Speaker 1: Welcome to Go ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Speaker 1: Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. Hi am Eli
Speaker 1: Wentworth and you're listening to Go ask Alli. Where this
Speaker 1: part of the season, I'm asking the question, how do
Speaker 1: you grow a healthy relationship with yourself with a loved one,
Speaker 1: is sibling, with money, with sex? In this episode, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about how to grow a relationship with ourselves and
Speaker 1: more specifically, how do we grow a healthy relationship with
Speaker 1: our bodies. Today I'm speaking with twin sisters, Dr Lexi
Speaker 1: Kite and Dr Lindsay Kite. They are founders of the
Speaker 1: nonprofit Beauty Redefined, which helps women recognize and reject harmful
Speaker 1: messages about their bodies worth and potential and the meaning
Speaker 1: and value of beauty in their lives. They also have
Speaker 1: a book More Than a Body, Your Body Is An
Speaker 1: Instrument Not an Ornament, now on Amazon. Lexi and Lindsay,
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to have you here, Thank you, Thank
Speaker 1: you you women. And body image has been it's like
Speaker 1: part of our DNA, and it's something that it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter how old you are. I feel like I discussed
Speaker 1: it as a little girl. I discussed it with my
Speaker 1: teenage daughters, and I discussed it with my female friends
Speaker 1: now and I discussed it with my eighty six year
Speaker 1: old mother, So it is amen an ongoing discussion battle.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking in the past few days about the
Speaker 1: history of women and bodies and how it's changed through
Speaker 1: the centuries, and that you know, there was a time
Speaker 1: when voluptuous, heavy women were considered incredibly desirable and also
Speaker 1: heavy women were sexy. Have you guys studied historically why
Speaker 1: it changes. Yeah, I mean there's definitely a history to it,
Speaker 1: and you nailed it talking about how voluptuous figures were
Speaker 1: really prized right aud the turn of the century is
Speaker 1: actually where a really into same phenomenon happens. I included
Speaker 1: this example in the book. Lillian Russell was a famous actress.
Speaker 1: She was kind of just known for her beauty. She
Speaker 1: was a bit of a social light in New York
Speaker 1: and you'd see pictures of her and she's They described
Speaker 1: her as robust and voluptuous, and she was really prized
Speaker 1: as this beauty icon at the time. Even her obituary
Speaker 1: mentioned that she was robust and curbacious, a larger woman,
Speaker 1: and there were there was one New York Times newspiece
Speaker 1: that mentioned her weight, and it was around two hundred pounds,
Speaker 1: and they were kind of celebrating this as a feature
Speaker 1: of her beauty because obviously at the time it was
Speaker 1: seen as healthier and you'd be more wealthy if you
Speaker 1: could afford to stay indoors, you did not have tuberculosis
Speaker 1: and a lot of the things that caused finness time
Speaker 1: and then you see just what sixty seventy years later,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, twiggy is in fashion. And ever
Speaker 1: since then it's been this tiny ideal and there are
Speaker 1: so many factors that go into whether or not thinness
Speaker 1: is prize. Unfortunately, since I've been alive, it's been skinny
Speaker 1: with big boobs. Um, the Kardashians have changed it a
Speaker 1: little bit because now there's now you have to have
Speaker 1: a butt too. I know, now you have to have
Speaker 1: a butt. But I'm an old lady. I'm all about
Speaker 1: growing tomatoes now. So I'm like, sexy is over, so
Speaker 1: let's move on. But I do have two teenage daughters.
Speaker 1: But ever since advertising has really taken over and been
Speaker 1: so directed at women after the Industrial Revolution, and women
Speaker 1: are indoors, then we see all of this economy that's
Speaker 1: built around women's value is coming from their right, from
Speaker 1: their desirability, especially within fact. It's interesting because then I
Speaker 1: was thinking about Jane Mansfield and to Phia loren And
Speaker 1: and I was thinking about what makes them so sexy,
Speaker 1: and I thought, it's a very Darwinistic thing, which is,
Speaker 1: when you see a voluptuous woman with big breasts, you go, oh,
Speaker 1: she can hold a baby and feed a baby. When
Speaker 1: I see a very very skinny woman who's adhering to
Speaker 1: whatever Vogue magazine says is in I look at her
Speaker 1: and I go, well, you need some cheese, first of all,
Speaker 1: and second of all, you just don't look healthy to me.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you think about Darwin and you
Speaker 1: think about survival of the fittest, it does, for me
Speaker 1: go against a lot of what the media throws at
Speaker 1: us of what should be attractive. Well, there's definitely this
Speaker 1: evolutionary argument that I think gets used a lot of
Speaker 1: the time to sort of justify why women are so
Speaker 1: valued for having crevacious hips and a small waist. And
Speaker 1: you know this ratio that is so prized and valued
Speaker 1: as the beauty standard, and it's youth. Obviously youth is
Speaker 1: highly prized, but this same evolutionary argument is used against
Speaker 1: women because it's putting the value slowly on a woman's
Speaker 1: physical appearance, solely on her sexual desirability and her availability
Speaker 1: to men. And so still we're learning to see women's
Speaker 1: bodies through this lens of a sexualized male, heterosexual perspective,
Speaker 1: and we learned to term that view against ourselves as well.
Speaker 1: So we see people who are curvationous, or we see
Speaker 1: them as too skinny or whatever. We're putting them in
Speaker 1: these categories in our own minds, objectifying them, really seeing
Speaker 1: them as objects to be evaluated. And we turned that
Speaker 1: same perspective on ourselves, which really just splits us not
Speaker 1: only against other women, but also against our own bodies.
