Your body, your rules: Breaking free from society's beauty pressure
For women, have you ever asked yourself: So what? So what if your stomach is not as flat as a laptop?
What you need to know:
- Women come in all shapes and sizes, they say, so how did we come to conclude that Size 8 was the beauty standard?
- Keeping the standards out of reach is a way to continue policing women’s bodies and feeding the beauty standards monster.
What does a Victoria Secret model have to do with an average Kenyan woman? Nothing, you might say. I would ordinarily say so as well, but I read something that changed my mind.
According to Forbes magazine, the Victoria Secret brand has not held a live show since 2018 amid controversies because it lacked inclusivity for all body types. Its “Perfect Body” campaign included photoshoots with only thin models, sparking a petition that got more than 30,000 signatures.
The ghosts of the 2018 came back to haunt them in their 2024 show, where the women paraded were equally, impossibly slender. To their credit, they came in different colours, and the line-up also included a model with vitiligo. It’s the shapes they did not compromise on.
Read: Beauty trends for the African woman
For centuries, women's bodies have been policed and controlled. From foot binding in China in the 13th Century to the tight, spine-deforming corsets meant to achieve an hour-glass figure, which started in the 17th Century in England, the world seems keen to have women fit into an extremely narrow view of beauty.
The Slimpossible show on Citizen TV Kenya, which featured mostly female contestants fighting to lose weight so that they could gain the “perfect body” seemed to be responding to the patriarchy-driven, commercially constructed view of what a beautiful woman’s body should look like.
Granted, there are numerous health benefits to having a lean figure, but these messages often get swallowed up and drowned by the loud profiteers who are keen on cashing in on impossible beauty standards thrust upon women.
Read: Contested concepts of African beauty at One Off Gallery
Because let’s face it, chipping away at women’s self-esteem and self-worth make for lucrative business. Slimming teas, creams, belts and other contraptions are constantly being pushed to women, urging them that they are not good enough, and men seem to be spared of these expectations and standards.
For women, have you ever asked yourself: So what? So what if your stomach is not as flat as a laptop? Or your waist is not wasp-sized, and your feet tiny and demure?
Women come in all shapes and sizes, they say, so how did we come to conclude that Size 8 was the beauty standard? Victoria Secret models are the exception, not the norm, but the world punishes and makes women pay for not looking like these models. Keeping the standards out of reach is a way to continue policing women’s bodies and feeding the beauty standards monster.
Read: Neomi: My struggles as a plus-size woman
Chasing the elusive slim, Size 8 figure has cost some women their lives. Some have died at the hands of quack plastic surgeons. Some have swallowed pills with chemicals that altered their insides. Some have lost millions trying to look like these Victoria Secret models.
Keeping healthy and fit is great, but women, please let’s flaunt what we have, not what other people dictate we should have. Let’s stop feeding the beauty standards monster.
The writer comments on social and gender topics (@FaithOneya; [email protected])
