It’s a busy day here, and the great disappointment of the next few hours is that I won’t get to see any of the Liverpool-Chelsea Champions League semifinal.
I saw Courtney Martin on MSNBC this morning, talking about her book. I’ve got her book, and Jessica Valenti’s new one, both coming in the mail. I look forward to reviewing them both on this blog. Based on excerpts that appeared here, I had some comments here and here about the Martin tome.
I am so glad that a larger discussion of women’s perfectionism and people-pleasing is really taking off in the blogosphere. Of all the posts I’ve put up this year, my Fourteen Marthas, not one Mary is perhaps the one of which I am most proud. And I was delighted to read an outstanding take on this same subject, also inspired by the Martin book, from Amanda Marcotte. Read the whole post, but this insight is key:
My theory is that perfectionism is the tribute that women with opportunities pay to sexism.
Read the rest of the post to see that idea fleshed out.
One of Amanda’s commenters got me thinking, asking:
Any thoughts, Amanda, on the connection between perfectionism and purity? I sometimes feel as if perfectionism is the new purity, or the traditional demand for female purity in new clothes, or women’s response to still-current demands for female purity, but I’m wondering if you see this connection as well.
Amanda hasn’t answered yet, but I’ve been mulling it this morning.
One aspect of perfectionism and people-pleasing that I haven’t touched on is related to the “purity” obsession, and that’s the tendency I’ve noticed in many young women for perfectionism (and compulsive dieting) to be closely connected to sexual guilt. Bear with me, as I’m musing here — this is a theory in process of being developed, but it’s grounded in years of teaching and youth work.
A disturbing number of young women still seem profoundly conflicted about sex. Statistics tell us — and my own experience as a pro-feminist gender studies professor and longtime youth leader tells me as well — that a great many teenage girls and college-aged women are “having sex.” Some of them come from conservative backgrounds in which pre-marital sex is seen as immoral and sinful, and some come from more liberal environments where “safety” rather than “purity” is emphasized. Some speak (and write in their journals) enthusiastically and positively about their sexual decision-making, while others seem tormented by ambivalence, anxiety, and guilt.
It’s remarkable how persistent the notion that “good girls don’t” has proven. Young women born in the last two decades, a generation after the sexual revolution, and raised in tolerant, even feminist households, still sometimes quietly report (and again, folks, this is all anecdotal based on my teaching and mentoring experience) guilt and conflict over their sexual choices. Even when they didn’t absorb the “True Love Waits” message from parents or pastors or peers, they couldn’t help but pick up the romantic ideal of “waiting ’till marriage” from somewhere in the broader culture. Though Disney movies never explicitly reference virginity before marriage, the girls I work with “assume” that the “princesses are all virgins.” And the number of high school and college-aged young women whose views were partly shaped by the “princess” culture — which is surely part of the “purity” culture” — is stunningly high.
Again, all anecdotal: I think there is a connection between guilt (or at least ambivalence) over pre-marital sex and an intensified perfectionism. Far too many of our little sisters, far too many of my students, still internalize the message that having sex too early makes them into “bad girls” and “sluts.” And whether or not they articulate that sense of undeserved shame, it seems to me that many of them overcompensate by trying all the harder to be “perfect and pure” in other areas. The desire to mold the body to more closely meet an unobtainable ideal often seems to intensify once a young woman becomes sexually active, and I don’t think it’s always because of an anxiety about pleasing a boyfriend. It seems at least partially linked to a desire to prove that “even if I’m having sex, I’m still a ‘good girl’, and I prove my ‘goodness’ through self-denial, through exercise, through even more of an effort to live up to a societal ideal.”
Even in our own relatively liberated era, pre-marital virginity remains an explicit ideal for many and an implicit ideal for many more. Many of my students talk boldly and confidently about their sexual decision-making in one breath, and express occasional wistfulness about “a white wedding” and “waiting until then” in the other. (Some, of course, are completely unconflicted, and I don’t mean to diminish them. Then again, there are some young women who don’t feel tortured by the ideal of slenderness either. Would that their numbers were greater!) Many of them seem to feel as if by choosing to become sexually active, they’ve fallen short. And some of these seem to compensate for their own perceived failure in this one area by redoubling their efforts in another. Call it the “if I’m earning straight As and I’m volunteering 20 hours a week and I’m on this committee and president of that club and playing this position on that team and keeping my body at that weight, then I can’t possibly be the bad girl that somewhere inside of me I’m afraid that I am” syndrome.