Speaker 1: That's the really hard thing here with objectification. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's incredible how as women we do flip the mirror
Speaker 1: onto us instead of saying, hey, Richard Gear not so
Speaker 1: cute anymore. You know, he's got white hair, but no,
Speaker 1: he's still stay desirable. He stays o yes, And he
Speaker 1: gets to marry a thirty two year old and he
Speaker 1: does movies where the wife is cast much younger. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's all still real. Is there a reason that women
Speaker 1: in our culture don't flip the mirror. Why aren't we
Speaker 1: all saying that's a double standard? What about you? What
Speaker 1: about you? Besides penis sides, I don't know what else
Speaker 1: we I guess they have to have abs, but they
Speaker 1: are not put under the microscope the same way women are.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can blame a few different reasons for this.
Speaker 1: One is patriarchy, another is capitalism. Another is sexism, which
Speaker 1: goes hand in hand with patriarchy. But what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here is the majority of girls and women in
Speaker 1: Western culture, if not many more cultures that are raised
Speaker 1: from the time we are tiny, being told from every
Speaker 1: conceivable angle, even the people we love, that our value
Speaker 1: is based on how we appear. That's why we give
Speaker 1: little girls dress up kids and make up kids, and
Speaker 1: the shows they watch always always revolve around the female
Speaker 1: characters being curvaceous, being sexualized, being decorative in ways that
Speaker 1: we don't ask male characters to be. And then we're
Speaker 1: raised believing that our value comes from our sexual appeal
Speaker 1: and our beauty, and that is reinforced to us by
Speaker 1: the ways people treat us, by the diets are moms
Speaker 1: asked us to go on with them until we are
Speaker 1: a hundred years old, still worrying about the carbs we're eating,
Speaker 1: still worrying about the wrinkles on our face. Because multibillion
Speaker 1: dollar industries prey on these insecurities. So it's no wonder
Speaker 1: that we get to see men being lauded and praised
Speaker 1: for just showing up as they are. The bar is low.
Speaker 1: They get to be praised for their talent where women
Speaker 1: must be talented, plus they must look good doing it.
Speaker 1: And haven't we all internalized that? Yes, it's interesting. There
Speaker 1: aren't any little boy beauty pageants, are there? No, we
Speaker 1: don't give boys scholarships for looking good. Now, it is interesting,
Speaker 1: and when you think about how we're all put literally
Speaker 1: put on the stage at such a young age, boys aren't.
Speaker 1: It's go out and be macho, Go shoot a deer,
Speaker 1: go play football, go do all those things. Absolutely, it's
Speaker 1: this thing where we require this of girls in ways
Speaker 1: we don't do men. And Lindsay and I in our book,
Speaker 1: we hit this angle hard where we talk about the
Speaker 1: idea that a lot of people are trying to fix
Speaker 1: female body image and self esteem issues by a range
Speaker 1: of body positivity or body positive mantras helping people see
Speaker 1: themselves as beautiful, you know, flaws and all, or you know,
Speaker 1: beautiful in all of their glory. And we try to
Speaker 1: expand these notions of who gets to be beautiful so
Speaker 1: that we can increase girls and women's confidence, but we
Speaker 1: do not do that to boys and men. How laughable
Speaker 1: would it be to, you know, have a viral video
Speaker 1: or a well intentioned speaker say to the boys and
Speaker 1: the men with body image issues, you are so handsome
Speaker 1: just as you are. If you only knew how cute
Speaker 1: you were, you'd have the confidence to change the world. No,
Speaker 1: that's not how we treat boys and men, because they
Speaker 1: know they are more than bodies. And yet girls and
Speaker 1: women are relegated to just trying to feel beautiful and
Speaker 1: believe they're beautiful. And so we try to expand these
Speaker 1: notions of beautiful to encompass everybody, and yet we're still
Speaker 1: stuck at just beauty, at just bodies, and we're trying
Speaker 1: to expand this. This standard of what constitutes beautiful and
Speaker 1: attractive and even just normal for girls and women is
Speaker 1: set so far out of reach that we are all
Speaker 1: constant trying to become just normal, trying to lose enough
Speaker 1: weight to feel like we're acceptable, we're in control. We're
Speaker 1: constantly striving not only to be successful in our careers
Speaker 1: and to have grate fulfilling relationships, but we don't feel
Speaker 1: like we have achieved anything unless we also look good
Speaker 1: doing it. And this is a message that we received
Speaker 1: throughout our whole lives, and it is a huge double Standpope,
Speaker 1: get me started. We don't have that much time. But
Speaker 1: what I will say is when I was sixteen years old,
Speaker 1: I went to live in Spain. It's like a broad program,
Speaker 1: and I had a very happy, heavy Spanish family. I
Speaker 1: lived with who ate six meals a day, and I
Speaker 1: gained a ton of weight, to the point where when
Speaker 1: I got off the plane my mother walked right by me,
Speaker 1: didn't recognize. And I spent my freshman sophomore years of
Speaker 1: high school as a heavy girl. And two things came
Speaker 1: out of it. One was complete freedom to not worry
Speaker 1: about that stuff, to see all the mean girls do
Speaker 1: in their lashes with mascara on the tip of a
Speaker 1: safety pin, which I never gotten nowhere. Or I had
Speaker 1: a roommate. I went to boarding school, I had a
Speaker 1: roommate who didn't eat, just couldn't be skinny enough. So
Speaker 1: there was a little interactia going on with her, and
Speaker 1: I worked on my personality and one summer I fell
Speaker 1: in love with the cutest boy who looked like James
Speaker 1: Spader from Pretty and Pink, and I won him over
Speaker 1: because I was funny and I was smart and I
Speaker 1: gave him a hard time. And it was a huge
Speaker 1: lesson for me because the weight ultimately fell off because
Speaker 1: it was it was the opposite of trying to be skinny.
