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Aug. 4, 2014 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
29:34
TEDx： the Beluga Chronicles
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So I am Jess Baker.
Hi, Jess.
And I'm here tonight to talk to you about one of the most radical and controversial subjects out there.
Clearly, this is going to be something very important.
That concept being complete and total body love.
Masturbation is only controversial to Catholics, Jess.
Everyone else is just fine with it.
Body love and the impact it has on us individually, and also the impact it has on our society as a whole.
Ah, the science of wanking.
So we're going to talk about a few things tonight, a handful.
We're going to talk about the state of the world we live in right now.
Don't you think that's a bit heavy for a talk about masturbation?
We're going to chat about things we can do individually to start our own self-love journey.
Don't worry, I have already got a bottle of lotion.
And then we'll talk about what those actions do for the rest of the world.
If you say so, but I really think this is the sort of thing that's best kept to ourselves.
So I get a question a lot, but I want to ask you one first.
All right, but all this talking is kind of putting me off my stroke.
My question for you here in the room tonight is how many of you would feel comfortable tonight looking me in the eye?
I won't even blink.
And telling me that you can call yourself beautiful or handsome.
What?
I'm not masturbating in front of a mirror.
How many of you can call yourself beautiful or handsome tonight?
Some.
Good.
Shout out to the people in the audience who masturbate in front of their mirrors.
Good.
Those of you who did not raise your hand, you are not alone.
In fact, you're normal.
Because the statistic globally is that 4% of women will call themselves beautiful.
Wow.
Is that it?
Because what I hear when you say that is 4% of women are inherently egotistical and narcissistic.
And in my experience, men is very similar.
So that leaves 96% of us that feel inferior.
You don't know that anyone feels inferior.
Maybe they're just not up their own asses.
And not good enough because of our body.
And to solve this, you're going to teach them how to masturbate.
Am I correct?
And it's tragic because it doesn't have to be that way.
So the question I'm asked is, why is body love so important?
Well, I can only speak from the male perspective, but if you don't, after a while, your balls start to really ache.
I imagine women get a very similar problem with their ovaries.
Usually people say, Jess, why are you so superficial?
Why do you focus on the body and not on a personality or the talent or the things on the inside?
And I like to talk about that stuff, but the body is really important because it's the thing that you use to masturbate with.
The way we view our bodies determines the way we participate in the world.
So the way we feel about this impacts all of this.
I will concede your point if you never do anything as cringeworthy as that again.
And if you think about it, collectively, all of our participation shapes the world we live in.
I'm not really sure how many people I want participating in my masturbation sessions.
I kind of like it to just be me.
So here is some really sad, real talk.
Well, that's hardly boner-inducing.
How am I supposed to love my body when you want to talk about sad things?
81% of 10-year-olds are afraid of being fat.
Are you aware that people can have more than one fear?
It's their biggest fear.
It's bigger than cancer, war, or losing both of their parents.
I know you think that this is some sort of bad thing, but this is actually a glorious testament to the success of Western civilization.
Do you think the kids in Gaza are worried about being fat?
Okay?
In a survey of nine and ten year olds, 40% of them have tried to lose weight.
That is almost half of our fourth and fifth graders who are dieting, folks.
Maybe if the parents didn't let them get so fucking fat, they wouldn't have to think about dieting.
Either way, though, well done Western civilization.
We live in such terrible abundance that our children are more concerned about being fat than they are mortal danger.
And then as adults, 91% of women are unhappy with their body.
And the other 9% go to the gym.
91%.
And the interesting thing is that only 5% of women naturally have the body shape that we see in the media.
Because the statistic globally is that 4% of women will call themselves beautiful.
Do you think there might be some connection here?
5% of women are actually the sort of naturally beautiful, slim body type that is often portrayed in media.
And about 4% say, hey, I'm beautiful.
Do you think there is any correlation between those statistics?
So that leaves 95% of us, pretty much all of us, unable to achieve that in real life.
Maybe that's because 95% of us aren't that good looking.
Maybe we're just normal.
So we have this failure, shame, failure, shame, and it's just the really quite ugly.
Did you just say that we've got this failure, shame, failure, shame?
It's that we're quite ugly.
So we have this failure, shame, failure, shame, and it's just the world quite ugly.
It really sounds like you're saying that.
And then I'm thinking, well, that's not very positive, is it?
So what happens?
What happens because of these statistics?
Nothing.
Nothing happens because of statistics.
Statistics are the measurements of things that have already happened.
What does that look like?
It looks like a few things.
How does this impact us?
