Courtney Martin

Last Saturday I returned home from vacation at the Outer Banks a day early in order to have a meeting with Courtney Martin - the very same Courtney Martin who wrote Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters which I've blogged about several times.

A few weeks before, I'd googled Courtney to find out how to get in touch with her and happened to notice that she was going to be in Richmond at a conference for Women's Studies Professors and Students.  And furthermore, an acquaintance of mine was coordinating the conference!  I immediately wrote her to ask if it might be possible to arrange for me to meet Courtney.  I felt so led to try to meet with her.  My friend wrote Courtney to request the meeting, and Courtney very graciously agreed to it. 

It was a terrific meeting.  I am so impressed by everything Courtney has undertaken.  She has written not only the one book, but also at least two others:  Click: When we Knew we were Feminists and Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists.  In addition she goes all over the country to speak at universities to tell young women about the possibilities for helping to change the world so it's a better place for everyone.  She recently chaired a conference called Endangered Species Women.  Here's what the blurb on their blog says: 

The summit took place on March 18 and 19, 2001 at The New School, with over 500 people in attendance and an incredible diversity of content and conversation. Stay tuned for details about the imminent international campaign.

There have been 5 of these summits in 5 different major cities around the world.  Here's some of the press they received:

The fight-back has begun. Last month, women and men from the fields of fashion, feminism, politics, advertising, psychotherapy, education and the media got together in five cities around the world to shout loudly ‘enough is enough’. To the rallying cry of ‘Take back your body’, the events – called Endangered Species summits – galvanized a campaign for a new visual culture: one that reflects women’s diverse shapes, sizes, forms and skin tones, rather than perpetuating an unattainable beauty myth.

Katherine Baldwin, the journalist who wrote this piece, is also raising awareness over at her own blog. Check it out.

These women and women have the amazing audacity to think they can change the way women are portrayed in the media around the world!


As you can perhaps imagine, Courtney felt aligned with the work I'm doing which is basically the exact same thing.  I gave her a copy of my catalogue which she plans to share with the other organizers of the event.  She posted a blog entry about my work with one of my images on their site.  She was very generous in suggesting folks I could get in touch with who might be interested in my work.  It was fantastic speaking with her!  I'm excited to follow through on her suggestions (after I finish my darn taxes!) so I can start to get my work out into the world even more.  It's been a glorious month!



So many exciting things are happening, I can't even begin to relate them all tonight, but stay tuned the next few weeks!  There seems to be a groundswell happening in the world right now - not only with all the changes in the Middle East.  A similar rush seems to be occurring around women's issues.  Women are no longer content to stick with the status quo.  Things are shifting and changing.  Are you aware of any of these changes in your life/ neighborhood/ community?  Are you working to make any happen?  Share your work here, and let's keep the flow growing!

Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, by Courtney E. Martin

The last couple of weeks I've been reading an outstanding book called Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body, by Courtney E. Martin.  It is an indictment of our culture today and how young women are caught in a vise of trying to please and to be perfect.  These young women give the impression of having their act together.  They excel in school, sports, and extra-curriculars, but at the same time they detest themselves for not being completely perfect, and they often take out that hatred on their bodies.  It isn't just an upper middle class white girl problem either.  Martin's research has shown her that unfortunately this issue is gender-wide, bridging economic and racial lines like few other problems.  And in fact, she is also seeing a huge rise in eating disorders in young men who are also starting to feel pressure to have perfect bodies - six-pack abs, calves the right size, pecs that are muscular as can be.

Here are some of the statistics Martin quotes and address in her book:

* Ten million Americans suffer from eating disorders.
* Seventy million people worldwide suffer from eating disorders.
* More than half of American women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five would prefer to be run over by a truck or die young than be fat.
* More than two-thirds would rather be mean or stupid.
* Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychological disease.

Her take on the problem is that young women today were raised to believe they can be anything - unlike their mothers or grandmothers who were on the front lines of feminism and had to fight to break through the glass ceiling.  Apparently, according to Martin, this affirmation has been devastating to these young women.  She says, "In those affirmations, assurances, and assertions was a concealed pressure, an unintended message: You are special.  You are worth something.  But you need to be perfect to live up to that specialness."

Wow.  What a Catch-22.  I certainly want my daughter to feel like there are no doors closed to her, that she can, in fact, do whatever she wants to do, but I would hate it if at the same time I was somehow giving her the message that she had to be perfect  in order to be able to do that "anything" she set out to do.  What a painful bind.