Speaker 1: I couldn't keep the pounds on, but I it was
Speaker 1: a lesson to me that I could rely on who
Speaker 1: I was. My authentic inner self prevailed, and I tried
Speaker 1: so much to hammer it into my I have two
Speaker 1: teenage daughters and to work in it, and I'm always
Speaker 1: saying to them, developed the inside, because the outside is
Speaker 1: going to change. It's going to go through all different things,
Speaker 1: and it's not who you are totally. It's just not
Speaker 1: who you are. It's so interesting that we learned this
Speaker 1: story our whole lives about what it takes to be
Speaker 1: happy and confident and desirable. But what you just described
Speaker 1: is the reality when you actually push back against those
Speaker 1: narratives that tell you thinness is the key to everything.
Speaker 1: Then you can realize for yourself. But that is not
Speaker 1: necessarily true, like you might come against some barriers because
Speaker 1: then is definitely prized and rewarded in an objectifying culture
Speaker 1: like this. But you can also find out that it's
Speaker 1: much more fulfilling to have a really dynamic personality and
Speaker 1: to find out what you actually bring to the table,
Speaker 1: whether it's in a dating relationship or just in the world.
Speaker 1: It's so much more fulfilling, and it's so much more sustainable,
Speaker 1: Like you learned what makes you you? Absolutely I um.
Speaker 1: I lived in Los Angeles for thirteen years when I
Speaker 1: was acting, and that is a town and a culture
Speaker 1: that propelled actuates this, and I do remember very clearly
Speaker 1: being very insecure, but then going to a dinner party
Speaker 1: and there would be some of the most beautiful, famous
Speaker 1: actresses in the world at the table, but they just
Speaker 1: were uninteresting. They just really had nothing to say unless
Speaker 1: they were whispering across the table to the other one
Speaker 1: about who did your nose? And I realized that I'm
Speaker 1: getting the focus, and it's not because my tits are
Speaker 1: up to my chin or I'm shaking my ass to
Speaker 1: the guy next to me. I'm getting the kind of
Speaker 1: focus that ultimately all of us women want, which is
Speaker 1: real communication, And that to me is so much better
Speaker 1: than being ogle. That the fact that these men and
Speaker 1: women at the table were engaged in a conversation with
Speaker 1: me and laughing and dissecting something, and that image, to
Speaker 1: me is what I try to give my daughters all
Speaker 1: the time. Be the provocateur at the table as you
Speaker 1: have something interesting to say, not because you have a
Speaker 1: tattoo of a sword on on your breast, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's very specific, but it's it's so hard because
Speaker 1: I I want to bring us into high school a
Speaker 1: little bit, because so much of our formidable years happened there.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure and I've I've read a lot of
Speaker 1: the research that you guys have done. You've dealt with
Speaker 1: girls who had trauma, there was sexual assault, something where
Speaker 1: they was trying to hide their body, or they were
Speaker 1: bullied at school, and so unfortunately that ends up turning
Speaker 1: into eating disorders, cutting. And so I think about high
Speaker 1: school a lot because that is the age group that
Speaker 1: are so susceptible to all this stuff. And so how
Speaker 1: are you talking to women that age? How are you
Speaker 1: talking to high school girls and saying listen. You know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter that you have a unibrow, or it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter that Timmy the quarterback doesn't like you. So
Speaker 1: one thing we want to do to act with these
Speaker 1: girls who oftentimes are living in a comfort zone that
Speaker 1: is deeply uncomfortable. We talked about in our book. We
Speaker 1: use this imagery of being a little girl who isn't
Speaker 1: self conscious of her body, who's playing on the beach.
Speaker 1: You're not thinking about what you're wearing or why you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be at the beach today. You're just playing. And
Speaker 1: then over time people start inviting you into what we
Speaker 1: call the waters of objectification, the sea of objectification, which
Speaker 1: I love, thank you, where you slip outside of yourself.
Speaker 1: You start to perceive yourself from the outside, to monitor
Speaker 1: yourself by the way you appear. After a while, that
Speaker 1: water feels like the most comfortable, warm place in the world.
Speaker 1: You can't imagine even getting out outside of it because
Speaker 1: it's cold. So you tread water in this deeply uncomfortable
Speaker 1: comfort zone because it's all you know. So many girls
Speaker 1: grow up believing that part of the price they have
Speaker 1: to pay to be female is to be consistently perceiving
Speaker 1: and monitoring their bodies from the outside, thinking about their
Speaker 1: worst fears, about what other people might be thinking when
Speaker 1: they look at them, and they live in this place
Speaker 1: of shame and self objectification. So when we can explain
Speaker 1: to girls that the way they're living inside their heads
Speaker 1: is actually impacting their real lives in horrible and dangerous ways,
Speaker 1: they start to see it in this light. Bulb goes off.
Speaker 1: It did for us when we started recognizing that self objectification,
Speaker 1: that idea of your identity being split into living and
Speaker 1: being looked at, was not just a crappy thing girls
Speaker 1: have to experience, but actually a thing that keeps us
Speaker 1: from fulfilling our greatest lives and happiness and potential, from
Speaker 1: happy sex lives where you're actually living inside your body
Speaker 1: and getting enjoyment from that, from achieving good grades to
Speaker 1: working out. You know, so many girls opt out of
Speaker 1: sports and exercise because they feel uncomfortable with how their
Speaker 1: bodies appear. Well, didn't you got You did some research
Speaker 1: that said girls that are all about body fixation and
Speaker 1: self objective patition don't do as well in math, Yes,
Speaker 1: reading comprehension, you don't lift as heavy of weights when
Speaker 1: you're working out in front of a mirror, or thinking
Speaker 1: about how you appear to the guy behind you. You're
Speaker 1: worried about how you jiggle, you can't perform as well.