Some of my secular feminist allies may doubt that this guilt (and the concomitant compensation with perfectionism) is linked as closely to sex as I suggest. My conservative friends may embrace the theory as further “evidence” that pre-marital sex is bad, particularly for young women. If even women who weren’t pressured to “wait” by their families still seem sometimes to feel conflicted about their sexual choices, my right-wing buddies will no doubt argue, isn’t this evidence that pre-marital sexual activity violates some natural desire on the part of all women to save themselves for their husbands? I am reluctant to give that old canard any credence at all, and I fear that I may be doing so here. (After all, it’s obvious that chastity is no prophylaxis against anxiety or people-pleasing; spend time in any conservative evangelical community, and you’ll run into lots of exhausted, weight-obsessed virgins.)
I write as a professor and a mentor who has been teaching classes on gender and sexuality for well over a decade; I’ve read countless student journals and led innumerable small group discussions with both college and high-school women. I am convinced, as Courtney Martin is convinced, that guilt, perfectionism, anorexia, and people-pleasing are epidemic among young women today, and that that epidemic extends to every strata of American society. I am worried that despite generations of progress to create a more egalitarian society, many young women today still feel a crushing pressure to live up to unobtainable ideals. The shame and guilt they struggle with is different, perhaps, from that with which their grandmothers wrestled, but it is no less debilitating. And I am at least somewhat convinced that the ancient, ugly, lingering stigma of the “slut” and the “dirty girl” plays a considerable part in the “perfection projects” of a great many young women today.
When young women are repeatedly reminded through the media and society that our *value* is tied up closely with our sexuality, it’s no wonder a lot of sexual guilt appears. “Sluts” are valued less than “pure” girls, is the message, and no matter how smart you are, as a girl you’re constantly aware that if your value as a sexual object is somehow brought to attention, you’re given even less credence. It’s dangerous to be either sexy or slutty.
The number of attractive and intelligent women I personally have known who aim for “invisible” as a fashion statement; trying to hide their femaleness and not draw attention to their sexual value, one way or another… if I had a dollar.
I am convinced that the greatest source of my anxiety is my desire for acceptance. I am also convinced that my high blood pressure (at the age of 20!) is linked to that. I’ve spent so much time caring about what other people think, specifically on the issue of sex. I kept asking other people, (my parents, Brio, the blogsphere), what they think about my decisions regarding sex before marriage. This whole sex thing is loaded with guilt. I’ve grown weary of it, and am finally getting to the point where I am putting more emphasis on how I think and feel rather than what everyone else thinks. Granted, I still take everyone’s suggestions with a grain of salt (or is it sand?), but I am slowly learning not to DEPEND on reaffirmation in order to be happy. Feminism has helped with that. And, actually, talking to some of my openly gay and lesbian peers has helped with that even though I’m still divided on the issue of gay marriage.
Then I think back to the difference between guilt and shame. It is sometimes not easy to define, especially when you grew up hearing (and living out) the “Good Girl/Bad Girl” discourse within the same year.
I think the internalization of the “good girl vs slut” dichotomy has more to do with school culture and sexual harrassment in schools (of girls from both boys and girls) than it has to do with the “princess culture.” Adolescent girls, especially in high school, are very quick to throw that word around, along with “whore” and any other sexually perjurative word there is, in order to socially ruin someone they feel is competition, academic, athletic, social or otherwise. It doesn’t matter if the name caller is having sex. For that matter, it doesn’t matter if the person called the name is actually having sex. It’s the attitudes about sex in our society, the fact that it is everywhere but forbidden, it is dirty and banal, all of this combined with the gender dynamics of most schools, the fluctuating hormone levels of high school students, maturity levels and relatively small communities which make it easy to give someone or to get a reputation that will last at least until the end of high school and probably color your views about sex (at least until you realize that not all of the world is like high school, although some colleges still are). If a girl who is date raped can get the reputation of being a slut, imagine what that does to other girls’ attitudes about sex.
