Body type objectification is not gender-specific

Signifying Nothing: A toast to Twitter: consuming ourselves and others

A few weeks ago my roommate and I invented a new drinking game. He would read out a headline from Twitter, and I had to guess the source of the tweet. The idea was that I’d drink when I was wrong, and he’d drink when I was right. In the end, we just drank whenever we felt like it, and cracked ourselves up imitating the tones of NPR, The New York Times, Pitchfork, and The Onion.
As we kept playing, it seemed like we were on to something. Each news source had its own stylistic trademarks, and it was possible to pick up on these subtle differences. In this game, media outlets no longer said anything important but merely became caricatures. Recognizing the distinctions between BuzzFeed, Gawker and The New Yorker was funny because it was so easy. It quickly became hilariously and painfully obvious that these publications aren’t broadcasting news—they are broadcasting a voice.
The Internet seems like a Great Equalizer. On Twitter, every tweet suffers the same limitations and appears in the same place. All you need to open an account is an email address—after that, it’s up to your own merit or desperation to get as many followers as you can. But how do you stand out from the crowd? When you’re scrolling through Twitter, Lena Dunham, LeBron James, and your older sister may all be competing for your attention. To be heard in a Twitter feed’s cacophony of information, a profile needs its own sound.
This isn’t limited to the news publications that my roommate and I ridiculed. Everyone’s Twitter handle is competing for favorites, for retweets—and ultimately, for recognition. Tweets are constantly moving, so there is only a little time to make a lasting impression.The best way to do this is to be funny. I’ve impulsively favorited countless tweets just because they made me laugh. Because Twitter thrives off humor, its natural mode of communication is irony. What other medium could juxtapose The White House, Lil B and Disney and produce a homogenous stream of information?
Every Twitter profile is producer, consumer and product, all rolled into one. Where else can an individual person have a two-way conversation with Toyota or Quaker Oats? And here’s where it really gets weird—does a company’s Twitter represent the entire business, certain employees, or the product itself? In embracing this hodgepodge of consumer roles, one might think that Twitter can’t be anything other than ironic. But what happens when we take it seriously?
Entire revolutions have sprung out of online social networks, and yet mainstream American culture treats them as little more than a comedic stage. Most “serious” moments on social media seem trite and offensive. (“Share this picture 1000 times to save a terminally-ill child.”) Irony and wit are competition—we point out the contradictions all around us, attempting to get as many laughs as we can.
The ironic nature of Twitter suggests that Twitter itself is absurd—a waste of time. So why do we play along? Do we just want the opportunity to prove we’re better than other people? Is self-objectification irresistible? Do we want others to acknowledge our value by consuming us? Because we idolize our objects of consumption, we want to turn ourselves into those objects of admiration and worship. We try to make our tweets funny so everyone stays on Twitter to justify our presence on the medium, and our delusions of importance. But how can we sustain this illusion when the mode of communication revolves around Twitter’s unimportance?
I recently heard a professor ask if careers in journalism would soon die. I’m not sure what this question was meant to suggest, but today journalism seems more alive than ever. I’ve never been able to follow so many different news outlets at once, or read so many different opinions. Online platforms give everyone the tools to create and disseminate information. But, with so many sources, how can I believe anything that I read?
I can go on Twitter and write the same thing as the New York Times and the only thing separating our tweets is that little blue and white check mark next to “The New York Times.” This check is a subtle reminder that, no matter what we tweet, we’re all still part of the same system—which someone, somewhere, controls. After all, as long as we continue to tweet, however ironic we may be, Twitter Inc.’s profits are nothing to laugh at.

Signifying Nothing

Body type objectification is not gender-specific

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

February 20, 2014

Growing up, I was the fat kid. I wore a shirt while swimming, ate pizza and drank extra-large Slurpees like it was my job, and eventually attended a juvenile weight reduction program. I lost a few pounds in high school, but I was never quite satisfied. Raised on popular media, I always aspired to have the body of a Men’s Health cover model or Ryan Gosling in “Crazy Stupid Love.” So, last May, I decided to buckle down and work towards the physique I always wanted.

Over the summer, I exercised daily, and kept track of everything I ate. I liked the mathematical certainty of counting macronutrients, and I was happy with my success. But I noticed that once I started, it was impossible to stop scrutinizing my diet and worrying over my energy consumption. Once you learn that an Oreo has 50 calories and a PBR has 144, the numbers get stuck in your brain—and they haunted me all the time. The more I learned about nutrition, the more I became convinced that the fewer Oreos I ate, the better off I was. Every food decision felt like it would determine my waistline as well as my lifespan.

When we think of someone who stresses over food, we often picture a malnourished young woman. And while many people do struggle with not eating enough, I felt not only that I had to avoid eating too much, but also that I always had to eat the right things. After all, I couldn’t build muscle without enough protein. As a man, I often find myself at a frustrating crossroads: I don’t want to be fat, but I also don’t want to be scrawny and malnourished.

Because we generally hear of women having eating disorders, it can feel emasculating to admit my anxiety about food. Not only are men expected to conform to a physical standard, but they convey their masculinity through excessive consumption. Television is full of advertisements for products like Taco Bell’s “Triple Steak Stack,” which claims to be “what a man eats.” These commercials accompany ads for Planet Fitness and Dr. Pepper Ten, a diet soda marketed towards men, presenting contradictory images that create an impossible masculine ideal. However, the media often insists that we can reach this unattainable goal if we only buy the products it advertises.

I found the recent Orient article, “The pretty game: objectification, humiliation and the liberal arts” moving, eloquent and, in many ways, relatable. But because it was so relatable, I thought it was wrong for the author to present food anxiety as a gender-dividing issue. She says that there exists a “pretty test” where “girls are let in and boys don’t even get a chance. The “pretty test,” is for girls whereas boys “try to pass a different test, playing a different game altogether.” The author recognizes that boys may have their unique struggles in fulfilling gender roles, but she doesn’t consider what they may might be, and separates them from female struggles with objectification. By sharing some of my personal experience, I don’t mean to suggest that all men secretly have the same anxieties about food. But to confront any body image issues, we must consider the unique ways people of both genders are objectified and oppressed in a patriarchal society.

Because men are supposed to benefit from gender disparities, we often joke about male objectification. While it would seem crude to applaud Emma Stone’s figure in “Crazy Stupid Love,” it’s acceptable to gush over Ryan Gosling’s impossibly sculpted (and totally hairless) torso. This disparity often makes it harder for men to speak out against patriarchy. After all, doesn’t the system let the bouncer in “the pretty game” judge and select women on looks alone? But instead, we must consider patriarchy not as a way for men to take advantage of women, but as a structure of power that creates unattainable standards that pit everyone against each other. Perhaps the bouncer is himself a victim of a system where he must reject certain girls to assert his own appearance of masculine subjectivity.

To combat patriarchy and liberate both genders, we have to overcome the illusion that the system is good for men. Our media and cultural stereotypes can be just as sexist—and certainly as complicated—for men as for women, driving a system that leads people to consume endlessly to pursue unattainable ideals. And I haven’t even mentioned how it affects those who don’t fit into mainstream, heteronormative gender roles, which is a topic worthy of extensive discussion.
By focusing on women when discussing body image issues, we assume they all have similar relationships with food. Gender is significant, but many other causes determine how people see and feed themselves, and we have to consider all these factors to have a healthy and progressive campus.

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