Speaker 1: All of this research shows that self objectification literally halts
Speaker 1: our progress on our happiness. And when girls learn about this,
Speaker 1: that light bulb goes off and they have an opportunity
Speaker 1: to choose a new path. We talk about this idea.
Speaker 1: Our main idea is body image resilience for girls and women.
Speaker 1: Body image resilience is the ability to see your pain,
Speaker 1: to see your shame, and to come back home by
Speaker 1: responding to that pain and that shame in a new way,
Speaker 1: by not doing what you used to do, by hiding out,
Speaker 1: by not dressing down for pe because you're uncomfortable, by
Speaker 1: not raising your hand in class, by dieting and self
Speaker 1: harm and disordered eating, but instead to feel that pain
Speaker 1: when it comes in, to feel it, to name it
Speaker 1: and call it out, shine a light on it, take
Speaker 1: your power back and respond in a new and healthier way. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to come after the short break,
Speaker 1: and we're back with more go ass galleys. It's interesting
Speaker 1: when you were talking about a little girl at the
Speaker 1: beach and and the whole analogy with being in a
Speaker 1: bathing suit. I look at my children and I think
Speaker 1: about how when they were two to four, two to six,
Speaker 1: they'd be in a bikini. They could care less about
Speaker 1: the bikini or their bodies. They're digging in the sand,
Speaker 1: they're getting dirty, they're running around, They're just spreading their
Speaker 1: legs and peeing in the sand. They're just who they are.
Speaker 1: And I would love to be able to go to
Speaker 1: the beach, not you know, peeing in the sand, but
Speaker 1: I'd love to be able to go to the beach
Speaker 1: now as a grown woman with that same freedom. And
Speaker 1: I think about how many women when you see them,
Speaker 1: they're not jumping up and down on the beach, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. They're not hitting the volleyball, and
Speaker 1: we have calf Dan's on are all trying to find
Speaker 1: the right position on the towel, and God, I just
Speaker 1: want to run down the beach and not worry about it,
Speaker 1: because I want to be that four year old girl
Speaker 1: in the Strawberry Shortcake bikini, not giving a ship what
Speaker 1: people are thinking exactly. Isn't that so aspirational? Yes? Really,
Speaker 1: we can all think back to a time in our
Speaker 1: lives in our childhood's, hopefully even into adolescence for some people,
Speaker 1: unfortunately not too many where you can remember not caring
Speaker 1: how other people or what I was wearing, or my
Speaker 1: horrible haircuts that my mother gave me. I mean, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you were. You were focused on the plato or the
Speaker 1: sandbox or the things at hand. And you can get
Speaker 1: there in little ways. Yeah, And so think of like
Speaker 1: when you're in the middle of an amazing book, a
Speaker 1: workout that you love, a walk that you love, maybe
Speaker 1: you're you're on a drive, Like, what are those examples
Speaker 1: of your life right now where you actually lose your
Speaker 1: self consciousness, where you're immersed in a moment. It happens.
Speaker 1: We all have those experiences, but for women it doesn't
Speaker 1: happen nearly as often. For girls, it doesn't happen as
Speaker 1: often as it does for boys. And so the first
Speaker 1: step is really a matter of recognizing that this like
Speaker 1: self conscious, self aware body monitoring is not a natural
Speaker 1: way to be. It feels like it is now because
Speaker 1: it's invisible because we've grown up in this culture that
Speaker 1: teaches us to zoom in on women's bodies and the
Speaker 1: camera pans up and down bodies. Our eyes learned to
Speaker 1: do that same thing to real people's bodies in real lives.
Speaker 1: But it's not just what humans do. It's it's an
Speaker 1: a learned thing we've received through this culture, especially in
Speaker 1: this really immersive media environment. You know. It's it's interesting
Speaker 1: I found with comedy you can fight a lot of
Speaker 1: these things, you know, because the laugh becomes a thing
Speaker 1: instead of the objectification. You know, if you were doing
Speaker 1: a character just didn't matter. I mean again, the laugh
Speaker 1: was more important than whatever they were thinking about us sexually.
Speaker 1: I want to know what is the special sauce that's
Speaker 1: going to help us with the next generations of women
Speaker 1: to pivot their thinking about themselves and when who's watching
Speaker 1: them and who's objectifying them and sort of focus on
Speaker 1: something else, focus on going to law school or you know,
Speaker 1: for me, it was getting a laugh, but you can
Speaker 1: aim higher. How do we pivot that? And I know
Speaker 1: that you guys have a lot of ideas about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what you just described I think is how in comedy
Speaker 1: you've broken the value system. Yes, so what we've got
Speaker 1: to do for ourselves It doesn't matter how old you are,
Speaker 1: whether you're a girl or a woman. We have to
Speaker 1: break that value system that says beauty is the only
Speaker 1: way that you will feel fulfilled, because it turns out
Speaker 1: it's not true. You can be as beautiful, as hot
Speaker 1: as you want to be, you might still get cheated on,
Speaker 1: you might still not get the career you want, you
Speaker 1: might still get cancer and depression and all the other
Speaker 1: wore things that happened. Well, by the way I mean
Speaker 1: talking about looking behind the curtain, I've known some of
Speaker 1: these women who were the most beautiful, and then you
Speaker 1: meet them and you go, oh my god, you're incredibly
Speaker 1: depressed and insecure. And then you start to go, if
Speaker 1: I had your body, if I like like you, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be depressed out. It's not true, not true at all.