We see low self-esteem.
We have bad days just because of our body.
Get on a treadmill.
It's really too bad.
We put our life on hold.
We say, I'm going to go gene shopping once I lose 10 pounds.
Or I'm going to take that photo with my family after XYZ.
Or I'm going to start dating after Phil in the Blake.
How many of us have done that?
Well, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say it's all of you.
But at the end of the day, you could put the effort in and lose some weight, and then none of these things will be a problem.
I have.
A lot of us have.
We put our lives on hold.
We stumped it because of the way we feel about our bodies.
Love, I have no idea why you feel bad about your body.
You have arms like the rock.
We see poor relationship skills.
We feel unlovable and undeserving.
I know plenty of slim women with poor relationship skills.
Women with low self-esteem are more likely to stay in abusive relationships.
That is true.
If women didn't pick these guys and then keep going back to these guys, we would probably have less abusive relationships.
It does take two to tango, though.
These guys shouldn't abuse women, but that's a given.
We see employment losses.
People who have low self-esteem do make less than their confident counterparts, so it affects us at work.
Do you realize that being fat isn't the only reason someone might have low self-esteem?
We see the creation of or triggering of mental illness.
Sorry, are you saying that fat women go mad?
Maybe something's dormant and it's triggered by social trauma, or...
Stop you there.
Did you just say social trauma?
Maybe we develop symptoms of depression or anxiety or borderline personality disorder.
You seem worryingly committed to the idea of fat birds going mental.
We see dangerous eating disorders, also mental illness.
But I've been told so many times by fat women that being fat isn't unhealthy and there's absolutely no ramifications for your physical well-being.
Those can be fatal.
And we see suicide.
People who would rather die than live in this body that they perceive as flawed, which is a lie.
They only perceive it as being flawed, do they?
It's not that it is flawed.
It's perfect.
But the people in those bodies are looking at it, going, God, my perfect body is so flawed.
So it's a little more than warm fuzzies.
It's kind of a big deal.
These are huge social issues that we're dealing with.
Must resist fat jokes.
The core of my message is that we can transform our lives if we learn to change our world and not our body.
Anything to avoid going for a run, isn't it?
Little bit about me.
I write a blog.
It's kind of a big deal.
No, I can contain this.
Yes, it's your blog, you fucking narcissist.
Of course you think it's a big deal.
Fuck!
I'm really glad to have the platform.
What a surprise.
Fat girl runs blog about food.
I'm also a founder of the Body Love Conference, which just happened here, the University of Arizona, and it was wildly successful.
I'm not going to make fat jokes.
I'm absolutely not.
I'm not going to mention how, unsurprisingly, in the world's fattest country, fat acceptance is an incredibly popular thing.
I'm not doing that.
Which just reiterates to me how important this concept is.
Actually, it really reinforces how important salad and exercise is, but never mind, carry on.
I'm also known for visual campaigns.
Oh, that's a secret, guys.
You're not allowed to see that one yet.
That one.
Visual campaigns.
This is the attractive and fat that, as we mentioned, was in response to Abercrombie.
Come on, love.
Rape jokes aren't funny.
Look at that poor guy.
He can't escape.
Ah, son, I wouldn't make any fat jokes.
And the CEO said, We don't sell extra-large shirts to large women because we only sell to the cool kids.
Saying that women who were larger were valueless.
They aren't selling fat women.
They do not determine the value of fat women.
They are saying that they have a brand image that they would like to maintain.
Don't tell me you're not familiar with stores that cater exclusively to extra large people because normal people aren't catered for there.
So I teamed up with Leora Kay.
We made a counter campaign that showed that sexy isn't a size and that, in fact, women that are larger do have value.
I really am trying to be the better person here, I swear to God.
She's giving me so many openings, though.
You don't have to know any of that stuff because of my super secret slide that you just saw.
I'm about to tell you the one thing that you really do need to know about me.
Only one thing, and that is that I am fat.
Oh, come on, that's not fair.
Is anybody shocked by that?
It's pretty obvious, right?
Okay, so as a fat person in society, I'm put into boxes.
Go on.
I'm a cultural deviant.
I am a freak of physical nature.
I am an embarrassment to society.
All nature is physical, but that's not why you're an embarrassment to society.
It's nothing to do with you being fat.
It's because you're on a stage proclaiming to the world how wonderful it is to be morbidly obese.
Every other society on earth is looking at us and going, What are you fucking talking about?
It is a bad thing to be morbidly obese.
Culturally, the West is very evidently on the decline.