Morpheme,
I am one of those people who actively tries to hide any sex appeal, even though I have been told that I give off a very strong sexual vibe. I really don’t care if other people think I am a “slut.” I have fairly healthy and open ideas about sex and don’t mind much what other people think about me in general.
I dress in a way that diminishes my sex appeal because I am tired of being an object every time I walk down the street. I am an object no matter what I wear, but sexy clothes multiply the cat calls, the whistles, the stares, the very obvious eye movement to my chest (which is relatively very small), the grunts and the intimidation exponentially. I am tired of losing my autonomy, my ability to decide what kind of attention I attract and from whom and my right to walk in the street without harrassment, every time I walk outside. The only thing that I can do to improve the situation is dress more conservatively.
I also do it because in some areas it is physically dangerous to be sexy.
Then again, there are some young women who don’t feel tortured by the ideal of slenderness either. Would that their numbers were greater!
I’m surprised you haven’t gotten a concern troll stating that the obesity epidemic is out of control and he wishes more women (the only sex whose “health” is threatened by obesity or being a size 12 even) were overly concerned about their waistlines.
Some of my secular feminist allies may doubt that this guilt (and the concomitant compensation with perfectionism) is linked as closely to sex as I suggest.
Seems reasonable, though I wouldn’t say “linked to sex” but “linked to internalized shame about sex”.
As a former overachiever (!) and young woman, I never really connected my fear of failure to sexuality. Hmm, I’ll have to think about that. The idea of perfectionism - where it seemed to be gendered, for me, was in this sense that I didn’t have as much time as men to get it RIGHT. Time I mean inthe sense of youth. I felt like certain people - usually men - had the chance to make mistakes, over and over again, in their learning curve before they would come good and still be rewarded by society. Not all men, but actually, maybe men like yourself Hugo. Success, as measured by the world, can come well into your forties and older. Whereas for women, I had the sense that to achieve perfection’ one had to be YOUNG (and yes, beautiful) at the same time. It’s that old idea of women’s shelf-life being shorter, which of course, is very connected to their sexual value. Anyhow, the way it seems to play out it to add tremendous pressure to young women to be over-achievers in the sense that they can’t afford to mess up, even once, or they will ruin their chances forever to be a great success. Maybe this prospect is real or maybe its partly imagined, but the pressure is definitely there.
And, you know, it connects to the idea of being a slut in the sense of fear many young sexually active het women feel about becoming pregnant. That is, the taboo against teenage/single mothers isn’t the same as it used to be, but the idea of perfection definitely does not include this particular ‘mistake’.
I think it’s a curious consequence of an incomplete sexual revolution that there is now no safe choice for women, in terms of sexual activity. There’s virtually no margin between being a slut and being a prude; there’s no way to live up to the expectations of both your parents and your peers; people-pleasing becomes impossible. (A prude is someone who doesn’t want to have sex with you; a slut is someone who doesn’t want to have sex with you, but will have sex with someone else). Who wouldn’t be neurotically perfectionistic?
I think maybe my problem here is that Courtney’s talking about your mainstream body angst, which is miserable and debilitating but probably not going to land you in cardiac arrest, whereas I’m thinking about full-blown anorexia…
I think you’re onto something, but I think it’s a little more complicated than you suggest. I definitely think that anorexia, at least, is tied up to really complicated feelings of shame and ambivalence about sexuality. But I think it’s sexuality, rather than necessarily having sex. One of the really classic moments for anorexia to emerge is in early adolescence, right after a girl hits puberty. That’s why there are so many 12 and 13-year-old anorexics. I don’t think most of those little girls are having sex. I do think that they’re whiplashed by a whole bunch of contradictory expectations and messages about their new, sexualized bodies and that it’s sometimes easier to starve that body away than to try to try to figure out how to conform to those impossible expectations.
I think anorexia is hugely about purity, in the sense that an anorexic often thinks she can purify her body by conquering her desires (for food, but I think often for sex, too) and by making it cease to be an object of other people’s desire. (There is really nothing less sexy in the world than an anorexic, despite what the media would tell you. I think most anorexics are pretty aware of that.) But I think it’s a way out of the whole “how can I be sexual and still good” dilemma, rather than a way of reconciling those conflicting demands. I think anorexia is often a denial of sexuality, rather than a way of convincing yourself that even if you’re sleeping with guys, you’re still a good girl and not a slut. If that makes any sense.
