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Feb. 15, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:41:29
1283 Sunday Show feb 15 2009 - Body Issues

Colleen leads a discussion on body issues. Stef does situps.

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Well, good afternoon everybody.
It's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I hope that you're doing well. No particular bits of news and weather today.
This week I was actually offered a – other than to say I was offered an advertising deal or that was interested in an advertising deal on FDR and I have turned it down, of course, because – I really couldn't tell you how much advertising would feel like a rude interruption and produce massive fits of rage in me.
Because this is true even of the listener conversations where listeners unfortunately tend to interrupt me with all of their thoughts and opinions.
So advertising would be even worse than that.
And again, thanks so much for your donations which have kept us advertising free for three years other than my books.
So, I hope you had a wonderful, wonderful week.
Everything is well here.
Isabella is doing wonderfully.
And we're going to take her for her two-month checkup this week.
And she's definitely having some light sleep these days, which is a challenge.
But that's just a passage that we go through when she goes through these growth spurts.
And, oh, I guess I also wanted to mention, I set up a little...
Let me just see here.
I set up a little...
Yes, I did. I set up a little thing with thing being Isabella Photo Gallery, freedomainradio.com forward slash board, forward slash media, forward slash G, forward slash IZZY, which may be of interest to you where there are a number of adorable pictures so you can, of course, set yourself up to be notified when new ones go up.
So I just wanted to mention that just because it's a bit of a hassle uploading them to the server and then putting them in the board, so I just did it this way.
So if you're at all curious about how Her Majesty is developing, you can have a look there.
We have some lovely pictures up there of her.
She is a shockingly attractive child.
I say shockingly because my troll genes are mixed in with the goddess genes of Christina.
And as in the marriage, it looks like Christina's have triumphed.
So that is very good.
Now, on to business.
Colleen has suggested, and I think it's a great idea, that We have a show on body image issues, which I think is great.
Obviously, I'm not going to have much to say about that other than to say that jowls, foreheads, and man boobs are pretty much the sequence of idealistic platonic perfection as far as human form goes, so I don't have much to add to that.
But I just wanted to thank Colleen for suggesting this and for the women and men who will be And with that having been said, I'm not going to have too much to add.
Colleen, would you like to take us for a spin?
Sure. Can you hear me all right?
Yes, it's great. Okay.
Well, basically the idea behind bringing this up was that I noticed a lot of women on FDR, and men too, but mostly women, I have a lot of issues around body image and they tend to be really responsive when I bring up issues like this so I thought we could explore questions behind what are the origins of women obsessing and despairing over their bodies and looks and how does it relate to parenting and how does it relate to family and society And what's men's contribution to this?
What's women's contribution to it?
And basically, what's a rational approach to body image?
I mean, I know that in pop psychology, you hear a lot of things like that women need to feel attractive in order to be happy.
And that's something that I've always found kind of ponderous.
I mean, the idea here is that virtue equals happiness, and we all recognize that beauty is not a virtue, so the idea that beauty could lead to happiness or feeling attractive leads to happiness always makes me wonder, and I wonder if you can feel happy without feeling attractive or feeling beautiful and things like that.
It's something that I don't think is really discussed that much.
And I just thought we could share our experiences and share questions and thoughts on that issue.
And if I'm to be honest, I've sort of been really dreading this call-in show ever since I suggested it, because I think I have anxiety around people knowing that I still have body issues, even though I've been working on This, you know, working on my virtue and being in therapy and I have all this philosophical knowledge and yet I still have these body issues.
And I think that's something that's usually attributed to women who are shallow or women who don't have much else to offer.
So I feel, I fear the way I'll be perceived if I say I still have severe problems with the way I look or, you know, Things like that.
I'd just be interested to hear the other women on the call's experiences with that, general experiences, and then maybe we can start to ask some questions.
If people have questions, that would be great.
I guess one question that I would have, Colleen, or to the other women or men who have this as an issue, and again, we all do.
Do you remember a time before Body issues before that was a part of your thinking?
I really don't.
I mean, I think I've always, not always, but ever since I can remember, have had issues with that.
And I knew it was exacerbated more in adolescence, but it kind of goes up and down.
But I can't remember just feeling comfortable about it.
And the reason that I asked that was that that would sort of explain why it feels so embedded, right?
Because if it's so early that you can't remember a time before it, then that it is going to be really deep within the soul, so to speak.
Right, right. And not an issue of shallowness at all.
Right. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I'm a shallow woman, but I fear that if I say that I have issues with it, that it'll be perceived that way, for sure.
And I know it's frustrating to hear when women talk about how they feel so unattractive, and I don't certainly want to be that way.
It's certainly something I want to overcome, and I know a lot of women on the call also want to learn how to deal with it and how to be comfortable with it.
Does anyone feel comfortable sharing their experiences with this?
And how do you feel about your appearances now and how does that factor into your self-esteem?
I'm always willing to jump in there if everybody else is feeling a bit uncomfortable.
To go back to the question that Steph asked, no, there was never really a time that I was I'm comfortable with my body.
I was always called out as being fat by either my grandparents, my mother, or just the other kids.
Obviously, the other kids learned it from somewhere as well.
As I grew up, I moved down to Texas to a different state than the one that I was living in.
And suddenly, you know, I walk into school one day, and this is around the age of 12, which is a difficult age anyway.
And, you know, there are all these people who I don't know.
And my first day at school, I can remember just being teased to the point where I literally ran home in tears.
And it hasn't gotten or didn't get too much better until I came to FDR. Still not great.
In that, you know, my thought is, oh, well, I'm sort of...
Well, not sort of.
I'm fat.
This is my self-talk.
I'm fat. And, you know, I know that I could lose weight because I've done it before, except I don't know that there's anything or anyone to lose weight for.
And, you know, I've tried telling myself, okay, well, you know, it's not for anyone else.
It's for you, right? But...
That doesn't really motivate me too much, if you know what I'm talking about.
It's sort of like, okay, I'm going to do this for me to what purpose?
So that's sort of where I am in that, you know, objectively, just from the health point of view, it would be great to lose weight.
Objectively, I know that I could It's just that it seems like the benefits don't outweigh all the work that I know that I'm going to have to do to do that, if that makes sense.
But yet, I tell myself that the benefits don't outweigh all the work that I'm going to have to do to do it, and yet I look in the mirror and say, you know what?
I would look really great if I just lost weight.
So, it's actually not about the weight at this point.
I think it's actually having something to accuse myself about, if that makes sense.
Charlotte, I guess I'm curious...
Can you guys hear me?
Yeah. Oh, okay, great.
Sorry. I guess, Charlotte, I'm curious about...
I mean, the last statement that you made was really interesting.
I have something to accuse myself about, but when you...
You said there's not enough motivation for you or not enough incentive for you.
Does your weight cause you to feel bad about yourself, or are you content with your physical appearance?
I'm not really content with my appearance, but it doesn't cause me to feel bad.
I mean, I don't abuse myself saying, you know, you're so fat, you're disgusting, no man will ever want you, etc.
I used to, but I don't now.
Now it's sort of, you know, I'd like to lose weight and it would be much easier to buy clothes if I lost weight and maybe people wouldn't look at me funny when I went down to the lunchroom if I lost weight.
But it's not really like that sort of all-out self-abuse.
Right, so your self-worth isn't measured by your physical appearance, or at least not totally.
Not totally, no.
Right, right. We lost the audio briefly, so when Colleen was asking, you know, do people have anything to say about their body issues, body image issues, or any comments or anything, I was going to ask a question or make a comment, and it's kind of slipped my mind, but I'm going to try and reformulate it.
It had to do with...
Oh, I know. Colleen had mentioned body image and shallowness and affecting how one feels about oneself.
And I guess I'm curious, is that, you know, I have a flaw.
Let's say, you know, my legs are too short or...
My behind is too big or whatever.
Does that make you feel completely unattractive?
Does that make women feel completely unattractive and then hence affect self-worth and self-esteem?
Or is it just, you know what, I hate this particular part of my body and I'm self-conscious about it but I don't consider myself to be totally unattractive?
Because I think those two things are very different and I'm just curious about what other people think about that.
In my experience, there are certainly times when having a fly feels like an all or nothing Like, my flaws make me completely unattractive.
And I don't think that attractiveness is, you know, the entirety of my worth, but I think that one physical flaw or whatever it is that I'm not happy with will make me completely unattractive.
Yeah, and I'm wondering if other women experience the same thing.
For me, it's sort of a rare occurrence that I feel that way, but sometimes it's generally after a bunch of other things or something else has happened to sort of Trigger me to self-attack, if that makes sense. So then I look at myself in the mirror and it is like, well, you know, you're fat.