When we moan and groan about the obesity crisis in America, they're talking about me.
Well fucking done.
And I am your worst nightmare.
I'm the reason you diet.
I am the reason you go to the gym.
I am your fifth spirit because you do not want to end up like me.
It's fucking demoralizing to see you so proud of that.
Don't you have any standards?
I was unwillingly put into these boxes, but because I was, I had to make a very black and white decision, and that decision was to cut out the middleman.
Will I hate my body or will I love my body?
There was no gray area.
I wasn't going to lose 110 pounds overnight.
Or ever, because the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Your first step was to create a blog about baking.
Suddenly be okay.
And I decided to love my body.
Because frankly, it's easier to stay home and wank.
And so that became transformative for me and for the millions of people that I touched through sharing my journey online.
And I still continue to get emails every day from across the globe about this concept.
That's why I do this, and that's why I'm here today.
So body love is important.
I think I pounded that one into the ground.
So what can we do about it?
Apparently anything apart from dieting or exercise.
I'm going to give you 10 tools that you can use to encourage your body love.
And then I'm going to tell you what it does for the world.
Number one, start now.
Holy shit.
Tonight, in this room, this very second, committing to body love is a very interesting thing because I found pictures of myself from the last 10 years and I had a meltdown a little while ago because I was thinner in them, therefore more beautiful.
One doesn't necessarily follow the other.
And I thought maybe if I was like that, I would be more successful.
I would be happier.
I would have a hot boyfriend.
And then I had to stop myself because I'm happy now.
And I realized that happiness is not a number on the scale and it's not a size.
It's a state of mind where we say, I am okay just the way I am.
And we can start that tonight.
But are you though?
Really?
Because it strikes me that people who are genuinely happy with their bodies and aren't worried about their weight don't go around doing talks about how it's okay to be the weight they are.
This very TED talk or TEDx talk is a symptom of how unhappy you are with your body.
Number two, we need to recognize that body hate is learned.
Does anybody remember being a kid and we thought our bodies were the most wondrous magical things?
We'd like put our toes in our mouths and we'd show the world our belly.
There was no shame.
Yes, but kids don't know any better.
Just because it's learned doesn't mean it's bad.
It's actually consideration for others.
I don't want people shoving their belly in my face.
We transformed into this.
The interesting thing is that because it was learned, it can also be unlearned.
It transformed into that because they suddenly became aware that they wanted other people's opinions of themselves.
In this case, to look pretty for boys.
When you can stop young women wanting the interest of young men, then you will make it so they don't want to wear makeup.
Good fucking luck.
Let's learn why we've learned to hate ourselves.
And it's deeply rooted in history.
Yep, literally everything is.
Go on.
From the transition from hunter-gatherers to farming.
Yep, an absolutely undocumented time in human history, only revealed to us through archaeology.
Go on.
Where women became property and therefore the target of our advertising today.
Right, that was quite a big jump.
Let's go through that a bit more slowly.
Where women became property.
Not in any society that you come from or have even visited, but go on.
And therefore the target of our advertising today.
That men are concerned with women's beauty is not in itself patriarchal.
What you are ultimately complaining about is competition for mates.
To the slenderization for class distinction.
Alright, so I went to her blog and found the slenderization for class distinction bit.
She says, slenderization for class distinction.
In the late 1800s, obesity was actually a sought-after body type in America.
I'll stop you there.
It wasn't obesity that was sought after.
It was the kind of Renaissance art, chubby woman we're talking about here.
Just so you didn't look like you were emaciated.
But, alright.
At the time, tuberculosis and other diseases were causing people to waste away.
Body fat was a healthy and enviable trait.
Yes, it was.
Additionally, food was scarce and survival again of utmost importance.
Listen, it wasn't caveman times, alright?
Food wasn't scarce.
There was plenty of food.
It was just who could afford it.
The wealthy were distinguished by their heavier body types, and that highlighted their obvious access to a plethora of food.
Yes, it did.
But all of this has shifted as meals became readily available.
Meals were always readily available.
It was the food types.
They could get sugar from the colonies.
Middle and lower class citizens began to fill out, and soon the rich folk blended in with the rest.
Add the sudden influx of migrant workers whose heavier body type tended to be stocky.
Citation needed.
And classes were no longer distinguishable.
Alright.
Now, that is true, but I don't know when you think this occurred.
This occurred in the 20th century.
This wasn't like a Victorian thing.
This occurred after the Second World War.
Look at all the poor people going to the Second World War.
Look at every single one of them.
You will not find a fatty among them.
