Yoo-Hoo!
Society!
I’ve been thinking you should get a new hobby–something that will divert your attention away from creating new and ridiculous ways to tear apart the female body piece by piece like your latest weapon of mass destruction: thigh gap. How about you take up something like soap making instead of undermining women’s spirits? Think of all of the bubbly fun. You could set up a booth at a Renaissance festival, make some cash, and enjoy a turkey leg and some ale. Pinterest might have a tutorial or a gazillion to get you started.
If you have not heard of “thigh gap”, I’m so sorry to be introducing it to you, but basically it’s lauding (or coveting) the tops of your thighs not touching. This is not just another flavor of fat shaming. It really is more than that. This moves beyond weight, which is a matter of health and is managed with diet and exercise, and moves on to the way girls’ skeletons are built, something they can’t change.
Depending on the roll of the genetic dice determining the width of your pelvis, your femurs are either wide set, making you (according to the internet) a thigh-gapped flamingo or closer set making you one step away from being a mermaid with your rubbing thighs. Such whimsical imagery for what is basically another avenue for self-loathing and eating disorders. If your pelvis is narrow, the only way to get a thigh gap is through starvation.
Images like this popping up in my Pinterest feed got me thinking about the topic:
It seemed like an innocent giggle, but was it? It rankled with me, prompting me to do a search for “thigh gap” on Pinterest.
My mouth dropped open when I saw the eating disorder warning at the top.I was grateful Pinterest was responsible enough to post this, but I was deflated because as I suspected, this wasn’t a laughing matter.
But I didn’t have true chills of disgust until I expanded my search beyond the rainbows and mason jars of Pinterest and perused Tumblr, that wild west where all of the teens hang. There, girls with thigh gaps were called whores, blatant glorification of anorexia abounded, and fat shaming oozed.
I have two teenage daughters. One naturally has a thigh gap and one does not, but until a couple of months ago, this was something I would have never noticed. What’s important is they’re both healthy, trim, and athletic. Why should either one of my girls feel badly about the set of their femurs?? Damn you, Society, for planting another seed of obsession.
Those seeds have a way of taking root and burrowing in. I remember yucking it up at a Dane Cook show until he started on a riff about how disgusting it is when the inner labia are longer than the outer ones. As someone who did time in an OB/GYN residency, I knew he just shamed about half the women in the audience. Why did he even have to suggest that my vagina was less than acceptable? And why do I still think about it to this day? It’s like once you hear it, you can’t shake it out of your head. All I know is, at that moment, I wished a thousand fire ants would crawl up his pant leg . . . and that he would never have the privilege of seeing another vagina ever again.
These missiles against women are lobbed up so cavalierly, but they aren’t new. Twenty-first century boredom and Tumblr accounts aren’t solely responsible. Corsets anyone? Foot binding?
The problem is as old as time, but what are modern moms to do? You can’t send an army of ants to attack offenders and you can’t shield your kids from life, but you can give them another point of view, another inner dialogue. You can combat the negative messages because they really do listen to you.
With my daughters, I monitor how I speak about my own body, promote exercise as a way to maintain health and good moods, embrace desserts in moderation, emphasize healthy foods as delicious fuel, and present my girls with reasons to love and respect the strength of their bodies through organized and leisure sports.
I also teach them about fads and how not everything on the internet is worthy of their time or attention. We talk about this A LOT because the web is constantly serving up new points for discussion. (Damn you, Internet!)
This week I’m branching out, though. I’m going to take a vacation from combating the negative and teach them how to pick a worthwhile hobby. Soap making here we come! There’s a festival in our future.
-Ellen
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I hate that this has been made into a yet another huge piece of psychological baggage in our girls’ warehouse of first-world concerns. And I have seen men — stupid, loser men — post that if you don’t have a thigh gap, you are overweight, plain and simple. I have never been overweight and the only way for me to have a thigh gap would be for me to put my thighs on the gyro pole and shave them down. Thank you for putting this out there, and thanks for the reminder to treat our bodies with respect. For our daughters’ sake.
You are the picture of athletic beauty Keesha. I agree, Tumblr and the comments I found there made me sick to my stomach. Ellen
What am I going to do with all these fire ants now?
Amy Flory – Funny Is Family recently posted..20 Things I Say When Traveling with Kids
Well, if you already have them . . .
I remember an exercise video my mom and I used to do in the eighties, where the woman said “My mother always said, there are only three places a woman’s legs should touch – knees, the calves, and the ankles.” Man – that comment has stayed with me my whole life. I am fairly sure there is nothing in the world I could do to achieve that dubious goal. Not surprisingly, the video did not get me the desired results because…genetics. Wake up, people.
Damn, I must have missed that gem in the eighties. All I can think about now is the Thighmaster. Remember that? The irony was that using it actually bulked up your thighs. Oh how I wish exercise fads would go away, too. Ellen
I heard that also from a friend’s mom—and that your legs should form 2 diamonds of space above and below the knees—and like Alicia this has also always stayed with me. At the time I was in high school and relatively thin and still my legs always played music when I wore corduroys. Thigh gap was never in the cards for me I guess.
Liz recently posted..Zoe vs. the British Nanny
I don’t think my thighs have ever not touched. Ellen, I love the way you put things so logically and straightforward. This is a must read for women AND men!
Kathy at kissing the frog recently posted..I’d Only Do It For Joey
Well Said——what else can I say?
I am proud to call you FAMILY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you for posting this Dr. Ellen Williams.
LOVE YOU
Agreed that this is a troubling time when you think of the reach of social media and pressures it puts on youth to always look “perfect.” Then, as I was reading, I wondered if men had the same pressures to look storybook perfect all the time. I’m sure they do, but they aren’t posting self depreciating memes on social media accounts, sharing it amongst themselves, and pointing at other men in the group showers while whispering about the akk cellulite or worse.. that their thigh touch..
bodynsoil recently posted..Layne Norton on Metabolic Damage
I try not to be obvious with my daughters as I watch like a hawk for signs of obsession with weight or shape. Luckily we’re still just vying to be the taller sister. The other day my daughter started playing with my stomach and I overrode my instinct to flinch. I am finding that as I hope to teach them things, I am learning so much myself.
Amanda recently posted..Testing Body Image
I have a three year old daughter and it sickens me to think that one day (and that day may not be so far away if statistics are to be believed) she will face the pressures society places on women to look a certain way. She is a tall girl and has been in the 97% for her weight since birth. She has grown beautifully, in healthy proportion for her personal parameters, and I hope she continues to do so with little regard for societies’ views. I’m always conscious of the way I speak about my body around her. Like Amanda I have to override my instinct to make a face or a self deprecating joke when my daughter grabs my bottom and says ‘jiggle jiggle does that tickle!?’.
The flip side of the manner in which some people choose to combat the thigh gap phenomenon, is that women and girls who are naturally thin in this area are being shamed. ‘Thigh gaps are for flamingos’ or ‘Eat a cupcake’ “campaigns” are just as damaging for some young (and even more mature) women who struggle to put on weight. These women do exist, and being told they look unhealthy or need to eat more can be just as damning to their self image as telling someone they are overweight because their thighs touch.
This is all without even delving into body issues facing young men today. It’s a scary world out there for young people. The best hope they have are people like you who aren’t afraid to throw your hands up and say ‘enough is enough!’ For everybody.
Thank you for this article, beautifully written, as always.