Who's going to look at you?
But that is a rare thing.
Yeah, I've also experienced that it's not very often that that happens, but it's like often when I'm When I've gone a week or so without any exercising or if I'm eating a lot of candy or something like that, I'll feel like, oh my god, I can't believe that you're not exercising and I'll self-attack that way.
The thing that I was going to say as well is that Marissa mentioned not working out and eating a lot of candy and things like that.
But I noticed that at least with myself, and this may be with other people as well, that that doesn't happen just sort of naturally.
Like if I'm going to stop exercising and start eating a lot of crap and sugary things, that there's something else then that will set me off as well.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, so something comes up where there's a disappointment in life and that's when your eating habits and your exercising regimen will change.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah. Yeah.
Colleen posed an interesting question about, and I think Steph sort of went on about, not went on about it, but picked up on it as well.
You know, is this something that, how is one's relationship to body image And a lot of studies have been done.
There are more and more preteen girls who are on diets.
They've even surveyed kids as young as four and five years old and little girls as young as four and five years old will say, I need to watch what I eat or I'm too fat.
And it's really, really quite shocking if you think about it.
Four or five year old girls who are concerned about their physical appearance.
And the literature suggests that It's the mother, more often than not.
If mom has problems with body image and is constantly dieting and saying things like, oh, I can't eat this, or I had too much of that, and oh, I feel fat, or I don't look very attractive in this outfit, little girls, and again, I'm not too clear on the literature with little boys, but definitely with little girls, they will pick up on it, and they learn a lot about About these things from their mothers.
So it does start very early on in life, and I don't know if anybody else has any more information about this.
I don't know, Colleen, I know that you're studying psychology now, and I think a couple of other people are.
I don't know if anybody's read any more recent literature on this issue.
I've read a little bit of that, actually.
Sorry? I'm sorry, could you repeat that?
I can't hear you.
Sorry, I don't know if anybody else is having problems hearing you.
Can you hear me? Can you hear me?
That's a little better, thank you.
Yeah, I just read in this book by Dustin Miller about invasive caretaking and how it negatively affects the body image of girls, like, if their parents are too interfering with them as children, like, Fretting over them and stuff, then they tend to have a very negative self-image.
And I think that's probably what's happened in my case, because my parents were those kinds of parents, you know, was fretting about the child being sick and stuff like that.
So you're relating this to parents worrying about your physical health, if I heard correctly?
Yeah. And so what is your experience with your parents worrying about your physical health and that affecting your body image or your physical image?
I just know that when I was little, like three, four, five years old, I was My mom would just take me to the hospital a lot.
I wasn't really sick, but she would kind of play up that I was and take me to hospital and stuff like that.
I have a couple of really clear memories of being in the hospital and just being poked and prodded and fussed over and not really understanding.
From when I was like two or three years old, My mother also had a fascination with the illnesses that my brother and I had and when she would have dinner parties when we were very young.
I remember sitting at the dinner table when she would have guests over and it seemed like every hippie on the planet went through the apartment in London and she would literally go on.
I mean, it felt like for hours it probably was quite some time even still about, you know, and then they got this illness and then this happened and then they got sick with this and there really was a fascination with Yeah, I think.
I mean, it certainly gave me the sense that we were, in a sense, more trouble than we were worth.
I don't know that it translated specifically to body image.
Because my health has been good throughout my life, I can't really look at that, but I can certainly see how giving children the sense that they're frail and sickly would have an effect on the view of body image.
Right, and that's perceiving myself as Sick has been a real problem for me because I'll convince myself that I'm sick when really I'm just causing the damage, like eating properly or whatever?
I'm curious also about the relationship between illness and one's physical illness and one's body image.
I'm sure it's complex.
I don't have a lot of empirical information about that.
I haven't read very many studies about that.
I do know that body image issues are...
I do have a lot of young women, particularly, who come in and talk about how unattractive they feel.
And it's quite astounding to me because these women are actually quite attractive.
They're not unattractive.
They have such skewed perceptions of themselves.
And it's not quite a body dysmorphic disorder, which is a very specific psychiatric illness.
But it is quite a prevalent problem.
I think, Colleen, you're right. A lot of women do suffer from body image issues.
And our self-worth is wrapped up in it.
And I think you pose an excellent question.
If virtue is associated with happiness, how come we get so upset about beauty when we know that beauty is just strictly biological and has nothing to do with us being a good person?
I think that's an excellent question.
I think another question that's well worth asking, and I certainly don't mean to interrupt the discussion, but I think if we can understand what the purpose of body image issues is, again, I don't want to get all political, but I think that there is an element of fretting and self-attack and being consumed with little things, like, oh, I had a Twinkie, or have I gained a pound,
or... And again, we're all subject to this and it's not unhealthy to be concerned with your weight.
But I can't help but think the degree to which people who are consumed by body image issues don't pose any threat to the existing order of things, if that makes any sense, because they're too fussed about little things to do with themselves rather than big picture stuff, if that makes any sense. Yeah, I think that's a great point.
And the other question I was going to ask that I think is a little related to that is why is this?
It seems to be that this problem is so much on the rise.
Like Christina was saying that more and more little girls are now dieting and it seems to be much more of a prevalent problem than it was before.
And I don't know if that has any correlation to Well, I think that it would be reasonable to imagine or to put forward as a tentative thesis that there would be an inverse relationship.
Between virtue and the desire for physical beauty?
Because it's a great question of life, which is, you know, you're at a bar or you're at some club or you're, you know, in some social situation where the possibility of romantic interactions, you know, being picked up or being chatted up or exchanging phone numbers or something, where there's some romantic potential in the air, the great question remains, Why is someone going to pick me?
And the less we know people, the more we have to judge them, in a sense, by more shallow criteria.
And it does seem to be the case, and I know this is a contentious argument that I've made, and I'll just touch on it briefly here, that the less widespread virtue is, the greater there is going to be an emphasis upon physical attractiveness as a reason to pick someone out of a crowd.
Because we all want to be picked out of a crowd.
We all got our hands up in the air for the people to pick us who are attractive or who we find attractive.
And how do we differentiate ourselves?
Well, prior to virtue, we have to go for something snazzy, right?
Something like beauty or talent or sports ability or something like that.
Something that gets us picked out of the crowd of me please, right?
Somebody gets us picked for the team, so to speak.
And I think that as the ethics of society dwindle and decline, which does seem to be the case in the modern world, there would be more of an emphasis On that and of course as women get the opportunity to become more picky as they become economically self-sufficient and as feminism makes its necessary and hugely advantageous strides Towards equalizing the genders, then women would get a chance to be more picky, not just wait for the guy to come and ask them, but have the ability to go forward and ask.
And then it would make sense that the boys would then be subject to the same body image issues and striving for, you know, the six pack and the cobra back and all that kind of stuff that, you know, long legs, narrow hips, big shoulders, flat stomach, which makes about as much sense as big boobs and a tiny butt does for women, right? These things don't tend to go hand in hand.
And we have, of course, seen that happening in society, that men are becoming much more subject to the body image issues, which lead them to strive for physical beauty rather than for the perfection of the soul, which is, of course, where real love resides.
But there is this shallow show of physical appearance that occurs when virtue is not core to the equation, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, I was curious because, I mean, being the age that I am, I only know the culture as it's existed fairly recently.
Was there less of an emphasis on attractiveness and beauty in earlier generations?
Or, I mean... I can certainly say that for my generation, there was less of an emphasis on physical attractiveness for boys when I was a kid than...
The girls still had it more than boys when I was a kid, but I think that's even out these days.
Interesting. I think as a society, we have, you know, I mean, values...
If I could even say that their values are completely misplaced.
I was thinking while the two of you were talking about a report that I had seen about what do children want to be when they grow up.
And regardless of whether it's a model or a musician or an actor, they want to be rich and they want to be famous.
And nobody talks about being a good person.
And where do kids learn all this?
And I'd have to say, of course, there's a strong influence from the media, but it has to be supported by the values of the parents in the home as well.
So I don't know that virtue is something that is considered at all.
I shouldn't say at all.
I mean, that's a very sweeping statement, but it's certainly not the primary The primary emphasis for kids in terms of where they want to be or who they want to be when they grow up.
How does virtue play a part in how they see themselves in the future?
And so I think beauty goes along with fame and fortune.
I want to be beautiful, I want to be rich, and I want to be famous.
But nobody talks about, well, what am I going to do to get that?
And they just think that those things are what's going to give them happiness.
Yeah, I think that's a good point.
And I was curious, when you're dealing with patients who have these body issues, do you tend to focus on...
I mean, what's the approach that you take?
