I came back to my apartment the other night to my female roommates sitting together and discussing their bodies. Bodily dissatisfactions were exchanged, such as, “I wish I has bigger boobs,” “I want a toned butt,” “I hate my hips,” etc. I stood in the kitchen fixing myself dinner, occasionally chiming in but mostly observing this conversation (as a possible topic for a blog post was brewing in my mind). My roommates gathered around a laptop and began to look up pictures of their desired physical attributes. I listened to exclamations such as, “See, that’s the kind of ass I want!” and “She has perfect skin!” However, the tone of these comments quickly changed; cries of “I do not like her body,” “Eww, her boobs are so far apart,” and “That’s not a cute butt” abounded.
Generic photo of female judgment
Courtesy of allparenting.com
http://www.allparenting.com/my-family/articles/968537/women-judging-women
I found it interesting how, in just a matter of seconds, their comments went from positive affirmations to scathing criticisms, but I remained cool and collected as I was acting as a secret agent of the Unruly Bodies class. However, after I heard one of my roommates say, “I hate when thighs touch. I think it’s gross,” I was taken aback. This wasn’t a put-down of an anonymous woman’s touching thighs on the internet, but a put down of touching thighs in general—thighs that I happen to have. Suddenly I had become one of those women with an undesirable body.
Let me just clarify that my roommates are also my friends, and I absolutely think they have the right to express feelings about their bodies. It is perfectly natural to feel dissatisfied with one’s body. But that having been said, why can’t women look at and talk about their own bodies without looking at and talking about other women’s bodies? This conversation my roommates had really made me think about how we as women look at other women’s bodies and how we are so quick to qualify and label bodies that are not our own.
I understand that our society has impossible standards of beauty for women, so it makes sense that we compare ourselves to each other; we’ve been conditioned to do so. We want to know if we’re “doing it right” and if we’re frustrated by “lacking” in a certain department, it makes us feel better to see someone who is lacking even more. But why does the need exist to condemn another woman’s body as “too” this or “not enough” that? Why do we project our feelings onto other bodies rather than concentrate on our own?
Unruly Bodies 
This post is extremely interesting, as I think that many women have engaged in this behavior at some point in their lives. I know that I myself have made comments on other women’s appearances with my friends, without a clear understanding of why, except that it just simply seemed like the thing to do. I believe that for many women, we have been taught that this sort of behavior is OK. It is almost seen as our right to judge the bodies of other women, because women’s bodies are seen as public property. Although this is a habit that I am attempting to break, it is difficult to do so when it has been so ingrained in me that the bodies of other women are fair game to discuss.
I’m currently enrolled in GWST 320 in addition to 345, and since it’s a film class which looks at media through a feminist lens, we talk a lot about the “female gaze” and the “male gaze.” In particular, we’ve discussed that men are represented in such a way that they’re concerned with their self-image, or how they are projected into the world. Women, on the other hand, are represented as being self-surveying; they scrutinize their appearance based on the standards expected by the “male gaze.” Obviously this sort of analysis is better applied to movies and ads and the like, but when these representations are so all-pervading in media, the attitudes tend to seep into everyone’s heads. So, I’m not surprised to hear that your roommates, like many women in our society, are so critical about their own appearance and the appearance of other women. Simply put, we are taught by almost every person and media source that criticizing and scrutinizing our appearance and those of other women is exactly what we’re supposed to do.
I once heard a quote that has always resonated with me, “The worst thing any woman can do to another woman is degrade her. Men already do enough of that”. I’m not a misandrist by any means but we must acknowledge the patriarchal society we live in. We should embrace our sisterhood and stop judging one another. We aren’t the enemy.