Speaker 1: It's yes. It is a myth, one thing that that
Speaker 1: we What we really want to drive home, and this
Speaker 1: work we try so hard to do is to get
Speaker 1: women to see their pain, to turn it on its head,
Speaker 1: and let that anger fuel you to meld you back
Speaker 1: into yourself where you belong. I cannot say it strongly enough.
Speaker 1: Girls and women belong inside their bodies, and we our
Speaker 1: joy has been stolen from us, the lost potential of
Speaker 1: so many girls and women who have been unable to
Speaker 1: embody themselves, to just live inside their bodies, to enjoy
Speaker 1: working out and loving relationships and their careers is unfathomable.
Speaker 1: And so we want women to start out with anger,
Speaker 1: like to really embrace seeing the ways this objectifying world
Speaker 1: and even people you love have objectified you and sexualized
Speaker 1: you and harmed you in so many ways that are
Speaker 1: both violent and very implicit and hard to see. The violence.
Speaker 1: It's all violence, and we want them to use that
Speaker 1: pain as an opportunity to rise in the face of it,
Speaker 1: to rise with resilience. And the only way we are
Speaker 1: ever going to do it is by calling it out.
Speaker 1: Body image resilience is the feminist revolution that every single
Speaker 1: one of us needs. And by breaking this value system
Speaker 1: and showing up, by opting out of these very dehumanizing
Speaker 1: ideals that we all just play by, we can do that.
Speaker 1: You know, not all of us have the power to
Speaker 1: opt out people who can't fit in most clothing in stores.
Speaker 1: They're gonna have a harder time opting out Black women
Speaker 1: who are required to straighten their hair where where weaves.
Speaker 1: They're going to have a harder time opting out of
Speaker 1: some of these ideals, but those of us with the
Speaker 1: privilege to do so must push back to provide a
Speaker 1: little bit of freedom for our daughters. I have a
Speaker 1: four year old daughter and a one year old daughter.
Speaker 1: I have opted out of painful beauty regimens, like even
Speaker 1: laser hair removal, because I want my daughters to see
Speaker 1: that their leg hair is okay, that it's more. When
Speaker 1: Julia Roberts a few years ago waved her arm and
Speaker 1: she had all that long armpit hair, yeah, I screamed
Speaker 1: yes Queen the loudest because I was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's change up the imagery a little bit. Yes. And
Speaker 1: for her to have all that privilege and be pushing back,
Speaker 1: how amazing is that, you know, to see women like
Speaker 1: Lizo pushed back on this and Melissa McCarthy like break
Speaker 1: the value system so many Billie eilish, to see women
Speaker 1: who are given the opportunity, you know, because that is
Speaker 1: still power that is offered to us in a very
Speaker 1: sexist and patriarchal world. But when we received that power,
Speaker 1: every one of us should push back. For Lindsay and I,
Speaker 1: we've opted out of dieting. I can tell you that
Speaker 1: I am the fattest i've ever been. And I'm the
Speaker 1: happiest I've ever been. I have the most amazing, loving
Speaker 1: relationship with a husband that I is just like my
Speaker 1: dream partner, and babies who loved me at a career
Speaker 1: that is going incredibly well. And it has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with my body. And you're probably really healthy. I
Speaker 1: work out every day. My weight has not changed one bit,
Speaker 1: but my workouts have gotten me through a global pandemic.
Speaker 1: I am so grateful for the way my body can move.
Speaker 1: You know this mantra we shout from the rooftops that
Speaker 1: really is a game changer is your body is an instrument,
Speaker 1: not an ornament, and that can change your life. It
Speaker 1: will change how you see health and fitness. It will
Speaker 1: change how you perceive your body every time you're moving,
Speaker 1: every time you're looking in a mirror. Um, I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about the health version because so much,
Speaker 1: so much stuff that is delivered to us to be
Speaker 1: the right thing to do is unhealthy. Right, Um, you
Speaker 1: talk about intermittent fasting. Is there a way to reframe
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff? What you want to do
Speaker 1: is put the focus on actual indicators of health and
Speaker 1: fitness as opposed to just those external indicators we have
Speaker 1: been fully taught to rely on and to define our
Speaker 1: health and fitness by. When you ask women to define
Speaker 1: their health and fitness and whether or not they consider
Speaker 1: themselves to be healthy or fit, overwhelmingly they'll use thinness,
Speaker 1: whether or not their tone, whether or not they fit
Speaker 1: into the genes that they wanted to from five years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is why is it such a selling of our
Speaker 1: genes are like this great status indicator of how we're feeling.
Speaker 1: Come on, and now you can get a new pair
Speaker 1: of genes for like forty bucks. So it shouldn't where
Speaker 1: sweatpants exactly. Yeah, I've learned that lesson a lot of
Speaker 1: us have this year. The most important thing is to
Speaker 1: recognize the ways we have not only objectified our bodies,
Speaker 1: but we've objectified our health by depersonalizing it, by evaluating
Speaker 1: it and defining it solely by how we look, how
Speaker 1: much we weigh, what sides of clothes we wear, our measurements, whatever.
Speaker 1: I want you to think of these things as objects
Speaker 1: that actually depersonalize your health and fitness to the point
Speaker 1: where it exists outside of you. It is not something
Speaker 1: that you are experiencing that you are living that you
Speaker 1: are feeling. And so to reframe this and flip it
Speaker 1: on its head, we do have to get back in
Speaker 1: touch with what is it really. We've got to start
Speaker 1: defining it by what we do, how we feel, what
Speaker 1: our internal indicators of health like lab tests, cardiovascular fitness.