Do you tend to focus on having them find other, you know, more meaningful ways to build self-esteem?
Or do you try to challenge their self-perception, and is there a way that you try to help them feel more attractive?
Because I only know that with pop psychology, the focus is on helping the women feel more attractive.
Is that the approach that you take, or what do you do?
Well, I have them try to be more realistic and objective, because particularly when I'm working with a woman who is attractive, who claims that she's unattractive and she feels ugly, And has real problems with self-worth.
We try to do more work on objective reality.
You know, what is it really that you see?
And it's always, my experience with my clients is that it's always, I'm less attractive compared to some standard.
And so we need to take a look at what the reality is.
You know, yeah, are we less attractive than Christy Turlington?
Most of us are. So trying to be more objective.
And also looking at, you know, also, again, I mean, how their actions affect their beauty as well.
Speaking of reality and standards, it's also a question that I had for people.
I mean, I noticed myself that I'm not really...
I'm attracted to the guys who are like this picture of male beauty that Steph sort of painted, you know, all these guys looking for these six-packs.
Personally, I don't find that attractive.
Sorry, I think what you mean by that Steph painted, you mean that Steph paints every day he does a video.
Is that what you mean?
Yes, yes. Okay, I just wanted to clarify that for those who might be confused or distorted.
But, you know, I'm not attracted to that.
And I'm Sort of wondering, you know, is there kind of a double standard here?
Like, you know, women have to be, you know, absolutely perfect.
They have to look like Christy Turlington, but they're not actually attracted to the guys who look like this picture of male beauty.
I'm wondering why we have to look perfect, but we don't necessarily require perfection in everyone else as well.
I was just thinking about that a little earlier, and I think that, I mean, if I understand the question right, that we apply much higher standards to ourselves as women than we do to the attractiveness of men, and I think that traditionally there's sort of...
Shallow characteristics that are more prized in men, but they're not necessarily looks.
Like the stereotypical thing that women want from men, and this doesn't mean you or anybody else, but is money.
I mean, that tends to be, you know, the men is the provider and the woman is the baby maker.
So, you know, they want the women more young and attractive and the men to be older and more wealthy.
Sorry to interrupt. I'm just getting Christina Hickley next here.
That's also a question that I sort of have.
I don't think it's necessarily just women having different standards for men, but do you have different standards for other women as well?
Because, I mean, I notice with all of the women that I work with, you know, I see 50 different women around me and they're all attractive to me in some way.
Except none of them looks like a model, and all of them have different flaws, but I find them, you know, very attractive even so, even without looking, you know, blonde hair, blue-eyed, and five foot ten inches tall.
Right. Yeah, definitely.
And I think that's...
It just goes to show how non-objective it is, the view that most women have about themselves, and that it serves a purpose of self-attacking rather than an accurate appraisal of yourself.
Uh-oh. What happened?
I can't hear anything. And somebody just raised a good point, which is that height for men can be a significant body image issue that often goes unrecognized or unnoticed.
Because, I mean, if you...
Look at most couples, the man is taller than the woman.
Now, this is, of course, the case with Christina and I, but that doesn't put me in a very small category of people.
She's kind of compact.
This is where a lot of men have a real challenge, right?
It is to men what weight often is to women, with, of course, the difference being that it's easier to do stuff about weight than it is to do stuff about height.
But that is another issue that is very tough for men who are on the shorter side.
Right. I mean, it also goes a reverse way for women that are on the taller side, I think.
Because, I mean, not many women would want to date a man who's shorter, and I think on the reverse, not many men want to date a woman who's taller.
That's very true. That's very true.
In fact, Christina and I have both seen relationships where the amount of quality that the woman seems willing to give up to gain a few extra inches of height, and not even when the man is lying down, just seems to be rather staggering.
Something I was curious about, and I know this might be kind of a weird question, is what if a woman objectively is unattractive?
Like maybe she has some kind of affliction or, you know, she just was not born attractive or maybe was in an accident or something.
It just seems like in our society, it seems like if you can't feel attractive, you can't be happy.
And I was just wondering, how would you deal with that?
I mean... On a psychological level.
What do you mean by deal with that?
I mean, if you were somebody who just was objectively just not attractive as a woman, and, you know, how would that affect your romantic relationship and your sexual relationship?
And just, I'm just curious.
I mean, because we're all not attractive.
And it's said that, you know, women need to feel beautiful.
And what if it's just not possible?
I think that it's a stretch to say that a woman can't feel beautiful if she's not conventionally physically attractive or has some sort of flaw that way, if that makes sense.
I think that there's the old joke, or I guess cliché, that if you're being set up with someone, let's just say, right?
I'm being set up with a woman when I was single, and I would say, well, you know, what's she like?
And the answer would come back, she's got a great personality.
I think everybody knows what that means, right?
Right. And yet, that of course is much more important than looks, right?
I mean, I'm fortunate to think that my wife is a physical goddess, but if she were as beautiful as she is physically without having a similarly beautiful soul, all the looks in the world wouldn't make her as wonderful a mother as she is to Isabella, as wonderful a friend as she is to me, as wonderful a wife.
So one of the things that does occur when you go through a challenge with looks is that you will hopefully try to develop other characteristics that more than make up for it in the long run, if that makes any sense.
In the same way that a guy who has a heart attack can end up living longer than the guy who doesn't because he reforms his life.
In the same way when you go through a phase where you feel challenged about your looks or you feel challenged about your attractiveness, the goal or the hope is that you will Work on other aspects of your personality and almost, in a sense, the more sparkling the personality, to some degree, we can certainly look at back at times in that person's life where they couldn't sail on physical attractiveness and that's actually given them quite a lot of benefit.
So I think that you can end up feeling and being more beautiful when there's a sort of physical flaw or lack of attraction.
Now, signal's still up.
We're just waiting for responses.
I was just going to say that if we also, if we take a look around us, you know, just go to any public place, a shopping mall, a community center, you'll see that people of all shapes and sizes and levels of attractiveness are in relationships.
So obviously one's physical appearance isn't the only factor that determines whether or not one will be in a relationship.
And again, whether or not that relationship is successful or happy is A whole other story.
But physical attractiveness certainly isn't the only factor.
And I know that we're veering from that original question, which is, you know, does our physical beauty lead to our happiness?
And I would say, unfortunately, yeah, there is an impact on how happy we feel.
And whether or not that's right or wrong is irrelevant.
The fact exists.
I guess the question that I have is what solutions have people found for questions of body image?
I'll talk about just one or two that I found to be helpful.
I definitely grew up in a family where body image was A very, very strong factor.
My mother was very obsessed with her weight and has remained slender and willow-like at least up until her early 60s when I last saw her about 10 years ago.
And my brother as well became very obsessed with, I shouldn't say obsessed, very interested in working out.
And I've been sort of doing weights since I was about 16.
And so there was a very strong emphasis on slimness within my family as a sort of basic criterion for physical attractiveness and its slenderness plus muscularity, which of course is the slightly opposing pole of male idealization.
And I've certainly found that I have become much more comfortable with my physicality over the past couple of years since delving into philosophy in a more public way with freedom in radio.
That's been really, really helpful.
And so I have found that depth is very important.
You know, a real love with a similarly beautiful soul is something that is very important.
I've thought, like I have a little pimple here today, right?
Just on my chin.
And I found that washing my face in fish fry runoff is not, however attractive it might be to Christina, it's just not good for my skin.
However, lots of carp are thumping up against the windows.
And I have spawned.
But what I've thought about is that Isabella, when I sort of look down and smile at Isabella and kiss her cheek and play with her and sing songs to her and so on, she doesn't care about how I look.
She cares about the love that's in my eyes.
She cares about the tenderness that's in my touch.
She cares about the softness of my voice.
She cares about the solicitors of my echoing and the degree to which I want to carry her around and show her.
That's what she cares about.
And whether I have a pimple or not is completely immaterial to her, unless she thinks that daddy's growing another eyeball with which to regard her, which I wish I could do.
Because Christina has eyes on the back of her head, but I don't as yet, which is shocking because I could actually see with them.
So I have found that You know, love and wisdom are really the antidotes.
And I've also sort of thought, I've just been organizing photographs that we've had because we have some baby photos now.
We're sort of organizing photographs.
There's something, I think Kurt Vonnegut wrote this or some guy who did that.
You know, there was that song, you know, Always Use Sunscreen or whatever.
And at one point in the song, the guy said, you know, when you look back at photos of yourself 10 years ago, you'll be shocked at how great you looked or something like that.
I've really thought about that, looking at photos of me on a beach from last summer.
I'm like, damn, I look good.
We all have those photos where there are bad angles.
