By Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com
It seems that over the last few weeks, More To Love (the “Bachelor” type show featuring an all plus-sized cast) has become a lightning rod for the cultural debate about the inclusion of fat people in media. I even found myself “live tweeting” the show as I watched it last week.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about how, in the real world, people of all shapes and sizes have great relationships, bad relationships, good dating experiences, bad dating experiences, and everything in between.
This week, I was struck by something that Amanda, one of the contestants, said as she was being sent home by Luke, the bachelor:
“I’m really shocked with Luke’s decision. I think I’m kind of prettier than some of the girls in the house. I wonder what Luke could possibly see in Mel B. This is, like, a total blow to my ego. I’ve never lost a guy to a girl [who was] bigger than me or not as attractive. I really don’t know how to take it right now.”
Amanda’s statement was so wrong on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin. If Amanda were right, all of the fattest women should be sent home first, with only the thinnest fat women remaining. Also, it’s as if she’s saying that the erstwhile Fatchelor should only be comparing the contestants based on their size and “attractiveness” (which seems to be sized-based in Amanda’s view) rather than other things like, oh, I don’t know, personality, chemistry, etc. (not to mention that Luke may like the size).
But what it really got me thinking about was the idea that there is some value in comparing yourself to other people. I would contend, however, that there is very little value in comparing oneself to others.
Moving away from More To Love (thankfully!), I’d like you to think about whether the following situation has ever happened to you. Have you ever done something really great at work or in school, like you made a great presentation at work or got a really high grade on a paper, only to hear right afterwards about a friend or colleague who did something that you would consider even more successful? For instance, let’s say you give a great presentation and your boss is really impressed with you. You’re feeling great about the job you did. Then you hear about Barry down the hall who’s being sent to France to negotiate some huge deal, and suddenly your presentation seems meaningless? Or let’s say you go on a date with someone you really like, and s/he takes you to a concert to hear a band you really like, and it’s lots of fun and you get home and see your friend’s Facebook status is something like, “Partying with George Clooney on his yacht,” and suddenly, your date doesn’t seem that fabulous.
I used to suffer from this compare/despair syndrome a lot, until I realized that it really wasn’t serving me. Being envious of other people and denigrating the good stuff in my life only made me miserable. I’ve learned that the easiest way out of the compare/despair syndrome was to simply celebrate the successes of people around me. By celebrating those successes, I could actually enjoy my own, and even picture other people’s successes as being possible for me, rather than things I could never attain.
By the same token, bigger people sometimes take themselves out of situations because of the way in which they compare themselves to other people. We, literally, suffer by comparison. I’ve had numerous clients say to me that they feel uncomfortable being the biggest person at a meeting, event, or gym class. They find themselves searching for the fattest people in those situations and then sizing up whether they are, indeed, the fattest person in the room. Some of them even stop attending those events as a result of concluding that they’re the fattest ones around. Just like Amanda’s assumption about Mel B. on More To Love, these people assume that the fatter they are, the less accepted and desirable their presence is in any given situation. And just like Amanda, they assume wrongly.
Usually, we can’t know why someone falls in love with us and someone else doesn’t, why certain things fall into our laps and other things seem unattainable, or why we’re great at some things and not at others. The key is to know that we have value, despite our flaws, real or perceived, and that comparing ourselves to others is fruitless and unwise.
So the next time you start to compare and despair, stop yourself and celebrate instead. Celebrate your successes as well as those of your colleagues, friends, lover(s) or acquaintances. Know your value and theirs.
Please stop by my Facebook group and become a member of the Body Love Wellness Group! Also, I would love it if you would follow me on Twitter. We can even live tweet More To Love together!
And then I thought "But wait, how can you even be aware that you have a different skillset than people without comparing?" And then I thought, maybe you aren't really arguing against comparing, you are arguing against using a comparison as any kind of judgment of value. But to do that you have to ignore any value you place in any attribute you compare. Which is easy enough if you feel that attribute is not core to your idea of what gives you value, but if it is then it's kind of hollow if not impossible. Which is not to say it would have to manifest as envy. There's also admiration and feeling-happy-for, but it's really hard to use those if the person you are comparing yourself to actively dislikes you, although I now think the whole self-esteem thing is a separate issue because it is usually more of a scale than a competition with one other person, but sometimes it could be or it could easily be exacerbated by one-on-one comparisons.
Or maybe comparing is okay so long as we only do it to convince ourselves we shouldn't compare. I still can't believe things based on the results of believing them rather than more traditional foundations like evidence and logic.
I'm not getting what you mean by that Shakespeare quote. I'm unaware that there are things in the world that I know nothing about? And if I just acknowledged that they exist they would knock on my door and give me a unicorn? Or I would be happier if I were more happy about the vanishingly minuscule possibility that they might? I'm trying to reserve being offended until I know what you were trying to say, because it sounds like you're calling me provincial and closed-minded if not ignorant, but it's been many years since I read Hamlet.
