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Many of my childhood memories are
physical ones. I have a vivid memory
of an afternoon playing on the
riverbed of the Loire with my family
in France. Barefoot, I stomped across
the shallow river. I built dams with
slippery rocks and the water, warmed
by the sun, flowed softly through my
fingers. I wasn’t in my head, but in
my body. I was my body. But as I
grew older, I became more and more
‘head’. At university, I spent many
hours bent over thick tomes, taking
notes. At home, I fed myself with
literature, newspapers and films.
I paid a lot of attention to my
thoughts—too much so. I would drift
around in my head endlessly. French
philosopher Descartes’ famous
theorem cogito, ergo sum (‘I think,
therefore I am’) was my forgotten
body’s proxy. But I also noticed how
much importance is attached to a
beautiful body in our society, which is
so focused on appearances. When I
did pay attention to my body, it was
not in a ‘feeling’ way but in a ‘judging’
way: My knees weren’t pretty; my
stomach wasn’t flat enough. Even
though I decided it shouldn’t matter,
sometimes I’d feel startled when I
saw a picture of myself and wonder
if that was really me.
HEAD OVER BODY
Australian philosopher Damon Young
finds it quite understandable that
we’re becoming somewhat alienated
from our own bodies in today’s world.
“Today’s society makes a major
demand on our mind,” he says.
“People spend a large part of their
working day talking, reading and
typing; there isn’t much physical
labor. Movement is marginal: pressing
screens and buttons, making phone
calls. Of course we still have a body,
but its contribution to our life is
limited.” That means that we’re
becoming more and more ‘head’,
and less and less ‘body’.SEEING BUT NOT FEELING
The virtual world is also responsible
for this ‘discorporealization’, Dutch
philosopher Ad Verbrugge writes in his
book Staat van verwarring (State of
Confusion; Dutch only). In the virtual
biotope where we spend a large part
of the day, we’re in a space we can’t
touch, Verbrugge observes. Our eyes
and ears are stimulated, but our other
senses (touch, smell) fade into the
background. We see images of a
beach on Bali passing by online, but
we don’t breathe in the fresh air or
feel the sand under our feet. We scroll
through the photo album of someone’s
desirable life, but we completely fail
to notice that this person is actually
deeply unhappy—something we’d
see much sooner if they were
physically present. Through all that
surfing and texting, Verbrugge
argues, we’re becoming alienated
from the corporeal dimension of life.MIRRORS
“The disconnect that people can feel
regarding their bodies also has to do
with the attributes that we assign to
certain body types,” says Canadianpsychologist and body image
researcher Jessica Alleva of Maastricht
University in the Netherlands. “For
example, we associate obesity with
laziness and lack of self-control, and
in our society wrinkles symbolize old
age and an unhealthy lifestyle. If you
have wrinkles but you still feel young,
or you’re a bit overweight but not lazy
in the slightest, then you don’t
recognize what you see in the mirror.
You become alienated from your
own body.” In addition, Alleva says,
women don’t look at their reflections
with the friendliest of gazes. They see
their body as an object and look at it
with the eye of an outsider (Is my
dress okay?; What do I look like to
other people?).
This third-person perspective is
informed by the images present
everywhere in society of what an ideal
body should look like. But, according
to Alleva, that ideal picture is far from
realistic. “Scientists think the ideal
image is more unreal now than ever
before,” she says. “Women must be
slim, fit and muscular—but not too
much so. They must have large
breasts and a narrow waist, and
always look young and youthful.” It’s
an almost unattainable ideal that we
are confronted with every day. We
scroll through the most beautiful
pictures on Instagram and Facebook.
Perfect bodies wave and smile at us
everywhere, implicitly or explicitly
selling the message that a beautiful
body is important for success and
happiness in love and at work. “It’s
difficult not to be influenced,” >