16 _
Alleva says. “Even though you know
that the images are unrealistic, you
internalize them. You subconsciously
compare your own body with the
manipulated idealized image.”
I once worked at a glossy magazine
myself, so I know how often the
images are Photoshopped. And
I think: Come on, don’t be so
superficial, surely you’re not sensitive
to all these images of artificial beauty
any more? But maybe it affects me
more than I’ve realized. I don’t exactly
cheer when I’m standing in front of
the mirror. And most of my vacation
snapshots stay safely hidden away on
my hard drive. If I spot a double chin,
a roll of fat or an unattractive grimace,
I immediately delete the photo. That’s
not who I am, is it? Or rather, who
I want to be? But those pictures
probably just show me the way I
actually look sometimes, the physical
‘imperfections’ that belong to me. So
why do I find it so uncomfortable to
be confronted with that? Nobody’s
perfect, right? Surely real life includes
making mistakes and being less
attractive, too?THE THIRD EYE
“There are quite a few difficulties with
the outsider’s gaze,” Alleva says.
For example, you’ll experience less
pleasure between the sheets if you’re
paying too much attention to how you
look, because you’re then thinking
from the point of view of the other
person (Does he/she find me
attractive?) instead of focusing on
yourself (What do I like? What givesme pleasure?). What’s more, you’ll
have less awareness of your own
physical arousal, so you end up also
enjoying sex less. An outsider’s gaze
also disempowers you, because
you’re letting your self-esteem
depend on the judgment of the other,
or on society. “Women who look at
themselves with a third eye (Am I
good enough? Do I look beautiful to
other people?) are then more insecure
about their bodies,” says Alleva.
“They are more likely to suffer from
eating disorders and are more likely
to consider plastic surgery to ‘fix’ their
appearance. Your body becomes like
a prison, with you trapped in the task
of achieving an unattainable ideal,
and if you don’t manage to achieve
it—almost always the case—you feel
like you’re a failure.”THE BEAUTY PARADOX
Ironically, you don’t necessarily
become more attractive if you work
hard on making your body more
beautiful, writes German philosopher
Rebekka Reinhard in her book Schön!
(Beautiful!; unavailable in English).
According to Reinhard, German writer
Heinrich von Kleist makes that
strikingly clear in his essay On the
Marionette Theatre. She explains that
Von Kleist describes in his essay how
a young man sits down on a stool
after a bath to dry his foot. When he
looks in the mirror, for an enchanted
moment he’s reminded of a Greek
statue in a museum. When the boy
tries to make the beautiful movement
again, the enchantment is broken.And by the tenth attempt, his
movement only appears more and
more wooden. Von Kleist writes that
from that moment on, the young man
underwent an incomprehensible
change. He stood in front of the mirror
all day and the longer he did, the more
his attractiveness disappeared. It was
as if an invisible and bewildering
power had settled around his otherwise
free motions like a tight corset. After
a year, there was no trace of the
sweetness in him that people around
him had previously admired. In real
life it’s like that, too, in Reinhard’s
opinion. She writes that the more you
try to be more beautiful, young and
fashionable, the more you lose your
appeal. That’s the beauty paradox
she describes: Deliberate beauty
always has something stiff and
determined about it.SO MUCH BEAUTY
To love your body more, it’s good to
think about all the things your body is
able to do, Alleva learned during her
Ph.D. research. In one study, she
instructed women with a negative
body image to write about what their
bodies are capable of and why they
are so grateful for that. “Women find
it difficult to look at their bodies that
way,” Alleva says. “It’s not something
we’re used to doing. But our body is
capable of so many beautiful things.”
The women spent three periods of
fifteen minutes writing. “Each writing
assignment in the research project
had a different focus,” Alleva explains.
“In one, the women wrote about >‘TO LOVE YOUR BODY MORE, IT’S GOOD TO THINK ABOUT
ALL THE THINGS YOUR BODY IS ABLE TO DO’