(It’s been pointed out that a lot of anorexics were sexually abused as children, and I wonder if some of them are also coming to terms with, or avoiding coming to terms with, lesbian sexuality.)
Agreed, Sally — this is why I said partly above. I am not proferring an all-inclusive theory here, and what I am offering is aimed largely at a high-school and college-aged audience.
No question, all the literature on eating disorders connects to the idea that at least in part, anorexia is a perverse rebellion, a refusal to play by the rules. Depending on the woman involved, not-eating can be either a desperate attempt to comply with social norms or a quiet rejection of those same ideals. And given how conflicted many teenaagers are, it can be both at once.
As a layperson who does work with young people, I’ve gotta say that working with eating disorders is tougher than working with anything else. Drug addiction is a piece of cake (sorry) compared to overcoming serious problems with food.
Since I have always been fat, it was made painfully obvious to me, throughout middle and high school, that my value as a sexual object was vanishingly small. Also, that I must be a complete idiot since I was fat — which actually hurt more.
While this hurt, and sent me into deviant behaviors like reading comic books and playing Dungeons & Dragons, it did amputate a lot of my concerns of what people thought of me. I knew exactly what they were thinking of me: nothing at all.
Maybe it sounds terrible, but it was in its way quite liberating when it sank in that I was not being held to a yardstick because I was not acceptably female.
Now, many years later, it seems bizarre to me that anybody loses sleep over whether someone thinks they’re “slutty” or “fat” — so I’m sorry if I don’t come across as sympathetic. But life is too short, and at the same time far too long to to spend it as a slave to some unrealistic ideal.
I haven’t tended to lose sleep worrying if people think I’m “fat,” but “slutty” I have an enduring fear of. Mainly because to me, other people thinking of me as “slutty” means other people not being on my side if I’m sexually harrassed or worse. People just thinking badly of me, I can deal with; people not thinking I have rights any more, not so much.
Unfortunately, though, Emily H. is right, and there really is no safe choice. Absolutely anything you do, while single, can mean you’re a “slut,” a “prude,” or a “tease.” Of the three, “tease” is the scariest; at least a “slut” or a “prude” might be taken at her word and allowed her own choices. And, of the three, “tease” is the one where it’s least possible to find any behavior that lets you be sure you can avoid it.
Good thread. Not to nitpick, but from what I’ve observed with others heroin addiction is not a piece of cake to overcome.
In my own experience, it’s always been the contradictions that have caused me so much guilt and worry. I’m 21, but I’ve never had a boyfriend and have rarely been seen as attractive by men, at all. As Emily H. commented, there is no middle ground between being a “slut” and a “prude.” Whenever I get that question (”Do you have a boyfriend?,” which is sometimes followed by, “Why not?”), usually from well-meaning, older family friends or distant relatives at boring parties/reunions, I always get the urge to say “No, and that’s fine with me.”
I’ve also consistently felt that I’ve had to “make up” for having never been in a relationship (which nearly always implies *failure* of some sort on my part) by excelling at other things, such as scholastic and artistic pursuits. The messages that societal structures send to young women can be frighteningly similar, even if one is struggling over sexual purity or, in my case, sexual and relationship inexperience, ie: Looking sexy is very important. Feeling sexy or like you’re in control of your own sexuality is not. Don’t have sex–then you’re a slut {this is the flip side of “Have sex, or you’re a prude”}.
Anyway, I hope this comment isn’t too thread-drifty.
annaham, what you say about contradictions makes a lot of sense.
The contradictions built into the messages sent to girls and women are disorienting and cause second-guessing and confusion. It seems to be aimed at keeping women on the straight and narrow track.
Having a boyfriend is considered a good thing, because no boyfriend is prudish, which is bad. However, too much fun with your boyfriend, or too many boyfriends, verges on the slutty, which is also bad.
The common ground between the messages sent to both males and females is something like “practice your relationships and sexual behavior in a way that communicates to other people in the community that your status is high”. The messages are highly normative and have the result of coercing specific behavior from those who take them to heart. Social customs promote certain behaviors (”Congratulations! You’re getting married! Here are lots of gifts.”) and discourage others (”Slut! Bad!”).