Of course, I get the joy, such as it is, of seeing myself every other day or so on a video, reviewing it before it goes out.
I think I look great on the videos, too.
It's interesting to have that standard where you say, okay, well, I'm X years old, so for me it's 42 up to 43 this year.
And this is how I look.
And I guarantee you that in 10 years now, when I look back, because when I look back at the videos I did three years ago, I'm like, damn, I look good.
And it's only in the now that I seem to find the flaws of myself.
When I look back at pictures of myself when I was younger, I'm like, damn, I look good.
And I think that's something that I try to remember, which is to remember, of course, there's aging and so on, but to say, okay, well, when I look back at myself in 10 years, now, how am I going to think about how I look?
And I bet you I'm going to look back and say, damn, I look good.
So why not sort of feel that way at the moment?
And that's Been so sort of love, depth, intimacy, the vulnerability that comes from shared souls really does sort of melt away the self-consciousness around the physicality.
And remembering that when we look back, we're going to be surprised at how good we looked.
So why not just incorporate that in the here and now, if that makes any sense?
So sorry, that was a little longer than I thought.
But those are the little things that I've sort of found have, you know, I don't weigh myself more than once a month now and all that kind of stuff.
So that sort of stuff has been really helpful for me.
If that makes any sense to others, I hope that that's of some help.
Yeah, for me I noticed a pretty strong correlation Between how I felt about how I looked and how much I thought about it and who I was around.
If I was around people who were more shallow, and not necessarily people who obsessed overlooked, but were shallow in other ways, then those thoughts seem to come up more, but they tend to lessen when I'm not around people like that.
I suppose this is a big source of frustration for me.
Even in all the work that I've been doing with FDR, I haven't been able to really solve the problem.
It comes back and it goes away and it comes back.
I'm not really sure how exactly to solve it in myself.
You know, Colleen, it's really interesting, and again, when you talk about body image, and I'm not sure if it's your physical body or prettiness, facial prettiness, that sort of thing.
There have been a lot of studies done about beauty and how people respond to attractive people and we know that in court cases, attractive people get lesser sentences or they get off.
They may not get ticketed by police officers and that goes for men and women.
More attractive people get jobs, they get preferred for jobs over less attractive people.
So the fact that you are concerned about your body image, and this is true probably for most of us, is not irrelevant or insignificant.
I mean, attractive people are treated better.
They're just treated better.
They've done studies with infants as well, and infants will look at pictures of attractive people For longer amounts of time, then they will look at pictures of unattractive people.
So there is something about beauty and attractiveness that is biological that causes us to feel good and feel better.
You know, again, the key is to be objective and not to sort of lump everything all in one basket.
You know, if there is a particular flaw, and let's face it, everybody has a flaw, does that render you or me or the other person completely and totally unattractive?
And I think the answer, obviously, is no.
You know, we have flaws.
But if we can look at each different part of our bodies and parts of our face, Maybe my eyes are too close together, but I have a nice smile.
Maybe I'm having a good hair day, which is a rarity in my case.
I think everybody knows where my body image issues lie.
Right? But we have to sort of look at everything objectively and not sort of as an entire package.
I don't know if that helps you at all or not.
No, it certainly does make sense, and that sounds like a very rational way to look at it, but I have a lot of trouble being rational around this issue.
Well, one of the things that you can try is to...
It's to really dress down to the degree that you can, right?
Which is, I remember having this challenge with a woman I knew when I was working up north.
Every time we went to the mall, we were working in the bush or whatever.
Every time we went to the mall, she'd make two hours putting makeup on and getting ready and so on.
Of course, as a guy, as long as I dig the majority of twigs and leaves out of my hair, I feel like a Greek god.
But this was a challenge for her, right?
To go into town without, and again, I know you're off the makeup, but without, in a sense, accentuating her attractiveness.
And she did it, and she found it to be quite...
Emotional and challenging, right?
And she was actually, of course, more concerned about the reactions from other women than from men.
But that's one thing that you can do.
If you're having trouble getting to the root of these sorts of things, what you can do is dress to the opposite or show yourself to the opposite of your attractiveness and then see how you feel in that circumstantial situation, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that certainly was with the makeup experiment.
It was certainly really, really challenging and continues to be.
I don't think it's fully solved the problem.
I still find it almost almost equally difficult as when I started so Steph has suggested that perhaps you can try putting a less attractive picture of yourself on Skype to see what kind of an effect that would have um um But you see, that's why I don't put a picture of myself up.
Yeah, you had a feeling reaction.
Yeah, somebody said a non-airbrushed one.
That's the problem for me.
You can put a picture of me up.
For the truly shocking reaction.
Sorry, go on. I was just saying, the biggest problem that I have with my perceived attractiveness is the fact that I have, the way I see it, as pretty severe acne.
And that's been a problem since I was an adolescent.
And so I airbrush every single one of my pictures.
And that's why it was so difficult for me to not wear makeup.
And... And I really, I just, I have not been able to change myself about that thus far.
Sometimes I just, I don't even want to leave the house.
Like, it gets pretty bad sometimes.
You know, Colleen, it's really interesting.
When you were here for the barbecue in the summer, either you had a lot of makeup on and I didn't notice it, or I just didn't notice your acne at all.
It's not something that, for me anyway, that I noticed about you at all.
I mean, that's not what stands out about you when somebody meets you for the first time or spends, you know, we spent, you know, with everybody that came to the barbecue about, you know, two and a half or three days in close proximity talking and interacting, and I certainly didn't notice that at all.
So that's just something for you to think about.
Yeah, that is surprising.
I do think that it's, I always have the thought that it's like all that any worker notices about me.
I know my family was fairly not helpful about it when I was growing up, and I know that that's exacerbated it.
No, it's actually quite shocking to me that you said that you have a problem with acne because I don't recall acne, I don't recall blemishes, I don't recall skin problems when I think about, you know, you and having met you this summer, or this past summer.
Oh, sorry, I have to go.
The baby, she calls. Oh, here, I'll tell you.
Keep going. You know what?
She's probably going to eat some lunch.
Aw, please. Of course, Isabella is wonderfully free of her need to appeal to people.
Sweet dubs. Oh, baby cakes.
Oh, sweet dubs.
There we go, darling.
There we go, sweet dubs.
You stand up for crying.
She has been plugged. And she's tired.
She's been trying to fall asleep throughout this entire program.
Sorry about that.
Please go on.
I was just going to respond and...
I mean, I appreciate you saying that, but of course my first thought is like, oh, it was because of the makeup, and that's the only reason that people didn't notice it.
But yeah, I don't know.
The response that I've had to my flaws is that I think that they're the only thing that anyone ever notices, and I don't know if that's the same way for anybody else or what that comes from.
Well, I would suggest, Colleen, and this is true for other people, that when we look at our relationship to our physical flaws, the primary relationship that we have is not ourselves in isolation with our physical flaws, like there's you and acne in a room eyeing each other warily across a table,
But rather, it is our family of origin's reaction to our physical flaws that is the primary relationship, if that makes any sense, and that's where I would start looking at this.
Not to view it as a problem, you know, with just your vanity or your insecurities around looks, and this is true for me, I think, for everyone, but to look at how did our families, our parents in particular, deal with physical sort of flaws within us.
Right. Right.
And that's been something very difficult for me to connect with.
Because I know, I mean, I've heard some of the women at FDR and their parents and how they treated their looks, and they've just been horrible.
Like, their parents would call them ugly and call them fat and just dreadful things.
And with my parents, I think it was a lot more subtle.
So... For instance, my mother would have this barely palpable sneer and she would ask me if I had been taking care of my face.
It just gave me this feeling that I was completely disgusting.
And why? What was it about, if you had acne, what was it that your mother would feel about that?
Why would she take that so personally?
I don't know. It was like the message that I was not presentable.
And I know her own mother really engaged in a lot of body shaming with her.
And she had weight problems.
But I... I'm not really sure if she just wanted to pass on her own body shame or if she felt like she was embarrassed by me in public.
Well, yeah. I mean, usually there is an ego unification between the child and the mother, and particularly in terms of how other people will perceive the mother, which of course is not the case.
Acne has nothing to do in particular with diet or hygiene, of course.
But if there is that perception, That it is, you know, slovenly teenagers who don't wash their faces and eat nothing but chocolate that they're the ones who end up with acne, which of course is not true.
But if that perception is true, then it's possible, of course, that your mother would feel that people would criticize her child raising if her child has acne, i.e.
didn't teach you to wash your face and eat properly, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that would certainly make sense as to why.
I mean, I would kept telling her, like, scientifically that that has nothing to do with it, but she would keep sort of shaming me in that way.