But now, it's hard to spot the slim people.
Alright?
This is the difference.
The food, the food process, the whole manufacturing process of your food, modern food in the modern West has become industrialised, large-scale, and it's using really shit ingredients because they're cheap.
And the wealthy will always want to attempt to distinguish themselves from the poor.
Just like the poor will always try to look like the wealthy.
I've got an interesting story for you.
The reason that there is an upper-class British accent is because the industrial production of clothes reduced the value of the clothes, so even poor people could afford them.
So suddenly poor people could start dressing like they were noblemen.
That was insane.
Until that point in all of human history, everyone looked like what they were.
Which is why it was a good thing to be a butler, because you would probably get a suit made for you.
Specifically tailor-made for you by your nobleman.
And so when you're busting around in your suit and everyone else is wearing their peasant rags, you're going to feel pretty good about yourself.
But now everyone's wearing a suit.
It's not expensive.
Any poor person can afford one.
So you need something else to distinguish yourself from the peasants.
And this is where the posh British accent came from.
It was important to learn manners and diction to make sure that you didn't look like an uneducated peasant, or at least you didn't sound like an uneducated peasant, because there was no way to determine it visually.
The rich will go to great lengths to be distinguished from the poor.
And the poor will always try to ape these great lengths.
Happened in the late 1800s.
The rich created, not the physicians, the rich, created the obesity parasite.
And that way they would be able to be differentiated from the poor.
And she goes on to say in her blog that the obesity parasite, as it is called, was started by a few overweight and wealthy men who decided that fat was repulsive.
The two links that are here and here go to Fat Shame by Amy Ehrman Farrell and The Fat Studies Reader by Esther Rothblum and Sandra Solvay.
But do I give these the benefit of the doubt?
These seem like echo chamber material to me.
And then, World War II was very influential.
Before women had buying power in house fairs, when the men left and they went into the factories, they found independence.
Jesus, I can hardly understand what she's saying.
I'm going to have to go through that in slow motion again.
And then World War II was very influential.
Before women had buying power and house fairs.
Before World War II, women had buying power and house fairs or house wares.
When the men left and they went into the factories, they found independence.
So when the men left to go to war, you're saying women found independence.
Well, I suppose they probably did.
And what a wonderful time being independent they look like they're having.
This ridiculous retconning of history to make factory work in World War II sound something like something amazing and enlightening is stupid.
Don't worry, the men were having a shit time too.
But look at all these women from the 50s.
Don't they just look like they want to be stuck in factories all day?
Oh, if only I was in a factory making munitions rather than in my own home watching TV.
So when they went back to the houses, a majority of them were dissatisfied and they stopped purchasing the way they were.
The majority of women were dissatisfied and they stopped purchasing.
Bollocks.
Marketers freaked out.
And so they created two new markets that would not fade with time.
Beauty and age.
Bollocks!
This wasn't some sort of conspiracy against women, you moron.
Women still had purchasing power.
The problem is that most of the world was devastated by war.
And that sort of thing seemed a lot less important.
And yes, the United States was the sole exception, practically.
Now, these marketers were just trying to sell products.
They were just like, hmm, if we advertise like this, women seem to buy it.
That's what they did.
It wasn't a fucking conspiracy.
All you're seeing is the natural conclusion of a set of results.
We would always have bodies, and we'll always get older.
And they created this perfect woman, because we're the targets, right?
Perfect woman that does not exist, will never exist, and said, you should be this.
Precisely the wrong way round.
What they actually did is asked women, what do you want to be?
Surprise, surprise, a really attractive, slender woman was presented for them to use as a model for women to aspire to.
And we bought it.
No, you created it.
The only malice here was the desire for profit.
It was not the desire to hurt women.
All of us have bought it because it makes billions of dollars to this day.
And you know it.
I tell you what, if you are successful and every woman is like suddenly, actually, no, I do want to be a land whale, I guarantee you will get cosmetic companies creating all manner of how to look more lardy ranges.
But if you remember that list of the way it affects us, it comes at a very high cost to the rest of us.
If we reframe health, if we challenge what we've been told, a very interesting thing happens.
When we look at the fact that skinny can be healthy and fat can be healthy, skinny can be unhealthy and fat can be unhealthy.
It takes weight out of the equation.
What?
Please don't do that again.
It doesn't take weight out of the equation.
You are looking at it in a very narrow and silly way.
It isn't that skinny can be healthy and fat can be healthy and skinny can also be unhealthy and fat can also be unhealthy.
It is the scale to which you are either skinny or fat.
