So I’m reading Shapely Prose and other body positive blogs the other day and listening to Hole on Winamp. Just as I was digesting ‘The Fantasy Of Being Thin‘ and the FWord’s ‘French women don’t get fat‘ the song ‘Gutless’ came on, and the combination of what I had read and ponderings upon the adjective ‘gutless’ all segued together.
gut·less [guht-lis]
–adjective Informal.
lacking courage, fortitude or determination
[Origin: 1600–10 for literal sense; gut + -less
]
So if gutless, literally minus a gut, means you lack ‘courage, fortitude and determination’, what does the gut signify? Courage, strength, moxie, (and, for lack of a gender neutral term) “balls”. In the sense of the adjective ‘gutless’ possessing guts, and something to put them in – a belly, is positive, admirable, desired. But of course, and rather conveniently, this does not extend into how women are ’supposed’ to look. Size zero celebrities, diet books, celebrity fad diets*…all tell us that what we should strive for, the image of perfection, is a flat, toned stomach. (*Note that this Daily Mail link to Beyonce’s ‘maple syrup diet’ describes her pre-crash diet size as ‘heavier’, simultaneously telling us that while the diet is risky and dangerous ultimately it is worth this risk as we all want to be lighter, slimmer, trimmer…better.)
Perfection is gutlessness. Women should work to ‘lose that gut’ – diet, exercise, detox, have dangerous elective surgery…the perfect woman is gutless. Furthermore if a woman dares to dress in anything other than a black sack when she is not perfectly gutless, she is publicly decried as fat and awful.
Women are encouraged to starve themselves on fad diets, to deprive themselves of food, to be hungry all the time. On top of this they chase an ever-shrinking image of perfection, desperately trying to reduce themselves, to become the incredible shrinking woman. And when they achieve this goal? They are starving, unwell, frail and tired. They are gutless, literally and metaphorically.
And this is just how patriarchy, and the fashion/cosmetic/diet industry, wants them. If women hate themselves they spend more money, they believe the ridiculous claims of cosmetics companies, they buy diet books and dieting foods, they constantly chase a model of ‘perfection’ defined by the very industries that profit from their self-hatred. They become obsessed over food, not equal pay; a flat stomach not the glass ceiling; pores, not politics; losing weight not raising rape convictions…They become gutless, disinterested in politics and equal rights and the very model of a quiet, well-behaved female citizen that does not challenge the status quo and is too hungry, weak and obssessive about whether her bum looks big to be any sort of a threat to patriarchy. Gutless is good, if you think where we are now is enough.
But it’s not. Women are still served up shit every day and told that it’s ice cream. We are not equal, and we never will be if the majority of the female population cares more about being slim than being equal. Screw gutless. Eat. Eat food that nourishes and strengthens you, love your body for what it is and for what it enables you to do. Stop dieting. Love your belly. Get a gut. Get ‘courage, fortitude and determination’. Get equal.
Go to Amazon/your local library/a feminist friend’s well-stocked library and read ‘Fat Is A Feminist Issue‘. Then read ‘The Beauty Myth‘. Love yourself, love your guts whether they hang out or don’t and focus on the important stuff, not your size.