But yeah, that makes me really angry.
Go on. It's just, it's just, it's disgusting that, I mean, the way that she would...
Try to make me feel so horrible just to avoid the, you know, disapproval from other people.
Well, and given the degree to which we don't know whether that disapproval was objectively in the air, it really does come down, of course, to disapproval from herself, right?
What do you mean? Well, it's a form of self-management, right?
So, for instance, there's this perception, you know, that this is an old sort of cliche, that women dress for other women, not for men.
And so when a woman goes out feeling less than attractive, she's concerned sometimes, as the cliche goes, she's concerned that other women will be criticizing her dress or her appearance or whatever.
But since that criticism is, you know, not always going to be present, the criticism arises from within the person, within the woman herself, right?
It's self-attack that is being managed.
It's not the objective and direct criticisms of other people.
right Yeah. Right?
There's something that Dr. Phil says, which I think is quite true, is that we'd be less bothered by what people thought of us if we realized how seldom they do.
Yeah, I think that's pretty true.
I think it is very true, right?
And so, you know, if a woman is walking down, you know, to take some sort of stereotypical example, a woman is dressed to the nines and walking through some hotel lobby and she's got a piece of toilet paper stuck to her, I don't know, her pump's Then this is going to be mortifying.
It's going to follow her to her grave every time she thinks back on it.
Her cheeks will flush and so on.
And of course, for the people who see that, I mean, there is a kind of endearing quality to that, in my opinion.
There is that sort of humanizing aspect of having some toilet paper stuck to your shoe.
And they just remember it as an interesting memory, not shameful, not, you know, but for the woman, it's, so it's a kind of self-attack that's going on because it's not like everyone else is like, Telling the story, laughing, posting it on blogs, it's ruining her career chances or chances of getting mad.
It's just a little funny incident for other people, but for her, it's mortifying, and that's more to do with self-attack than it is to do with an objective assessment of other people's criticisms.
Right. Can you hear me?
Sure. Just thinking about that, I'm thinking of, like, In high school when embarrassing things like that would happen to me and I was viciously attacked by people for it.
So I'm not sure about that.
Sorry, viciously attacked for what?
Like you said about women in an embarrassing situation that most people wouldn't really think about it.
Stuff like that has happened to me that I've been, like, really viciously attacked for, like, months on end while I was at school.
Sure, but, I mean, I'm sure you know enough by now to know that the self-attack comes first, right?
Right, so why is it that people would viciously attack you?
Because, unfortunately, based on your parenting, you would have the habit of attacking yourself or of shaming yourself, and so they would You know, it's unfortunate, right, but blood in the water brings sharks and self-attack brings bullies.
And this does not excuse, of course, their behavior, but that's...
I've certainly not found that...
I've certainly not found that...
I've certainly found that an increase in confidence results in a diminishment of attacks, if that makes sense.
I think that makes sense.
Um... I was curious about the women on the call and their experiences with other women and how much their girlfriends or the women they were around played a role in their body image issues, if they have any. I've always...
Judged myself against my girlfriends.
Even at a very young age, I can remember thinking that my friend was a lot prettier than me because she was blonde and had blue eyes.
I've always compared myself to my friends and put myself down for things that I didn't really have any control over.
Things like that.
Yeah, I was the exact same way, actually, comparing myself to other people all the time.
And do you think that they played a role in that?
Because, I mean, I know I hear a lot of comments that women sort of exacerbate these issues in other women by...
Comments that are supposed to be helpful.
For instance, when I worked at this department store once, I didn't usually wear makeup.
And then one day I came in wearing makeup because I was going on a nice date afterwards.
And all of the women were suddenly like, oh my god, your makeup looks so good.
And they made all these compliments.
And at first I was like, okay, that...
You know, that's a compliment.
And then it started to feel uncomfortable.
And then I came in the next day without makeup on, and one of the women really pulled me aside and was like, you know, you should wear that makeup every day.
You know, I mean... You look a lot better with it and your skin is kind of oily and all this stuff.
She framed it as if she was trying to help me, but instead it was just making me feel really bad and like I needed to wear makeup.
I don't know if anybody else had those kind of experiences.
I had an experience like that with my mother.
This is going back...
Just after Steph and I were married, it was actually Father's Day, so it was June, and we were taking my father out for breakfast, and we met in the parking lot of the restaurant that we were at, that we were going to have breakfast.
It was a brunch that we were going to be having.
And the first thing my mother said to me is, oh, you look pale.
You should put some lipstick on.
And then she commented on my hair.
And then she commented on the fact that it was a little chilly and I should always keep a sweater in the back seat of my car as she does.
But yeah, I did have that from my own mother.
You should wear lipstick. And of course, that's not a very nice thing to hear from one's mother, let alone from anyone else.
Right. Yeah, and I just think of the...
Oh, go on. So, I was just going to say, I used to get a lot of stuff like, you know, you'd be pretty if you dressed this way or that way, or if you dressed like everyone else does, then you'd be prettier and stuff like that.
Yeah, and I wonder, I think the assumption around that is really interesting, that everybody necessarily wants to be prettier and obsesses over being prettier.
And I just think, I always wondered if the fact that certain women didn't wear makeup or didn't seem to obsess about their looks as much makes other women really uncomfortable because it Maybe points out their own insecurities that they wouldn't feel comfortable going into public, you know, not being completely made over.
I guess I'd still, I'm still curious a little bit more about solutions.
I mean, sort of the grit your teeth and just be unattractive in the world, be sort of physically, or not unattractive, you know, sort of paint on which boils on your nose or give yourself a third eye or something.
But Is there a solution called just be less attractive and deal with the feelings, if that makes sense?
Because I think that's the quickest way to get to the feelings.
Because if our worth is placed upon our external appearance, and this is not something that is innate, I think, to us.
I think it is something that is layered in through the Lord of the Flies public school system and our parents and, you know, to some degree, our culture.
But... If there is this perception or feeling that our worth is defined by our physical appearance, it is kind of something that needs to be challenged.
Smoking, you know, needs to be, you know, or whatever, right, some bad habit you have, that it needs to be challenged and kind of overthrown in a way.
And certainly, you know, therapy working from the inside out can have a lot to do with helping these issues, but where the feelings are not accessible, I think the best way to access them is to be less attractive in the world and see what comes up, to fight the feelings of insecurity that arises from that, or at least be able to recognize their source and work from there, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I definitely agree.
I think that is a good way to approach it.
And certainly one of the things that I was thinking when I stopped wearing makeup or whatever was that the way we act can certainly influence the way that other women perceive How attractive they have to be or how much effort they have to put into it.
The more of us who don't necessarily...
Put all sorts of effort into it and regard it as this big important thing.
It's sort of like the Emperor's new clothes.
You know, other women will start to see it as less important.
And I think that starting with ourselves and how important we act as it is, you know, if we act as if it's very important, then we'll keep maintaining the illusion.
But if we act like it's not, then that would certainly be the first step towards Changing things, I think.
I think you're right, but I also wouldn't underestimate the degree to which that kind of freedom is going to be viewed by others, some others, not all, but some others as an affront, as something that is going to be very provocative.
You know, the more free you get, the more people who don't think they can be free or who falsely think they are will become annoyed at you, if that makes any sense.
Right, and that's a little bit what I was saying about the attacks from other women.
If you don't wear makeup or do your hair, I think that's what that's provoking in them.
Right, and the response that you have of I feel beautiful on the inside carries with it, of course, the implicit criticism, which is that you, who are criticizing me, are focused on externals because you feel ugly on the inside and wish to cover up that fact, right?
I mean, there is an implicit criticism of others in personal liberation, right?
Yes, that's very true.
I was wondering if any other women had done that, had done the whole not being, you know, the sort of de-attractive being yourself sort of thing where you don't wear makeup or dress down or that sort of thing?
I would say that that's actually...
For some women, notably me, that's actually sort of the problem or an expression of the problem.
You know, you get into the sort of, well, I'm not attractive, so I'm just going to wear, like, baggy clothes and fade into the background.
I know from having done that that that's not cool.
But one of the things I noticed, I've actually sort of come the opposite way from Doing the, I'm going to make myself as hideous as possible thing, to the, well, you know, I can at least wear clothes that make me look like a woman thing.
And that's been a little bit, it was really difficult at first, but I've noticed that as I've sort of, I've done it, That I've begun to feel a little bit more comfortable, I guess, with my weight.
So if you have, you know, the opposite thing where you're trying to make yourself as attractive as possible, maybe just letting that go for a while.
I think it could be helpful.
I actually stopped wearing makeup a while ago.
I can't remember. It's probably been almost a year now.
