Getting beyond the Barbie

Love Your Body Week's got heart. That's undeniable. I admire the sentiment and enthusiasm behind the event. Who can argue with the positive effects of inspiring a little self-confidence in a population so prone to harsh self-critique?

All the same though, I find the actual week-long event a bit of an annoyance. The way I see it, you've got a small group of enthusiastic and already super-confident students trying, in one week's time, to combat the entire social conception of the idealized human body. I'll give them props for ambition, but at times I can't help rolling my eyes.

Despite small increases in volunteer participation, I'd argue that Love Your Body Week doesn't do much towards inspiring a social revolution. You can put up as many 8 x 11 inch posters on the campus stairwells as you want, attempting in one short sentence to redefine the concepts of perfection and beauty; you can scribble chalk all over the Dustbowl proclaiming the beauty of each and every one of us; but when half the students that walk past the posters and the chalk art are laughing and scoffing at the perpetual positive tone of the messages, how can you say your campaign has had any success?

Just imagine being one of those less confident students dogged by negative thoughts concerning their weight, their clothes, their color, their hair, you name it. You want so much to believe what you see spelled out across campus, but your peers are funneling so much scorn towards the event that you feel shamed into not participating.

While it's true that by telling yourself something enough times, you'll probably come to believe it, one week of think-positive propaganda isn't enough to un-brainwash someone of a social conception and to allay their self-conscious fears.

In that light, maybe we should think about where our capacity for self-consciousness comes from and what sort of purpose it serves. Maybe that will show us a more productive route to undermining a given social conception.

We, as human beings, are self-conscious of how we measure up against others, and personally I'd chalk that up to human nature and evolutionary instinct. As the old saying goes, there is safety in numbers. Being different can mean one of two things. Either you help advance your species, or you find yourself voted out of the gene pool. In that light, of course we'd evolve self-awareness. There's a clear benefit to being conscious of how you compare to the rest of your species.

But somewhere along the line in human history, self-consciousness got a bad rep. Nowadays, we've got entire TV shows devoted to helping self-conscious kids break through into self-confidence. As much as Love Your Body Week makes me roll my eyes, MTV's Made cracks me up. The only reason those kids become more confident is that they are the center of attention for a prolonged period of time. The constant attention of cameras, classmates, and "coaches" is enough to make anyone believe in their own capabilities.

That our confidence responds so enthusiastically to attention brings up an important point, namely, that confidence can be broken down into two components. First and foremost is a belief in the self, an acknowledgement that as a civilized species we no longer have a need for instinctual conformity. Our higher reasoning is above such base assumptions. That concept, though, is one we have to internalize by ourselves; it's not something that chalk art and a week's worth of attention is going to teach us.

The other side of confidence is the knowledge that we're appreciated as much by others as by ourselves. Now here's something that's worth a week of campaigning. For instance, imagine how much better a group of girls is going to feel if the guys they pass on a drunken weekend night refrain from playing an obnoxious game of Yes/No. Not being objectified goes a long way towards boosting confidence. And girls, maybe we could stop giving each other critical once-overs and basing our opinions of someone on whether they're wearing Guess or Levi jeans. Attitudes like these are far easier to change than entire social perceptions.

Ultimately though, what people need to realize is that social perceptions change over time and between cultures (it wasn't so long ago in Western society, and still is true in other cultures, that the idealized woman was voluptuous rather than thin.) Once you realize how quickly perceptions change, the ebb and flow of subliminal media messaging stops affecting you. You look at social standards more as a curiosity or as a lens through which you can analyze your world, not as the mold into which you have to fit yourself.

Jocelyn Rousey is a Heights staff columnist. She welcomes comments at jrousey@bcheights.com.