I was out to dinner at a friend's house recently, in a group of people who all knew each other, not intimately but comfortably. The hostess made one of the women stand up. "Nancy has lost twenty pounds! Isn't that fabulous?" Nancy stood, blushing, and everyone applauded. I was shocked.
First, the woman in question had recently had a show of her paintings at a prestigious gallery. No one in the group clapped for that accomplishment. I had finished a novel that took me seven years of research, and a doctor who was present had built a house with his own hands, but we were not cheered. Having caused part of her body to disappear seemed to everyone else in the room an act of such singular merit it overwhelmed the merely artistic or commercial success. Making a living, furthering one's career, providing for one's family, creating something beautiful and new in the world for others to enjoy, all fell before the triumph of wearing a dress two sizes smaller.
When I was a little girl, my mother was full of admonitions. Some of them I found silly, some obvious, and others still strike me as reasonable guides to conduct. She told me that you never commented on someone else's body; it was too personal. It was rude.
This adage, which I have always tried to follow, has little currency in our society. I have a friend who always greets you. "Hi! Haven't you lost weight?" It is her general-purpose hello. A newspaper interviewer walked into my hotel room and said to my husband. whom she had met exactly once five years before, Hello. we met on the Cape. Haven't you put on a few?"
I find both the compliment and the intended insult equally rude. I cannot imagine greeting someone, "Goodness, don't you have a long nose!" or conversely, "Oh, I remember you when you were fifteen. Haven't your breasts grown?" "What, no pimples today?" Yet comments on weight lost or gained seem to have become one of the standard opening gambits of our social games.
Sometimes I think we have all gone insane. A Massachusetts politician appears on the evening news responding to an arms-control treaty. The person watching beside me offers a trenchant comment on his support of the treaty. "He's slimmed down again. Is he running for something?"
We view packaging as more important than contents. This is particularly true with women, where it seems that after 20 years of a second wave of feminism, women are still judged primarily on how well they imitate the appearance of a 14-year-old. We are told that the society admires motherhood. yet every indication on the body that the woman in question has fulfilled that duty is punished. I attended a luncheon at which a woman spoke about child abuse. She saves lives and psyches. The woman next to me summed up her response to the speaker, who has written books and articles, is a professional woman and mother of three, "Well. I never expected her to be twenty pounds overweight!"
Bodies. particularly women's bodies, have become public property. They are supposed to be kept up like the lawn at the Washington Monument. Never do I hear women talking about other women in such a tone of moral disapproval -- not when they have stolen someone's husband, not when they have neglected their children, not when they have sabotaged another women at work -- as I do when one women is saying about another that she has let herself go. We reserve for fat the outrage we used to save for crimes against persons.
We behave as if weight is under every woman's control although all our experience indicates that is nonsense. We know scientifically that dieting simply causes the body to metabolize more slowly while waiting for the return of food to store instead of genetics, an inherited physique often as little subject to volition as height.
In spite of our obsession with weight, we do not confine ourselves to comments on that aspect of appearance. We seem to feel we have a license to comment freely on almost any aspect of a person visible to us or sometimes only speculated about.
Women will say to each other -- to casual friends, to acquaintances -- "Why don't you color your hair?" Or conversely, "Didn't your hair used to be brown?" "You shouldn't consider a miniskirt. Your thighs are too fat." "You're too old for one of those." We seem to be engaged in policing each other according to some notion of the deal that is not accessible to women over 40 who are not quite simply rich and either idle or in a profession where appearance is an investment worth several hours of time every day to maintain. It is obvious that an android could do it all better and cheaper after the initial purchase. A tune-up now and then, a touch-up, perhaps some new software every few years. Is that what we want being a woman to be reduced to?
Perhaps if we were able to love ourselves better as we are, in our imperfect bodies, we would feel less impelled to seek for and comment on the flaws in other women. We would be better friends to others because we would be more at peace with ourselves.
We are punishing each other for characteristics that do not matter. Would a woman be a truer friend if she resembled the anchor on the nightly news? Would she be kinder? Would she backbite less? Would she drive us to the dentist with a raging abscess when our car has broken down? Would she pick up the kids in the next town when we have a fancy dinner to prepare? Would she make us feel more valued and stronger when a husband or a lover has left us or proven unfaithful? Would she make us laugh harder when we're sharing coffee?
Even a compliment on the body conceals a judgment that festers. That friend who greets you, "Haven't you lost weight?" is implying that the time you met before you were unsatisfactory to her. If you look better for having lost weight. then you were too heavy before. You are passing some test now, but you failed it in the past and you may fail it again. Who needs this kind of testing among acquaintances? When will we stop doing it and putting up with it among friends?