And, um, I never really wore very much makeup to begin with.
Mostly just, like, um, maybe some lip gloss and some eyeliner.
Um, and I always would, uh, really be really critical of how I looked without the eyeliner.
I always thought that I looked really, like, tired and just really, like, blah.
But, um, yeah, I definitely don't think that, um, not wearing makeup, uh, is about looking as horrible as possible.
Um, I've actually really grown to like the way that I look without makeup on.
And I think it's just about, you know, do I need this eyeliner sort of thing to feel good or to feel like I look attractive.
And I've found that I actually do feel attractive without any makeup on.
I think that's great.
I mean, I'm really glad to hear that that's worked out for you.
Thank you. Appreciate that.
I had sort of the same approach as Charlotte in that I remember in high school I kind of dressed down in order to sort of fade into the background so that I wouldn't be noticed because I didn't feel that I could compete or that that was something that I wanted the pressure of doing.
And what I sort of did was I had a kind of a tomboy lean to me where I would do things like, you know, like climb trees and kind of try and fit in with the guys more so than the girls because of the pressure that I felt the girls put on beauty and that sort of thing.
So in high school and earlier on for me, Makeup was never something that I really did a lot, tried to focus more on activities and that sort of thing.
That's one of the questions that I actually had because it seems like there are sort of two camps, you know, women going kind of the opposite ways, either into the sort of tomboy area or into the sort of girly girl area.
Makeup area. And I've never understood, really, because I hate makeup with a vengeance.
I can wear it for about 20 minutes before I'm literally clawing at my face to get it off.
So that's one of the things that I've always sort of wondered is how...
Girls and women actually get into doing things like wearing makeup to either cover themselves up or to enhance their attractiveness.
I've never sort of understood why people seem to go two ways on this issue, if that makes sense.
You mean sort of one way or the other, not the flexibility?
Right. Well, it's because you're punished for being more than one thing, right?
Right. So I suppose that I couldn't have fit in.
Well, I never did fit in with the boys, of course, but I suppose that I couldn't have fit in quite as well with them if I did, you know, do things like wear dresses and wear makeup and stuff.
Well, I mean, this is going to sound like a stupid analogy, and maybe it is, but I have a foot in the art world and a foot in the technical world, and those are just two of the worlds that I have, right?
So when the people I managed as a software guy, if they found out that I wrote poetry, they would make fun, right?
And some of it was good-natured, and some of it was obviously just some kind of discomfort, right?
And, of course, when I was in the art world, when my interest and sympathy for free market capitalism, my hostility towards government funding of the arts and so on, then they would get – that doesn't fit in the box, so to speak, right?
So they would get very uncomfortable and I'd be like the Alex P. Keaton of the acting world or whatever.
And the fact that when I wrote a play, I wanted to make money on it was considered to be artistically impure or whatever, right?
Because I wouldn't take government grants and so on.
So I think what happens is people get into these stereotypes.
And I think it's from the previous generation, which themselves, of course, were boxed into stereotypes.
And we do have the fortune of being in fewer stereotypes, if we want, for any generation.
But people fundamentally don't like the MECO system.
They want it to be one way or the other.
If you're an engineer, you don't write poetry.
If you write poetry, you want government grants.
Again, they just want these Stereotypes to be real.
And when they come across somebody who's a tomboy, who also looks, you know, can glam it up for an evening affair, that makes them feel uncomfortable because it shows a kind of flexibility in the personality that everybody has naturally, but which is often, you know, chased out with broomsticks by our authority figures when we're children.
That sort of makes sense to me in that, you know, I'm sort of Similar to you in that sort of, you know, between the, you know, already poetry writing world and the technical world.
But the thing that I sort of wonder is, if I'm okay with doing that in so many other areas, then why not in this one?
If, you know, people's sort of, really, you don't consider yourself a computer scientist kind of thing doesn't affect me when I get it at work.
Why would it affect me You know, in the not wearing makeup, being a tomboy area.
Sorry, there were too many negatives for me to follow what the positive statement was there.
Well, I'm okay with being of two minds or being two different ways in so many other areas, so why not this one?
This one being, can you just give me the two again?
Being the sort of, you know, being a girly girl versus being a tomboy.
Why am I not okay with combining those when I can combine everything else?
Well, I would imagine because you have an ambivalent relationship to the girly girl world.
Right, because you're a bit of an Amazon, right?
And you're a bit of a warrior queen.
And I think that you would probably have some pretty dense emotional thoughts or responses to the girly girl, right?
So part of the Amazon personality is that the girly girls are manipulatively and annoyingly and cloyingly weak, you know, and yet at the same time, they're considered attractive.
So there's that contradiction, right?
So again, I'm just making stuff up, but it could be something along those lines.
It's interesting because I do sort of feel that way.
I was talking with a few of my male colleagues, and they were joking with me about, well, you're sort of with us guys, but once you ask, do I look fat in this dress, then you just become a woman again.
And my... Initial thought was, do women actually do that?
I hate those fucking manipulative bitches.
So, yeah, that does...
Yeah, I don't think there's any ambivalence there.
Maybe we can look elsewhere. Just kidding.
Yeah, so, I mean, and this is, of course, something that drives women completely nuts.
I saw a review of a film called House Bunny, which is about a girl from the Playboy Mansion who ends up being a mother, a house mother, at a fraternity.
Sorry, at a...
A sorority house. And the reviewer was saying, you know, this is all the kind of stuff that drives women mad, which is, you know, you need to be physically attractive.
You need to get makeup on.
You need to have the makeover, the before and after shot.
You need to be striding down the mall, striding down the mall avenue with power music on while men spill coffee on their crotches and stuff like that.
And yet, at the same time, you need to be chaste and a good girl.
And at the same time, you need to be sexually open.
And the reviewer just went through a whole bunch of lists of messages within the movie that was basically just all contradictory, right?
And this is the kind of stuff that legitimately, completely drives women nuts.
I mean, men have their own stuff too, right?
Which is where you have to be strong and manly.
And at the same time, you have to be sensitive and emotionally available.
I mean, there's lots of things that, you know, the women, we want you to be tough in the business world so that you provide a good income.
But at the same time, we want you to be sensitive at home and a dewy-eyed, grabby father and so on, right?
So there's lots of contradictory stuff.
And of course, this is all just a kind of maze that is set up for us so that we don't basically think about the power structures in society, right?
So we sit there bouncing around like a pinball.
In this, you know, well, the girly girls are like this, and the other girls are like this, and do I wear makeup, and have I gained a little weight, and, you know, how do I look in these pants?
And these are all little thoughts which take us away from the big thoughts, which, of course, you know, big thoughts are not very friendly to the powers that be.
So I think that there's probably something to do with that sense of impossibility and frustration that a lot of us feel with the roles that Put forward in society is good and which are so often completely contradictory.
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks, Steph.
I mean, there's a film called The Doctor.
I think it's with William Hurt.
And in it, there's this cliche that if a woman marries a doctor, that's really, really great.
She's hit the jackpot.
She's like the alpha female or whatever.
And doctors are, like, notoriously not fun to be married to, right?
Because doctors are kind of egomaniacal and they're often workaholics and so on, right?
Like, it's the rich wife who's alone kind of thing, like the Mrs.
Claus von Bulow thing, where the woman wants the hyper-aggressive, testosterone-pounding-the-table alpha male, but she doesn't want workaholism and emotional distance.
And again, these are all clichés, and I'm sure there's more refined ways of putting it.
But, um, that is, uh, this kind of stuff just drives people completely nuts, right?
Because there is this temptation when categories are out there that are considered attractive, that we want to put ourselves into these categories, you know, like the giggly know-nothing girl, or like in Mean Girls, the girl played by Lindsay Lohan, um, Who is really good at math.
She is a mathlete.
But in order to get the boy ahead of her to talk with her, she pretends that she doesn't know the answer to something and that he's so much smarter.
And when we have these boxes that are considered to be attractive, like if you wrap yourself up in this wrapping, then you will be attractive.
That is something which is, of course, so opposed to the complexities and ambivalence and depth of our true natures.
And the idea that we put ourselves in these little boxes and then people who are going up and down the aisles of attractiveness will pick us out is really tempting, right?
Because we have a biological drive to reproduce and we want to have romance and we want to have sex and we want to have intimacy and we want to have cuddling and all those kinds of things.
But it's, of course, complete madness because anybody who picks us out based on these stereotypes is only going to create a relationship which stifles and crushes us completely.
And yet to take the leap to be our true self, to be the richness, depth, and complexity of all that we are, Feels like a real, you know, like if I don't put myself on this shelf in this shop, is anyone ever going to find and buy me at all?
