Oprah Winfrey, Jennier Weiner, and Balance

Jennifer Weiner, the popular fiction novelist, recently wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times.

In it she wrote about how women’s poor body image and feeling shame about their body is so incredibly widespread, so incredible pervasive, so incredibly powerful, that it spares no one. Not even Oprah Winfrey.

Ms Weiner talked about what a powerful image Oprah has become in the diet culture movement. Having many times in her life taken to the stage and to the cover of magazines to declare herself skinny once again. It was the epitome of no matter how popular, wealthy or powerful Oprah became, her body couldn’t be good enough the way it was.

This article resonated with me on many levels. First, I myself from a very young age was aways self conscious of my size. I always remember feeling that the little girls around me were skinnier than me and that caused me embarrassment. I have led my own journey in trying to figure out the balance of wanting to be skinner, but then eventually realized I needed to be mentally healthy as well and wondered how that all fit together.

Second is I work with many woman across the life span and very few issues are as universal across that span as women being unhappy with the size of their bodies.

Third- this article called out the role of social media and woman of influence in our culture. Pictures are powerful. Words are powerful. Our brains use the images we see to compare ourselves to those other women thousands of times per day. It happens so fast and so automatically in our brains we don’t even realize it.  We all end up looking in the mirror and sighing thinking thoughts of discontent. A main driver of that is the images we have in our heads of women who we think are valued.

Fourth is a conflict that wasn’t mentioned but is one that I am left working with myself and with my clients all the time. The concept of a dialectical dilemma is when we have two opposite needs, emotions, etc that conflict with one another but are both true at the same time. A common example of this is that I am a person who needs to work on my many flaws and yet at the same time, I am someone who should be confident in who I am right here and right now. You would thinks the two concepts conflict, am I someone who needs to change a lot, or am I someone who should be content with who I am? And the answer is both.

In the world of body image and diet culture and body positivity and beauty at every size…… There is a dialectical dilemma. We do need to take care of our bodies and our health. We can’t deny that healthy eating, less processed foods, less sugar, more water and fruits and vegetables can help power this incredible gift of a body that we have. I would even say we can’t even deny the role all of these processed foods have on our mental health. At the same time. One the other side of this dilemma is the fact that woman are naturally made to be all shapes and sizes. It is wrong and damaging to have a whole society desiring only one body type. We need to be happy with who we are naturally. We need to believe that women can be beautiful and attractive and yes, heathy, at many different sizes.

I don’t have an answer to this balance or to this dilemma. Except to say I’m in it. Except to also say I enjoy helping other women be in it too. Our goal and our aim is not to decide one or the other. The goal is to accept the journey towards staying in balance. Our goal is to love our bodies enough to feed it well, to move it well and also love it enough to look in the mirror and give it a big satisfied smile. I’m not sad that Oprah is constantly trying to improve, I’m sad that she has defined thinness as the gold standard for that. But that’s okay, we are all works in progress.