Does this ring true to you in your experience?  Have you experienced this?  Or has your daughter? 

The world Courtney Martin describes is powerfully dysfunctional, with nary a woman able to have an intimate relationship with herself or with someone else because she's so worried that she looks too horrible to be worth loving.  And the men, too, are focused on but one thing - the woman's body and getting a piece of it.

Martin does ask young men what they look for in a woman - many respond from their hormonal place - big tits, tight ass (please excuse the crudeness of those descriptions - they're from the book) - but if they allow themselves to get under than shallow response, they usually are looking for a woman who likes herself, is confident, has a good sense of humor.  Martin posits that women would actually have an easier time finding a partner if they would take classes at the local comedy improv club than if they went to the gym every day for hours on end.  Authenticity and self-acceptance are the keys to filling in the inner void and finding love.

I was not caught up in the popularity thing in high school.  I didn't fit into that environment, and I knew it, so I didn't even try to play the game.  It wasn't about my body size - I just didn't have a clue how to play catty or do the girl compliment thing.  I wasn't really aware it was going on until my sister got into middle school.  I would hear her on the phone with her friends gossiping about another friend, saying what a &^*(_(*(& she was, then calling another person and gossiping about the person she'd just been talking to.  There was always drama in their circle, always someone mad at someone else.  It didn't make sense to me.  My friends and I sat around talking about religion or boys or the book we'd just read.  We liked each other and let each other know it.  We hung out together, had a nice time, but there wasn't social drama to speak of.  It was a different way of being, I realize now.

So this "mean girl" thing is unfamiliar to me.  I don't know how it works. But I certainly feel for the girls who are in it and do feel compelled to play by its rules.  It looks like it takes so much energy away from other things. 

Yesterday I did some online research on a disorder I had heard about called Body Dysmorphic Disorder.  The Mayo Clinic website defines it as follows:

Body dysmorphic disorder is a type of chronic mental illness in which you can't stop thinking about a flaw with your appearance — a flaw that is either minor or imagined. But to you, your appearance seems so shameful that you don't want to be seen by anyone. Body dysmorphic disorder has sometimes been called "imagined ugliness."

When you have body dysmorphic disorder, you intensely obsess over your appearance and body image, often for many hours a day. You may seek out numerous cosmetic procedures to try to "fix" your perceived flaws, but never will be satisfied. Body dysmorphic disorder is also known as dysmorphophobia, the fear of having a deformity.

Treatment of body dysmorphic disorder may include medication and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Wikipedia states that...

the disorder is linked to significantly diminished quality of life and can be co-morbid with major depressive disorder and social phobia, also known as chronic social anxiety. With a completed-suicide rate more than double that of major depression (three to four times that of manic depression) and a suicidal ideation rate of around 80%, extreme cases of BDD (Body Dysmorphic Disorder) linked with dissociation can be considered a risk factor for suicide; however, many cases of BDD are treated with medication and counseling.^[7]

They state further that a person's issue can be mis-diagnosed as depression when it's actually BDD which is causing the problem.  The sufferer tends to spend excessive time thinking about a perceived flaw, looking in a mirror to examine it thoroughly, and otherwise obsessing about a flaw which usually doesn't even exist.

I feel badly for such a person because their quality of life is so impaired. 

In a similar vein, I've just started reading a book called Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body (Hardcover)by Courtney E. Martin.  She is a young woman writing about her generation's horrific tendency to focus on their bodies and their imperfections.  She states that so many of these young women appear to have it all - excellent grades, amazing achievements, great jobs, perfect boyfriends - they are perfect on paper - yet they spend hours daily thinking about what they have eaten/want to eat/shouldn't eat, etc., etc.  Martin figures conservatively that such people spend over 100 minutes each day with thoughts such as "I wonder if I should get a frozen yogurt.  Oh, no, I haven't earned it.  No, that would be so bad.  No, I won't do it.  Yes, I'm going to.  I didn't have breakfast so I deserve it, and besides it doesn't have all that many calories.  What the hell!"  Then of course there's the price they pay in guilt and self-disgust and vomiting it up.  She paints a picture of imbalance and horrible self-denial.

It seems to me that our society is significantly out of balance with food and eating and body image and very little idea of how to think about it normally.  I haven't read a book about that yet - what normal eating would look like.  Of course I've read nutrition books about the ideal meal plan (where one is supposed to weigh and/or measure ones portions precisely as well as record them so one can't fool oneself about what one has really eaten) but I'm not sure that counts as "healthy".  Does anybody out there have an answer to that one?