Speaker 1: Your cholesterol is a good example of that because it
Speaker 1: can show you when something's out of whack, when maybe
Speaker 1: you've been coping in ways that are actually harmful, especially
Speaker 1: as a result of the disordered eating and the restriction
Speaker 1: that we all cope with in this environment. And so
Speaker 1: we can start to take that power back by focusing
Speaker 1: on your body as an instrument as opposed to an ornament.
Speaker 1: It's there for your use, your experience, your benefit, nobody else's.
Speaker 1: You can learn to appreciate and get back inside your
Speaker 1: body by focusing on how you feel, what you can do,
Speaker 1: and seeing what actually determines your health and wellness. It
Speaker 1: may not be weight loss. You know, you might take
Speaker 1: diet pills. You might be on pun bend and your
Speaker 1: heart's out of whack and you're thinner and everyone thinks
Speaker 1: you're healthier when yeah, you might be getting ready for
Speaker 1: a heart attack, and your doctor can tell you that
Speaker 1: actually you still have type two diabetes, you still have
Speaker 1: all of the risk factors for cancer or whatever it
Speaker 1: may be. What actually fixes that, what actually decreases your
Speaker 1: health risk in so many ways, is simply increasing your
Speaker 1: physical activity level, not in crazy ways, walking, moving your
Speaker 1: body thirty minutes a day, get your heart right up.
Speaker 1: This is sustainable. And it also improves your body image
Speaker 1: because then you're recapturing that relationship by using your body
Speaker 1: instead of just looking at it. There was research that
Speaker 1: said that during the pandemic, which we're still in but
Speaker 1: at the beginning anyway, women gained weight and men got fit.
Speaker 1: And I read that and I was like, is that true?
Speaker 1: And I thought about it and my sort of poor girlfriends.
Speaker 1: We're all baking bread and freaking out and like, how
Speaker 1: do I take care of my children and what's going
Speaker 1: to happen? And the men were out on three hour
Speaker 1: bike rides or strength training for the whole day or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I thought, is that interesting that the women the
Speaker 1: first thing they do is lose the relationship with themselves.
Speaker 1: They don't take care of themselves. And I I was
Speaker 1: stress eating and I went to the doctor who told
Speaker 1: me that my cholesterol was three, which is really bad,
Speaker 1: and she said, what have you been doing. I said,
Speaker 1: I've been eating ice cream NonStop and she said, we'll stop,
Speaker 1: and I thought, okay, yeah, my doctor told me to stop.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop. And I was like, why was I
Speaker 1: eating a pint of ice cream every day? Like I
Speaker 1: didn't need to, There was no reason for it. Um,
Speaker 1: it was it was my coping. But I'm curious as
Speaker 1: to why that was my coping, Like why wasn't I
Speaker 1: doing zoomyoga with my husband in the other room. Why
Speaker 1: wasn't I hiking? So what I did was I have
Speaker 1: this dog, this that I rescued that is my other husband,
Speaker 1: and I started walking him. And it was never about ego, right,
Speaker 1: My My doctor didn't say you're not going to look
Speaker 1: good in a bikini this summer unless you stop eating
Speaker 1: ice cream. She was like talking about heart attacks, and
Speaker 1: it was less ego and more like do you want
Speaker 1: to live? Right? So, I'm walking like seven miles a
Speaker 1: day and I've never felt better, I've never or felt stronger.
Speaker 1: I'm able to think like my brain, I'm like coming
Speaker 1: up with eight million movie ideas a second. And it
Speaker 1: never stemmed from any of this beauty place, which was
Speaker 1: very empowering for me. And my husband even said to
Speaker 1: me the other day, you know, I was like in
Speaker 1: my underweark getting dressed. He was like, God, you look amazing,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh really, oh good, you know,
Speaker 1: but I mean it was like, oh, that's just a
Speaker 1: good side effect of what I'm doing, but it's not
Speaker 1: the reason I'm doing it. We're gonna take a short
Speaker 1: break and we'll be right back, and we're back. The
Speaker 1: friends of mine in l a who, like I said before,
Speaker 1: the industry of entertainment, that kind of this is what
Speaker 1: they sell. Those women I've noticed are having a really
Speaker 1: hard time with like age transition because they're told that
Speaker 1: they're self worth, that their whole value is to be
Speaker 1: young and sexy. We can't all be young and sexy
Speaker 1: for the rest of our lives, and they're what they're
Speaker 1: hearing now is oh, you're expired. Your shelf life is over.
Speaker 1: And instead of going, Okay, this is what you're dictating,
Speaker 1: but I can go off and be you know, Jessica
Speaker 1: Tandy or somebody else, they're getting their third facelift and
Speaker 1: they're popping opiates to maintain the stress of having to
Speaker 1: battle this constantly, and I feel for them, I really do.
Speaker 1: I feel for them, and I'm always trying to find
Speaker 1: a way to message what you guys have been saying,
Speaker 1: which is find the other outlets. You know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: suddenly I'm in good shape and it was from something
Speaker 1: completely different. Oh yeah, that's what you're describing, is using
Speaker 1: your coping mechanisms dealing with these disruptions that come up
Speaker 1: in your life. For some people, it's going to be
Speaker 1: your body changing. So the disruption may not even be
Speaker 1: like I'm at home during a endemic and baking bread.