To answer your question, I don't see how you can have self-esteem without comparisons because you can't have esteem without a sense of worth and you can't know the worth of anything without comparing it to things with a similar type of worth. Like if there was a fictional country where the currency was the flubjon, and you won fifty flubjons in a raffle, you would want to know the exchange rate of flubjons to dollars. Maybe you just won 2 cents. Maybe you won a billion dollars. You can say, well, this trinket isn't worth a penny in cash but I value it greatly, but there you are still measuring its significance to you as compared to other things which are less significant. I can't just arbitrarily start valuing things about myself because they exist. It's rude to compare other people unless they're in a competition or something, but I don't see how you are supposed to make any evaluation of yourself without comparing at all, and they say the unexamined life is not worth living. (Of course I believe all life is inherently worthful, but if I'm going to argue that I am totally awesome even if I am a complete leach on society, it sounds really self-serving and not convincing to back that up with the mere fact that I exist at all.)
Plus I might want to be taken seriously and respected by people, and in order to do that I would need to be accomplished in some way, but there is no way to judge that except by comparison. Otherwise I could just present myself as a leading expert on giraffe biology because I wrote a report on them in elementary school. Actually, quantitative judgments aside, there's no way to make a qualitative statement about anything without comparing it to something that does not possess that quality. So even if my accomplishment is something non-academic and non-career-related like being friendly to people, I still have to compare myself at least to a hypothetical unfriendly person in order to be aware of it. Getting metaphysical again.
You recommend enjoying being around people who are fulfilling their desires, but if everyone around you is wildly successful and you are failing miserably at everything, it would take a very special person to accept that cheerfully. This is one of those skills that I do not and never will have. Okay, technically it might not be completely unattainable, with sophisticated professional brainwashing. Or aliens.
Desires were fun to play with, as you say, before I was at an age where people start actually accomplishing things. Now it's just a long string of "well that serious dream turned out to be utterly unrealistic."
Also, I would like to point out that the George Clooney thing sounds equally attainable whether I've decided it's unattainable or not, because it would happen entirely or almost entirely by chance. Unless you went into a career in Hollywood on the slim chance that you would be able to arrange working with him. Or became a famous actor too. But considering the odds of success, would this be worthwhile? Well (although there are other factors such as how much you think you'd enjoy such a career) you'd have to compare yourself to others to make a judgment of how successful you think you could be. See, I'm trying to avoid absolutes because you are so down on deciding that things are impossible, but I find the difference between impossibility and virtual impossibility to be negligible.
Gina, every time I read your comments I think of this quote from Hamlet, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." I agree with you that you may never be thin or get a 1600 on the SAT or party on a boat with George Clooney. These things are, of course, improbable. But I do think that comparing yourself to other people does not have much merit for exactly the reason you said, "lots of other people have skills and traits that I just don't and never will." People are different. People have skills that you don't have, and, similarly, some people don't have the skills that you have. Therefore, why compare yourself to other people? What good does it serve? If you celebrate other people's successes, however, you get to drop the judgment of yourself and actually pay attention to whether what someone else has or achieves is, indeed, something you desire. If it's not, you can just enjoy the fun of being around people who are achieving their desires. If it is something you want, you can play with that desire. Even something as seemingly unattainable as being on a yacht with George Clooney sometimes happens to people that aren't expecting it — you might work for an organization that he supports, or end up at an event with a friend of a friend — you just never know. If you decide that nothing that you want is attainable, how can you ever attain it?
Well, it's not like I'm actually going to take the SAT again, and if I did, I'd probably score lower because I've forgotten some of the math, so I don't think that people's 1600 scores are one of those successes that are "possible for me [too], rather than things I could never attain." Yacht parties with George Clooney are also an unrealistic goal for most people, although maybe if your Facebook friend has them you can wheedle your way in on his/her coattails, which isn't really an accomplishment. There's always going to be someone better than me and I'm never going to be the best in the world, so no, other people's successes aren't possible for me too. That is just delusional. Not to mention that lots of other people have skills and traits that I just don't and never will. And should we apply this "possible for me too" thing to beauty? Thinness?
Thanks, Vitamom! Glad to have you here. I've been posting every week since March, so there are plenty of old blogs to sift through. Have fun and comment away!
I just wanted to let you know that I found you through fatshionista (in the More to Love comments) and I'm really looking forward to reading more blog entries. :-)
Thanks, NHR!
JM, I so relate! And I'm so glad that this blog helped you and that there's a silver lining to what you're experiencing now, in that you're finding FA and HAES. The beginning of that journey can be tough, but the rewards are great. Best of luck in grad school and everything else!
I recently moved from the Midwest to the Bay Area of California to attend grad school, and in my new home I'm finding myself the "biggest in the room" frequently. As a smallish fat person (size 14-16), I'd been privileged enough to repress/forget that feeling until recently — I hadn't had that experience since college 15 years ago.
In addition, a lot of the people I work with are perfectionists and more fat-phobic than I've had to deal with before.
Altogether, I've felt quite self-conscious, but what you wrote is meaningful to me: It reminds me to never opt *myself* out — or to let anyone else opt me out of what I came here to achieve.
And, on the upside, this experience has led me to seek out and discover the FA and HAES movements! Which truly has been a gift — I'm at the beginning of "unprogramming" myself from society's toxic attitudes, and it feels great to do it.
Wonderful advice to remember!