More Than A Body: Your Body Is an Instrument, Not an Ornament

by Lexie Kite

When we focus on others’ looks, not only are we perpetuating a culture of objectification, we are also being divided against each other. We aren’t really seeing each other—our friends, sisters, daughters, colleagues, even strangers—as full, complete people irrespective of physical appearance. We often feel like we’re competing with other women—including our loved ones—for resources like love, beauty, and validation, even though these things aren’t actually limited.

they perpetuate the idea that we are most valued for our looks and always being evaluated accordingly. Any comment about appearance functions as a little splash—a friendly, nonaggressive, well-intentioned splash—that nevertheless instantly directs your attention back to the waters of objectification, where you are defined by how you appear over anything else. When

beauty as the foremost asset you have to offer the world.

“Your booty looks in those leggings!” Splash. “I’m in love with your hair!” Splash. “Will you do a makeup tutorial?” Splash. “#bodygoals.” Splash. “Did you lose weight?” Splash. These “kind” words reinforce the value and importance of appearance, which triggers people to be hyperfocused on their own parts.

These comments reinforce the lie that thinner is always best, healthiest, and worth any illness, trauma, depression, or insufficient access to food that causes you to achieve it.

“I lost 25 pounds in less than 2 months due to stress and grief over my brother’s death. Wow, the compliments I got, and the ‘how did you do it?’”

same after I got skinny after my anxiety attack. we never understand how much damage we create with body compliments

Girls learn the most important thing about them is how they look. Boys learn the most important thing about girls is how they look. Girls look at themselves. Boys look at girls. Girls are held responsible for boys looking at them. Girls change how they look. Boys keep looking. The problem isn’t how girls look. The problem is how everyone looks at girls.

they learn and relearn to experience their bodies from a sexualized outside perspective—as objects to be looked at.

what the larger outside culture constantly tells girls about themselves: they are bodies first and people second.

boys’ clothes are largely designed to be practical, while girls’ are designed to be pretty . . . It’s not just about avoiding skinned knees, but also the subtle and discouraging message that’s woven right into girls’ garments: you are dressed to decorate, not to do.”

“She is good, and I am good. We are in this together. We aren’t in competition for limited resources. I want what is best for her, and I’m sure she’d want the same for me.”

smallness, thinness, youth, and all the other narrow ideals about beauty. When

But assuring someone that she is beautiful will not protect her from the pain of being called ugly.

If you give looks-based comments the power to build people up, you reinforce their power to tear people down.

The truth is, when we stop giving beauty the power to make us, we take away its power to break us.

Tell her who she really is—generous, observant, smart, loving, curious, energetic, creative, articulate, compassionate, talented, etc. Compliment her in ways that remind her she is more: “I see the way you include those kids who want to play. You are so kind and compassionate.” Or “You are an incredible artist. You have a gift that speaks to people’s hearts.” Or anything else that helps her see that her purposes extend far beyond how well she decorates the earth.

Be aware that the moment you respond to anyone, child or adult, calling someone “fat” by telling her “that’s not nice” or “she’s not fat—she is beautiful!” you are setting up “fat” as the opposite of “beautiful” and “good” and “worthy,” which makes sense when so many of the cultural messages we receive throughout our lives do just that.

When we begin to see women as more than bodies, the look of those bodies becomes one of the least interesting parts about them.

When our first, natural instinct is to praise a woman’s appearance over anything else about her, we clearly have a limited view of her and what she needs.

Instead of telling her, “You look amazing!” tell her, “You are amazing!” Obviously, you should get more specific whenever possible. What have you observed in her character, talents, actions—or really, anything other than how she appears—that you find admirable or worth acknowledging?

know you mean that as a compliment, but I’m working on my body image and that means I’m trying to find my value beyond my looks. I could really use a reminder that I’m worth more than how I appear!” or “Thanks! And you just reminded me that I’ve actually set a goal to validate people for more than their bodies. Do you want to try this out with me? It’s hard at first, but so worth it to help people see how amazing they are for more than their looks.”

Tell them you’ve struggled to value yourself as more than a body and you’re working really hard to make sure you can keep up your progress and teach the ones in your care that they are valuable for more than how they appear.

looking healthy and fit rather than feeling or being healthy or fit.

My body is an instrument, not an ornament.

Our bodies are instruments for our own personal use, experience, and benefit—not ornaments to be admired.

Don’t decide what you want to weigh or how you want to look—decide how you want to feel, what you want to do, and what you want to experience along the way.