I mean, that is a really challenging thing.
But I don't think that there's any other way to a rich and rewarding relationship if it's going to happen.
That sort of makes sense. I mean, if you stick yourself in this box in order to be bought, and then someone sort of buys you, You've stuck yourself in that box forever, basically.
Yes, and as we've heard from the women here as well, sorry to be so annoying and interrupt a woman on the Women's Conference, but as we've heard from the women here, I would suggest that the mothers put themselves in the boxes.
The real tragedy is not so much that you put yourself in that box, but that you will end up putting your children in that box, which is really not fair, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, if you're sort of in this box that you feel that, you know, no, I'm so much more than this, but I have to stay in this tiny little world.
Otherwise, you know, my husband will divorce me or whatever.
I can see all the resentment that that would cause.
And additionally, I seem to be also in the same box as my mother, which is, you know, Let me be fat and unattractive so nobody will ever have to look at me so I won't have to deal with, you know, this thing where, my God, someone thinks I have value.
Why haven't I been told this my entire life?
Right, or it could be for your mother early sexual trauma that would have resulted in the anti-sexuality of her later adult life.
These things all can tend to coalesce.
Right, absolutely. Sorry, there is, I think, and I'll shut up after this, and I do apologize for talking during the Women's Conference to this length, but I'll just touch on this very briefly, and if it makes any sense to women, then pick it up, and if it doesn't, I'll shut up and let you all talk.
But there is also something, and I don't know if this is So much with the newer generation.
But there is, at least in earlier generations, the idea of management is very, very core to women.
And so just the one that popped into my mind was the question of sexuality, right?
So the woman would be like, "Well, if I'm not sexually attractive to him and if I don't give him sex, so to speak, then he's going to become interested in someone else and that's going to threaten the marriage." And so in a sense, sexuality becomes a sort of a trap or a management tool, if that makes any sense at all.
And this can occur with a number of other areas.
That's sort of the one that popped into mind.
But that's having a very distant relationship to your own physicality.
Like it's something that you use to manage someone rather than an expression of love and desire and so on.
And of course, that kind of sexuality can't be very much fun for the woman because it's like taking the car in for maintenance.
If I don't change the oil, my engine's going to seize.
And if I don't hand out...
I had a question for Christina.
Go ahead!
Is she around?
I know that from the very limited amount of information I have about your family history that your family really emphasized being presentable and being pretty and being attractive and I look at you and you seem to have a really healthy relationship with your self-image and you seem to be very confident and I was wondering what works for you in terms of resolving some of those issues?
My husband is very grabby.
I never got a negative body image from my mother.
My mother was always very comfortable with her weight and her physical appearance.
She never dieted.
We always ate very healthy home-coached meals.
She never binged.
She didn't have a sweet tooth or anything like that.
And she was a pretty attractive woman, I think.
And so she didn't instill that in me or my sister.
I don't think my sister has body image issues either.
And so never really worried about...
That's not completely accurate.
I don't think I worried as much as some of my friends did about my physical appearance.
I was told all the time that I was pretty because that's what was important to be pretty and that I was pretty and that I was nice and those sorts of things.
So it was never you're not pretty enough.
I never really had that.
I think I did a little bit of that to myself.
I think I got that from some of my girlfriends who were concerned about, oh, my ass is too big or my breasts aren't big enough or I'm too short or I'm too tall or whatever.
I picked that up from them.
I have my own issues, but they've never really defined me.
They've never really been a real focus of Of mine, I have, like everyone, I'm not immune to it.
I mean, you know, there are things about myself that I wish were different, but, sorry, a verbal tick from Steph when I said that.
There were things about myself that I wish were different, but not to the point where I become obsessive or where my self-worth has been caught up in it.
I also think that as I've gotten older, physical appearance has mattered less and virtue, of course, has mattered more.
What are your thoughts, Steph, about my relationship to my appearance?
Thank you, Colleen.
That's very kind of you to say.
Well, I mean, I think that Christina has a wonderful relationship with her physicality.
This is in terms of very early on, I coined her the term that she was the action wife, which didn't just mean that she was poseable in little G.I. Joe outfits, but meant that she was very open to trying new things, dirt biking, parasailing, scuba diving.
She was very open to trying some of the more sporty stuff.
That I was into.
We went skiing and you know all that which she'd never done before and so she was really great with with that kind of stuff and you I mean you have a great confidence with your physicality and a great grace and Yeah, she fell off the bike.
When we first went dirt biking, she hit a rut.
And when sailing off the bike, and it really was, you know, she really stuck the landing.
It was the Russian judges gave her a 12.
And she's just very graceful and sort of very natural that way.
I don't think that you have any particular aspects of your body that you don't like in other than a jokey kind of way.
Yeah. I used to think, oh man, guys with a full head of beautiful hair can't have any problems in the world whatsoever.
You look at guys in the magazines and they've got that bed head or whatever that they just sort of wake up that way.
So it seems, oh, they can't have any problems in the world because everything's got to be fine, right?
I think I'm the same way.
It would be great to have a full header here, but at the same time, you actually don't like that very idea.
It would be alarming to you.
I'll make jokes about it.
I have a funny relationship with baldness now.
I'm actually quite pleased with it now because it's so efficient.
But especially considering that, you know, the beauty commute that Christina has as far as hair management goes and where she needs like 12 cowboys and a lariat and a cattle prod to get it into shape.
But I think it's okay to...
I learned from you that sort of you can look at certain flaws within yourself and have a humorous and positive relationship with them.
You know, as you say, your hair is the Smurf Elvis hair.
And things like that and a bad permanent windstorm and stuff like that where you have good jokey aspects with some of the things that you're not quite so pleased at.
And of course I love your hair. I think it's perfectly you in the same way that my hair is It's perfectly me, right?
Because that's just who we are.
And so I think that aspect of things, I've learned a lot from you.
And of course, seeing the ease with which you went through the pregnancy and all that was also great.
But of course, you were also stunningly gorgeous throughout the pregnancy because of the growing life and all that, and other things.
So yeah, sorry, that's my two cents worth.
And thank you for suckering me back into talking on the women's show.
Speaking about the pregnancy, Isabella is going to be two months on Monday, the 19th, and so I'm carrying a little bit of excess pregnancy weight.
I'm not immune from feeling a little heavier and feeling a little...
I'm frumpier and unattractive.
I mean, I don't have a lot of weight to lose because I didn't gain a lot of weight during my pregnancy.
But I do know that, you know, I'm sort of in between things.
I can't wear my maternity clothes because they're all too big.
And I can't wear my regular clothes because they're all too tight.
And so I have sort of one pair of jeans that I can wear.
And I just, you know, the need to feel attractive is certainly there.
I want to be attractive for stuff.
And I also want to be attractive.
Oh, hang on just one sec.
Just wanted to point out that Christina also can't wear the outfits that I bought her because they're way too tight.
But that was true even before the pregnancy.
So, little Barbie outfits. Sorry, I think we'll have to let others take over because we are having a peanut gallery as inputting.
I didn't have any other questions, but I was wondering if the men wanted to say anything, the men that are on the call.
Yeah, we're almost at the back of the bus.
Um, I guess not.
Is there anything else anybody else wanted to mention from the women or anybody?
Hello? Yeah, um, would you like to go?
You can go ahead. Uh, yeah, I will.
Okay. So earlier you guys were saying something about people who were saying, oh, you should wear this makeup, and oh, you should do this, it makes you look better, you know?
And then I want to connect that with how we were talking about we should wrap ourselves in this little package.
And, you know, we bought by people who...
that's... But, I mean, to make the connection, people go and bought a pack of ours.
They're... The standards by which they're judging us are, you know, for us and our concern with virtue, they, you know, they're not the right standards.
We would probably get overlooked.
So, people who tell us, I mean, I'm just kind of theorizing, but say, like, people who tell us that, oh, you should look this way and everything, they're kind of telling us that, oh, you should look this way because they're kind of assuming that we want to be around people like that, you know? I don't know if that makes any sense, but...
Did you hear that?
I'll let Colleen respond.
Oh, um...
I'm not sure I quite understand the question, or the point was...
The people who say that we should look a certain way are saying that's...
I didn't quite catch the last part, it was a little choppy.
Um, what I'm saying is that by saying that we should learn what this way, they're kind of also assuming that, um, they're assuming we would prefer people to go that way with that.
I'm sorry, you're breaking up too badly.
I wonder if you wouldn't mind just typing the question in the chat room, because I'm already getting about every third syllable.
So if you could just type it into the chat room, then we'll pick it up that way.
And I think there was a gentleman who wanted to mention something.
Yes, that was me.
Go ahead. Just a couple of things.
