What if the standards that women are held to in society were reversed? What if men were viewed as subservient? What if men were forced to hate their skin and their thighs, unable to "experience equal status in the community" (Wolf 189)? What if men were routinely paid less than their female colleagues and exposed to severe sexual harassment and discrimination at work? What I have done in my last blog post is to explore what would happen in a sort of twilight universe situation. By that, I mean I am intrigued by what would happen if men were forced to undergo the same challenges (both internal and external) that women are forced to combat every day, if the Beauty Myth affected men and not women. In my story, Zach is a seventeen year old high school junior, and lives a life dominated by the Beauty Myth, in a world where the Beauty Myth reigns, targeting males, and wreaking havoc upon their lives and confidence.
***
"The norm, then, for young, middle class American women, is to be a sufferer from some form of the eating disease" (Wolf 182).
Zach dragged his feet as he walked to school in the hazy light of the morning. His gray eyes were dull and lifeless, as they had been for the last several months. He was just trying to make it through each day, but as he was consuming less and less food, the challenge of each day grew increasingly looming. It had started on a pretty low-key pattern when he joined in with his friends on a crash diet before spring break but even when school resumed after spring break, Zach was hooked on his new eating patterns. He didn't remember the last time he had eaten a full meal, preferring to pick at fruit or drink diet soda to curb his cravings. He could feel all of the other boys' jealous stares on him when he resisted the greasy pizza in the cafeteria and he knew they envied his willpower.
His first few classes passed in sort of a lifeless blur as they always did. He couldn't focus and his grades were dropping as quickly as the pounds were. He spent hours in the gym after school and found that running was the only time he could actually be free from the burden that his eating disorder put on his, thus leading him into a self-perpetuated cycle. He chewed gum viciously; he chewed it to keep himself focused in class, to curb his appetite, to keep his rumbling stomach at bay, and to rid his mouth of the foul taste of partially digested food and stomach acid.
At lunch, he congregated with his friends in cafeteria and watched with envy as they took generous bites of their ceasar salads. Did they even know how many calories the dressing had? He nibbled on a handful of grapes silently watching a nearby table with extreme envy. The table boasted the most popular and powerful girls in the school - the cheerleaders. They were pouring into their food, devouring sloppy joes, french fries, and club sandwiches without a care in the world, hair pulled back off of their faces to avoid dangling in the barbecue sauce. Zach's friend caught him staring at the girls, "I know, man," he said, "Wouldn't it be nice just for once to eat like a girl and not put on a pound?"
"If women were going to have sexual freedom and a measure of worldly power, they'd better learn to fuck like men" (Wolf 134)
That Saturday, Zach attended a party with his friends at one of their classmate's houses whose parents were out of town. He watched the girls showing off on the dance floor, laughing and being reckless and rowdy; the boys on the other hand, stood nervously, constantly readjusting clothing, and flattening their hair. They whispered in the corners, desperately hoping that one of the girls would pick them to flirt with. They would never admit it but they all wanted to be one of the latest conquests of the cheerleaders, who preyed upon weak and insecure boys.
Zach began to drink something that one of the girls handed him. He knew she was probably trying to get him drunk and take advantage of him, as he had been warned about so many times, but he was too self-conscious to care.
He wasn't sure how he ended up in the closet with the girl, whose breath smelt like beer and whose body felt like sweaty rolls of flesh. Her grip was tight and her hands were hot, making Zach feel trapped and weak. It felt like it could have been seconds, minutes, or hours, but finally someone yanked open the door of the closet, causing light to stream in and Zach and the girl to stumble out.
"Yo, nice!" girls called out to the girl, high-fiving her and slapping her hands as she walked out triumphantly. "You dog!" others echoed in praise.
As Zach crept back into the party in embarrassment he was greeted with whispers and stares. "Slut," he heard one boy hiss, but he wasn't sure from which direction. He left the party then, and trudged home.
"They will buy more things if they are kept in the self-hating, ever-failing, hungry and sexually insecure state..." (Wolf, 66)
Walking to school that Monday, Zach glanced up at the billboard hanging over a bus stop. The ad was of a perfectly groomed and perfectly chiseled man with an oiled-up body and almost no clothing. Zach didn't look at what the product was, all ads these days were the same. It didn't matter if it was selling tampons or orange juice, he couldn't find an ad in a magazine or billboard that didn't have the idealized body of a perfect man portrayed. He double-checked his appearance in the bus stop reflection before proceeding to school, the billboard staring down at him, reminding him of how imperfect he still was.
"Beauty thinking urges women to approach one another as possible adversaries until they know they re friends" (Wolf 75)
As he gazed at his reflection in the stained bathroom mirror at school, he noticed how pale and gaunt his face was beginning to look. Two other boys walked into the grungy bathroom laughing together, and Zach froze. They looked at him up and down and Zach hated the burning feeling he got in his stomach as their eyes bore into him, criticizing everything about him without even saying a word. Zach left the bathroom in a rush and disappeared into the masses in the hallway. If he couldn't be perfect, he longed to just be invisible.
***
This course has made me think in ways that previous courses haven't. I chose to focus on Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth for my last post, as it was my favorite book that we read and I think it was the book that both shocked me and stuck with me the most. I wanted to highlight the challenges that Zach goes through as challenges that many girls and women go through on a daily basis, yet these challenges are often deemed trivial and are consistently overlooked. Hopefully, people think that what's happening to Zach is somewhat ridiculous, and realize how wrong it is that when girls go through the same thing no attention is brought to it, which seems just morally wrong.