Speaker 1: The disruption might be I gained a bunch of weight
Speaker 1: and now my cholesterol is out of whack and I
Speaker 1: have been coping breathing ice cream. And what you did
Speaker 1: is you switched your coping mechanisms. So instead of responding
Speaker 1: to this disruption by sinking deeper into shame like you
Speaker 1: describe with opioids or with self harm and disordered eating,
Speaker 1: you switch that coping mechanisms to where you weren't trying
Speaker 1: to hide your body or fix your body. You weren't
Speaker 1: clinging to this uncomfortable comfort zone of oh my body
Speaker 1: doesn't look right, and so I'm gonna do a quick
Speaker 1: fix to figure it out. You switched it up, so
Speaker 1: you used your body as an instrument, and you found
Speaker 1: that joy and fulfillment in actually experiencing how your body
Speaker 1: can help you move through the world and see the
Speaker 1: world and enjoy it, as opposed to how the world
Speaker 1: experiences your body. And so when you're talking about these
Speaker 1: women who are aging in Hollywood, they've been reaping the
Speaker 1: rewards their whole lives in this system that values thinness
Speaker 1: and youth and beauty, and they probably felt like they
Speaker 1: were on top of the world, and everyone else probably
Speaker 1: perceived that they were winning. Because as as long as
Speaker 1: you've got uni in thinness and youth and plus a
Speaker 1: little talent to go along with it, then you can
Speaker 1: be okay in this system. But what you're describing is
Speaker 1: how it does not work that way. Eventually, all of
Speaker 1: us fail in a system that values women's bodies at
Speaker 1: the expense of our humanity. And so when we're just
Speaker 1: playing into the same value system that will inevitably fail us,
Speaker 1: we will not be sustainably happy. And the answer really
Speaker 1: is to find what truly fulfills us, what truly values us,
Speaker 1: and how we can understand our bodies from a new perspective,
Speaker 1: not an outside viewers perspective, but our own internal, first
Speaker 1: person perspective on the whole world. And it it depends
Speaker 1: on who controls the value system. So obviously in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: we know that as men overwhelmingly white men, and they
Speaker 1: have specific sexual preferences on what women's bodies need to
Speaker 1: look like to be valued. And it is a value
Speaker 1: system that is harming all of us because we export
Speaker 1: those ideals all over the US to every age group
Speaker 1: and then all over the entire world. And we need
Speaker 1: to recognize the ways it's harming us in our own
Speaker 1: visual lives. What have I been held back from? What
Speaker 1: have I opted out of? How have I been actively
Speaker 1: harmed by thinking about my body from some white male
Speaker 1: Hollywood executive's perspective? And then how can I use that
Speaker 1: spotlight on my shame and my self objectification, the ways
Speaker 1: I've learned to to dehumanize myself. How can I use
Speaker 1: that to take active steps the next time that shame
Speaker 1: comes up to where I can use my body as
Speaker 1: an instrument where I can reach out to other people
Speaker 1: socially and share this, you know, annoying self objectification this
Speaker 1: paim that I'm experiencing. How can I reconnect with my
Speaker 1: own inner child self, who wasn't so hung up on
Speaker 1: how my face and my body looks, and instead could
Speaker 1: just live my life the way we all should continue
Speaker 1: to do. She was paying on the beach, that little girl. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about social media, because that,
Speaker 1: to me, is one of the biggest hurdles with this.
Speaker 1: I'd grow up with it. It exists now and again.
Speaker 1: I have tuned to teenage daughters and I look at
Speaker 1: social media and I just think, Wow, the Instagram influencers
Speaker 1: and models, not only are they sticking their thong in
Speaker 1: the camera, but they're getting paid, so now they're literally
Speaker 1: being valued at a price. And I fear for this
Speaker 1: whole generation of girls. I scream and yell at my
Speaker 1: daughter's about sexually exploiting and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: They're not allowed to post anything. It's like kittens and puppies.
Speaker 1: But they look at their friends and they think, she
Speaker 1: just posted a sexy photo, and she's getting lots of likes,
Speaker 1: and she's getting popular, and therefore this can only lead
Speaker 1: to great things. And I feel like what they don't
Speaker 1: tell parents now is that this becomes as big a
Speaker 1: battle as getting them to eat vegetables. Is constantly parenting
Speaker 1: them about social media. Yeah, if they're a paid influencer,
Speaker 1: they're making some money from it, but they are in
Speaker 1: the rat race, the dehumanizing, sexualizing rat race, and their
Speaker 1: time will come. They're playing by objectifying rules that do
Speaker 1: not value them in any real way. But for the
Speaker 1: rest of us that are scrolling through our own social
Speaker 1: media feeds every day, we have got to talk to
Speaker 1: these girls about the real world consequences of that simple scroll.
Speaker 1: What does it feel like when you are looking at
Speaker 1: your phone? We have to curate our feeds like Instagram, TikTok, snapchat.
Speaker 1: It can literally be self help or self harm, and
Speaker 1: research shows but also real life experience shows that the
Speaker 1: more time you spend on these heavily visual mediums, the
Speaker 1: more likely you will experience body shame and self objectification, envy, loneliness, depression,
Speaker 1: and on and on. The more time we spend doing
Speaker 1: the very natural thing of comparing ourselves to literally everyone
Speaker 1: of thousands of millions of edited images that hit our screens,
Speaker 1: the more likely we are to self objectify and to
Speaker 1: hate what we see and to not only hate what
Speaker 1: we see, but feel so defined by our own bodies
Speaker 1: that we then replicate everything we're seeing on screen. My
Speaker 1: job is to unfollow, mute, hide, do whatever I have
Speaker 1: to do to take care of myself because we only
Speaker 1: we can only look out for ourselves in this world.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the classes or the seminars that you
Speaker 1: offer on your website, because that's fascinating. Yeah. So we've
Speaker 1: been doing a ton of speaking engagements ever since we
Speaker 1: first developed this visual presentation during our masters and PhDs.