I think, I don't know that I'd call it body image issues, but as far as my experience went, I felt like I was made fun of a lot growing up and teased for different physical things, you know, and some non-physical just kind of personality, like, oh, you're a geek, that kind of thing.
And I think, like, in high school, I sort of grew out of it.
And the way that happened for me was just looking around at other people.
Like, let's just take being short, for example.
Let's say, you know, I feel like I'm too short and I don't feel like I deserve to be with anyone because I'm so short.
What I found was that just looking at other people, you know, I'd see, oh, look at that guy over there.
He's shorter than his girlfriend.
You know, look at that guy.
He's short, too. You know, and obviously this, I don't think this makes a whole lot of sense to someone who's deeply kind of steeped in In that feeling, in that world where they really do feel like they're less of a person or they just generally feel like they're...
Like it's hard to pin it on something specific, but to someone who's suffering from one issue or another, that may not make a whole lot of sense.
But if it's possible to get yourself in a place mentally, actually emotionally, that's where you want to be initially, but...
Just mentally where you can actually compare and actually look at everyone and everything in your environment, you begin to notice things as they really are.
And once you get to that stage, you see that, sure, there are a lot of people who have the exact same issue that you have, and they have the exact same thing that, let's say, you want.
You know, whether it's friends or, you know, a great relationship or just people that treat you pleasantly, you know, and yeah.
So, I mean, that's one thing.
I guess I had another one.
I kind of lost it, so if I think of it later, I'll try and mention it.
I think those are excellent points.
Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say, I think that's a good point.
I think there is a tendency in people to look at things as, oh, am I attractive?
Am I not attractive? Or am I popular?
Am I not popular? And they don't think of it in relation to what is it that I really want out of life and what are my values?
And so, yeah, I think that's an important way to look at it.
Greg, you typed a question in the chat and it was, actually you typed a few questions.
The first one is, what are your attitudes towards men and their appearances?
What do you think is healthy or attractive in guys?
How do you think your view or attitude towards men's bodies is an influence on your attitude about your own or an effect of your attitude about your own?
And to what extent does physicality get in the way of your admiration of a man's virtue?
I know for me, I've never been really that obsessed over, you know, the way men look, and it's really rare for me to see a guy...
I'm sorry to interrupt you for just a second, but Rich has just pinged me to say that you're completely obsessed with the way that men look and will only go out with physically most perfect specimens.
Sorry, I just wanted to mention that.
Yeah, I mean, the way it's worked for me, it's like I rarely see a guy, you know, and at first glance go like, wow, oh my god, he's so attractive.
And, you know, I rarely get that worked up over it.
But what happens for me is I'll meet somebody and as I get to know them, if they're somebody that displays a lot of qualities that I find admirable, then my attraction towards them grows and grows.
And that's certainly what's happened with Rich.
And I mean... Just as, you know, I know a lot of people say, like, they first get into a relationship and then the person, you know, after a while, they get less attracted and the person let themselves go.
And it's sort of been the opposite with me.
Like, I feel like my attraction to rich just grows as our relationship goes on.
And so for me, I don't think it's really gotten in the way of my admiration of man's virtue or whatever.
I mean, as long as... As long as the guy is healthy and, you know, relatively fit, I don't really consider it that much.
I've noticed sort of the same thing with the men that I've found attractive or have even dated.
I mean, they've been of all sorts of different shape, sizes, you know, eye color, hair color, whatever.
I mean, they're all...
Different. So I don't think that I really have a type.
I definitely agree with Colleen that, you know, the more that I know a man or the more that I'm around him, I become much more attracted to him based on, you know, what his personality is like, what his virtues are.
And, you know, I used to get...
A lot of sort of pushback from some of my, you know, friends back when I was hanging out with not-so-good people.
And I would always say, oh, well, your fiancé is so ugly.
How did you ever get into a relationship with him?
And, you know, he was attractive to me.
So I... I basically sort of laughed it off and thought less of the people who would tell me that, you know, your fiancé is ugly, you shouldn't be with him, etc.
I think it was Roman Polanski, who, you know, maybe not a moral ideal, but he said that physical beauty runs out of charm after about three days around the house.
And I think there's some truth in that, because after that, it really is about how well you're treated, how loving your partner is, and how open and mature and wise I think that's a good thing to remember.
I just mentioned something I mentioned earlier in a podcast a long time ago, which was that I used to go just for the women who were the most attractive, and sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't.
Of course, I'm most physically attractive, right?
I just remember when I would be turned down by the women who were very physically attractive and I would be all offended because I'd be like, oh, so maybe I'm not handsome enough for them or whatever and I can't believe that they would judge me by that shallower criterion.
But, of course, the reality is that I was judging them by even more of a shallow criterion which was going for them.
You can't really say, well, I'm upset to be rejected because I'm not handsome enough if you're only approaching people for their own physical attractiveness.
You can't... You can't trade counterfeit for real currency and feel hard done by.
So I just sort of wanted to mention that, something in case people haven't listened to the earlier podcast.
It's something that I mentioned earlier that was a huge wake-up call for me.
And interestingly enough, if you do get a chance to see it, it's not the best film in the world, but it's got a very interesting message.
The film Shallow Hell with Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow and Mr.
Bananahan's Anthony Robbins is actually a good film, I think, from that standpoint.
And it's very nice to see Jason Alexander with a little tail.
So that's a good film from this, and I will get into it.
But if you get a chance to rent it, it's not a bad way to spend an hour and a half.
So that was a good film as well.
Greg typed another question, although I'm not really sure what it means.
Has the difference in focus caused any resentments or tension?
Who do you mean? I think he's probably referring to, as an example, if you don't wear makeup, does it bother other people?
Oh, I see. He said, given that you don't gauge men by their appearance, what do you think it says about your own focus on your appearance in terms of how you think others are judging you?
Yeah, I mean, I think I have had this perception in the past that men really, really just care about physical attractiveness, and though I don't think that's true for all men, certainly, it has caused a little bit of resentment in the past.
For me, because, you know, I don't really think that I had those kinds of standards for men.
And, I mean, of course, part of the problem was from myself.
Like, I was giving myself higher standards than I was giving men.
So I can't really, really blame that all on men.
So that's been my relationship to it.
I think it sort of goes back to the question that I had earlier, or a statement that I made.
It's like, I don't watch how much other people eat, I don't really care, but I always think that they're looking at me.
And it's sort of interesting to turn it around and realize that if I'm not looking at other people, if I'm not judging other people, then really?
Are they really judging me?
Right, I think that's a good point.
Any other comments or questions?
Okay. Well, I want to thank everybody for participating on the call, and I think we really got some good stuff out of it.
I certainly feel pretty good about everything we've been discussing.
I feel, interestingly enough, I kind of feel more peaceful about my own body issues after talking about all of this stuff.
So I hope everybody else enjoyed it.
I certainly did. And thank you so much for setting it up and for fielding the calls.
And of course, thank you for everyone who participated.
Everybody who has participated will be in the Free Domain Radio bikini calendar.
So that should be very exciting.
And I'm glad that at least one other man joined in.
Greg also counts because he typed questions.
So that will be...
We will be the fall, I would say.
But... I just wanted to mention before we sign off that I have finished the first draft of How to Achieve Freedom.
It's a horrible, horrible, horrible book.
I really hate it.
It has been a real brain-bending and heart-rending challenge to write, and I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do with it.
I don't think I'm going to toss it out to the four winds openly for a little while.
It is an extraordinarily volatile book, I think, so I just wanted to keep everyone up to date who's been asking me about where the book is.
So it has been a very tough write.
It's sort of between EA and PA in terms of length.
And so I just wanted to keep everyone up to date on what's happening with that.
I'm not sure what's going to happen.
I'm going to take a little bit of a break from it and then go back and read it with Christina, who's read some of it, and with some fresh eyes.
It will be a little while before anything particularly productive happens with it, but I think it's a very important book and I'm very happy to have written and I'm very happy to have finished it and it certainly has been the toughest thing that I've done.
So anyway, I just wanted to keep everyone up to speed on that to give you an annoying teaser, but I will keep everyone posted as far as that goes.
So thank you again so much to Colleen, of course, and to the women who shared so generously and the men who asked questions as well.
Apologies for barging in with the...
Falkhorn Leghorn of my perspective, but I hope it was somewhat useful.
And have yourselves an absolutely wonderful, wonderful week.
And don't forget, if you're going to be in Nashua, New Hampshire, March 5th to 8th, I hope to be there.
I will for sure be there for March 8th.
If the government is kind enough to give me Isabella's papers, then Christina and I will be there for the four days and look forward to seeing as many of you who will be there.
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