That's how we determine health, guys.
We need to educate ourselves.
You sure you don't mean re-education?
Because it's not all true.
There's this really interesting book called Health at Every Size, and it talks about the concept of treating our body well because we love it, not because we want to change it.
You rather seem to be misinterpreting the purpose of the book.
Changing your body because you love it doesn't mean accepting that you're a land whale and never doing anything about it.
We need to re-educate ourselves.
I knew it was only a matter of time before we became North Korea.
Learn the truth.
Who here has heard of Photoshop?
Is anybody not heard of Photoshop?
I didn't see all the hands go up.
Yeah.
Okay.
Even if we know about it, we still need to remind ourselves that that is what exists in real life, not that.
That Jessica Alba doesn't actually look like Jessica Alba.
And that Photoshop is in everything that we see online and in print.
I think this is probably the first good point you've made.
Even George Clooney is not allowed to age, which is tragic.
Poor George Clooney.
Yeah, it's awful.
Okay, so we need to normalize mental health.
All right, so you're not saying that being fat is a mental health issue.
What you're saying is not being happy about being fat is a mental health issue.
So one in four adults will experience mental illness in any given year.
One in four.
We tend to think that these are the only people who need mental health resources.
Yeah, because we've got this thing called money, and it's always in short supply.
So it seems prudent to only give these resources out to the people who actually need them.
But I propose that four in four adults need mental health support.
Absolutely barking.
You must have an incredibly strong justification for claiming that every adult in the world needs mental health treatment, mentally ill or not.
Y'all have brains?
None of them work 100%.
Just because we all have brains and none of them work at 100% efficiency is not a good enough reason to give the state the power to classify all adults as mentally ill.
And we live in a society that tells us we're not enough.
Which is the complete opposite of what society is actually telling you.
It's not that you're not enough, it's that you are too much.
So if we de-stigmatize mental health as a whole...
Yeah, the most pragmatic way of doing anything...
So if we destigmatize mental health as a whole, we might be able to access resources to keep our brain and our body happy.
Your problem is access to resources.
You've clearly got far too many.
But more than that, what makes you think you deserve mental health treatment because you have stuffed so many fucking donuts in your mouth that you now hate your own body and need some kind of mental health treatment to get you to accept how fucking fat you are?
Seriously, this is nobody's problem but yours.
Okay, I'm not an advocate that's going to tell you to turn off your TV and burn your magazines.
Because those things might do you some good.
Because I really love Millionaire Matchmaker.
Keep fucking dreaming.
Good luck finding your millionaire chubby chaser.
But honestly, I'm really not surprised that it's a fat girl that's advocating having her cake and eating it too.
Come on, have some self-awareness.
And that saves me this room, guys.
I love Patty and her crew.
Okay, so, but what we need to do is not get rid of it, but we need to diversify our media feed.
Well, do we?
We need to, ooh, no, I want to see that.
We need to diversify our media feed and add in images of reality so that we don't think that there's one standard of beauty.
Well, I see reality every day, but I suppose if you're the sort of couch potato who never leaves the house and gets everything they know about the world from TV, then yeah, I suppose that might well be something you actually do need.
And it's amazing what that does.
Let's increase conversational awareness.
We think that people's bodies are public property to comment on.
It's nothing about being property.
Let's talk about ourselves and let's talk about it positively.
And along with that, we have to stop calling thin women sellouts and fat women lazy.
We need to build each other up instead.
Create your own affirmation.
I'm always very reluctant to use the term cultural Marxism, but I genuinely think that this is actually a form of cultural Marxism.
And I really disagree with it.
Neuroplasticity is your friend.
We can rewire the way we think.
So it no longer conforms to reality.
Why are you all advocating for double thing?
We have post-its for you tonight.
And this is the post-it challenge.
You take a post-it note and you write one thing that you love about your body.
And if you can't think of that, an affirmation.
Something like this.
So you write it on that post-it and you put it in your house wherever you have the most negative thoughts.
Maybe a mirror.
And every time you go to that mirror and you have a negative thought, you read that post-it out loud.
And what that does is it stops the negative thought process because the negative and the positive cannot exist at the same time.
So it jumpstarts your brain in a positive way.
And if you do that enough, you will see a change.
You could do that, or you could actually go out and kill it today.
Your choice.
And number 10, wear what scares you.
Please be aware that it scares other people too.
I had the hardest time wearing a crop top in the beginning.
The breeze on my belly just felt unnatural.
Six months later, totally nude.
New York City, famous photographer, and there was an audience.
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