Speaker 1: So we've taken that all over the place, whether it's
Speaker 1: high schools, universities, treatment centers, and we turned a lot
Speaker 1: of that into an online course that we offer at
Speaker 1: our website, more than a Body dot Org. A lot
Speaker 1: of that stuff is in the book. Honestly, we recommend
Speaker 1: that people turn to the book first and if the
Speaker 1: process that we lay out there about learning to see
Speaker 1: more in yourself and in other people and then be
Speaker 1: more more than a body, more than an object, more
Speaker 1: than an ornament. If all of that resonates with people,
Speaker 1: they can dig deeper through our online course. Everything we
Speaker 1: do is intended to help people to work through really
Speaker 1: practical steps to build their body image resilience. This is
Speaker 1: not body positivity. It's not just we hope you feel
Speaker 1: beautiful and then you might feel terrible an hour later
Speaker 1: when you compare yourself to somebody else or whatever. Ours
Speaker 1: is a process, it's a methodology so that you will
Speaker 1: you absolutely will, no matter what feel body image disruptions.
Speaker 1: You'll feel negatively about your body in small ways and
Speaker 1: in huge ways because of this culture that we live
Speaker 1: in that values beauty and thinness over so much else.
Speaker 1: And when those feelings come up, we give you a
Speaker 1: plan to actually respond to it in a healthy and
Speaker 1: empowering and meaningful way that can actually reconnect you with
Speaker 1: your body as opposed to separating you from it, turning
Speaker 1: you against it to hide and fix forever. Your whole
Speaker 1: self esteem doesn't have to take a dive because you
Speaker 1: did gain a little bit of weight, or your face
Speaker 1: is aging and it's becoming more noticeable. These things can
Speaker 1: just be attributes of our changing, aging, growing, shrinking bodies.
Speaker 1: They don't have to be defining factors of who we are.
Speaker 1: And this is a process that works. Yeah. What we
Speaker 1: want people to know is possible is that body image
Speaker 1: resilience gives you this ability to feel freedom you never
Speaker 1: could have imagined. You know, we talked about in the
Speaker 1: book Lindsay and I from the time we were in
Speaker 1: seventh grade, we were dieting. We quit competitive swimming at
Speaker 1: age sixteen because we were ashamed of the cellulite on
Speaker 1: our legs, you know, and on and on. We know
Speaker 1: this intimately, and yet it is our body shame that
Speaker 1: opened our eyes to this thing that we could devote
Speaker 1: our lives too, to help people take their bodies back
Speaker 1: from systems and cultures and social media that wants us
Speaker 1: to be inanimate objects constantly in need of fixing. And
Speaker 1: this happens in little ways. This happens for me in
Speaker 1: my own life. You know, I had a baby a
Speaker 1: year ago. My body has changed a ton, and I
Speaker 1: I'm great, Like my life is good and happy, and
Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with how I appear. I
Speaker 1: want people to know that if you go to your
Speaker 1: closet right now, after having lived a year in a
Speaker 1: global pandemic, and you put on jeans you have been
Speaker 1: worn in a few weeks or months, and they are
Speaker 1: tight or they don't fit, it does not have to
Speaker 1: break you. You do not immediately have to set forth
Speaker 1: the plan for how you are going to lose that weight.
Speaker 1: You can reframe that as my body took care of
Speaker 1: me in a pandemic, and you know, maybe it's okay,
Speaker 1: but I gained some weight. Maybe I was actually coming
Speaker 1: back home to myself. Maybe I was opting out of
Speaker 1: the disordered eating that was my comfort zone, the only
Speaker 1: salad I could eat out at that restaurant every day
Speaker 1: that made me feel in control. Maybe I've actually gained
Speaker 1: a little bit more freedom to see that it's okay
Speaker 1: to gain a little bit of weight and eat more
Speaker 1: food and move my body because I love my body,
Speaker 1: not because I hate myself. Like that's what body image
Speaker 1: resilience can give you. It's what it's given me. Well,
Speaker 1: you look great from Zoom. Thank you. More than a body,
Speaker 1: Your body is an instrument, not an ornament. Lindsay and Lexie,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being with me, and particularly
Speaker 1: as a mother of two teenage daughters. I thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Thank you, Ali, Thank you Ali. I definitely
Speaker 1: want to make sweatshirts that say our bodies are not ornaments,
Speaker 1: because I think it's such an important thing, especially for
Speaker 1: women and girls. And the fact that I have these
Speaker 1: two teenage girls that are always going to wrestle with
Speaker 1: you know how they feel about themselves and their bodies
Speaker 1: because of the media and television and everything else. And
Speaker 1: I love what Dr Lindsay and Lexi say about how we,
Speaker 1: particularly women and girls view your own bodies because you
Speaker 1: know what, and I'm telling you make a bumper sticker
Speaker 1: out of it. Our bodies are not ornaments. Boom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening to Go ask Ali. Join me
Speaker 1: next week when I talked with sex therapist Dr Tiffany
Speaker 1: Henry about the touchy relationship women seem to have with sex.
Speaker 1: Do you think of sex with your partner as an
Speaker 1: obligation or a revelation? You'll want to hear this one.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast, and
Speaker 1: follow me on social media on Twitter at Ali e
Speaker 1: Wentworth and on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth. And
Speaker 1: if you have any questions or guest suggestions, I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you, call or text me at three
Speaker 1: to three four six three six or email Go ask
Speaker 1: Alli podcast at gmail dot com. Go ask Alli is
Speaker 1: a production of Shonda Land Audio and partnership with I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland audio visit the
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