Weight is not an effective measure of attractiveness, moral character, or health. The

including but not limited to regular exercise, avoiding harmful substances like cigarettes, and eating a balanced diet—are more important factors in a person’s health than their body size—and that social conditions trump all.

person’s level of physical activity is a better indicator of their health and fitness than their BMI or weight—and

eating five or more servings of fruits or vegetables daily, not smoking, limiting alcohol consumption, and exercising at least twelve times per month.

inclusion of eating fruits and vegetables as opposed to restricting other food groups.

them know that many people and companies in this world try to convince people, especially girls and women, that they should shrink and take up less space, but it’s a mean lie. This lie is intended to get people to spend money and time worrying about their bodies instead of living and leading and serving and taking up space doing good in the world—and, too often, it works.

still feel like it’s a work in progress. It’s imperfect, but it’s mine, and I am working on making myself feel good about it. I think our bodies are amazing, really. They are capable of so much when/if we push them to do so. When I focus on that I feel much better about my body. I am so impressed with my body that I was able to complete a 12-mile obstacle course five months after having

As long as our efforts to promote positive body image are focused on feeling positively about how we look, we are still being objectified.

“It’s much, much worse than we ever envisioned. There are all kinds of industries both creating and feeding off these insecurities . . . If you just dropped in on any conversation, the amount of mental space that people take up with what they’re eating, what they’re not eating, their yoga routine, is expressive of the level of distress in our society.” The

“You’re more beautiful than you think” is equivalent to messages like “You are beautiful just the way you are” or “Your flaws make you beautiful.” Of course, we all want girls and women to feel beautiful, especially after a lifetime of feeling subpar in comparison to unreal ideals.

We believe women are suffering not only because of the ways beauty is being defined; we are suffering because we are being defined by beauty. We are burdened with the task of looking beautiful and feeling beautiful (to others as well as to ourselves) because we live in a world that defines our value in terms of our physical appeal to others and defines our body image in terms of our physical appeal to ourselves. Being viewed as objects is the real root of our problem, not which beauty ideals are in vogue for female objects.

Traditionally beautiful white girls with perfect skin and able-bodied women with hourglass figures on the lower end of the plus-size range may easily find solace and solidarity in the body positivity movement—while women of color, those with disabilities, those who don’t conform to stereotypical feminine looks, those beyond the acceptable size and shape range, and those who don’t have enough money for the best brands and styling might still feel invisible, ignored, or looked down upon.

We call this bikini tyranny. Why tyranny? Because no item of clothing can or should have that kind of power over us—for good or evil. For so many years, bikinis have been put on a pedestal reserved for only the “hottest” among us. In recent years, with much-needed body positivity activism, women have worked to topple that pedestal in order to help people of all sizes feel comfortable enough to wear one.

Expanding the boundaries for which bodies qualify to be objectified for profit does not translate into actual empowerment for women, but it certainly translates into mega-sales for media outlets and their advertisers.

We want inclusion and representation, not equal-opportunity objectification.

The most-liked pics of women on Instagram are the body-baring ones—no matter how those bodies look. Bodies get the likes and the views.

Body positivity has been appropriated as another way to turn women into consumers and women’s bodies into the objects being consumed, only this time a wider variety of bodies qualify for consumption.

Objectification is not some natural part of what it means to be a woman. The only way to fight it, and the corresponding internalized self-objectification, is to call it out.

If you are interested in improving your body image and self-worth in a culture that values you as a body first and a human second, then you have to look critically at your own ideas of empowerment and self-improvement first.

The big problem with all of these messages—“you’re more beautiful than you think,” “look better, feel better,” “everyBODY is beautiful,” and “all bodies are bikini bodies”—is that even if they are perfectly effective at convincing us they’re true, we’re still stuck in a rut. Even if we are successfully convinced that we’re more beautiful than we imagined and already have a bikini body, the constant monitoring of our lovely appearance is still a distraction and a detriment to our lives. The well-documented harms of self-objectification remain whether we like our looks or not—and the likelihood is still that most women don’t like their looks, or like only certain parts of themselves temporarily.

There is no shortage of smart, dynamic, successful, high-achieving, forward-thinking, loved, and loving women who have every reason to feel at peace with themselves, yet still feel discouraged and disappointed with their bodies. They know they should get over their fixation on losing weight, toning up, slowing down signs of aging, and all the other sexist standards they would tell others to ignore, but they just can’t.

When you reconnect with your bigger sense of self, you will naturally engage in less self-comparison, and you won’t feel as threatened by someone else’s perceived wins or thrilled by their perceived losses.

Beauty doesn’t make you, so it can’t break you, either.

Meditate, walk, ponder, write, pray, practice yoga or tai chi, or whatever helps you personally tune into greater purpose and meaning in your life beyond your immediate physical self in order to reconnect with who you really are and what you are really capable of.