love each other as daughters of God who are made in His image, regardless of whether we have a perfect BMI?

I think that the results of this study suggest that we should start by focusing on the good things about the women in our lives that have nothing to do with how they look. Although well-meaning, a compliment about weight or shape or beauty might be more hurtful than loving.

* from Rachel Calogero, Syliva Herbozo, and Kevin Thompson, "Complimentary Weightism: The Potential Costs of Appearance Related Commentary for Women's Self-Objectification," Psychology of Women Quarterly 33 (2009), pp. 120-132.

Ads that Objectify: As Dangerous as Smoking

On page 198 of their seminal article "Objectification Theory," authors Fredrickson and Roberts write:

"Because advertisers may have no incentive to regulate their use of objectifying ads, federal restrictions and warning on advertisements--similar to those that govern the tobacco and alcohol industries--should be explored as a means to protect public health."

This is after they have explored, in depth, the effects that the widespread objectification of women has on women's psyches, relationships, and bodies. Their conclusion is that the health of women is at stake when we are routinely treated not as persons, but as bodies that serve a function.

There is most definitely not room in a weblog to reiterate what Fredrickson and Roberts take over 30 pages to describe, but suffice it to say that this article forms the foundation of 12 years of further psychological and sociological study of the effects of objectification on women. Effects include the obvious, such as eating disorders, and the less obvious, such as the interruption of "peak motivational states" (described as those moments in which we apply ourselves, body and/or mind, so completely to a task that we lose direct consciousness of ourselves, feel like we are no longer being controlled by other people, and are actually very happy). Women have trouble experiencing peak motivational states because we are socialized to constantly attend to what our bodies look like to other people.

They go on further to describe the effects of objectification on the psyche, including mental illnesses such as depression. Their conclusion is that the totality of the effects of widespread, culturally-sanctioned objectification of women is dangerous enough to require government intervention. What if there were warnings on skin cream advertisements or regulations that restricted the way that the human body was portrayed? I don't know what such regulations would look like, or what the results would look like, but I think it's important that someone is taking seriously the lived effects of these ads on real women. Perhaps regulations around airbrushing and computer modification are in order, so that we can see that real women have--gasp--pores.

Most of all, I think it's time that we as consumers of media stopped being apathetic about what we allow them to shove down our throats. Women need to stop allowing other women to be objectified so that we can see how good the latest pair of jeans will look on a hypothetical, impersonal ass. Men need to take stock of how much they love the women in their lives and whether or not they think it is worth all the "eye candy" to know that secretly their mothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends, daughters, nieces, aunts, etc are suffering from often a profound sense of dissatisfaction from their own bodies, and hence from their very selves.

We need, in short, to stop using people. It isn't good for their health and it isn't good for ours.

Reference:

Fredrickson, Barbara L., and Tomi-Ann Roberts. “Objectification theory.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 21, no. 2 (June 1997): 173-206.