Sunday Something: Overconfidence

I haven't written one of these long, rambling, thoughtful posts in a while, and I used to really enjoy them - so I'll do one in the course of Dress Your Best. Because I really like my brain, and letting it roam around between decoratively arranged streams of consciousness is as close as I'll get to dressing it up! So here's some musings about the boundaries we impose on body confidence, to round off the Dress Your Best weeks. 

[I'm putting on my thinking hat!]

My little sister, who has lately been saying lots of insightful things, read my post about dressing to flatter my bust and pointed out to me that, well, maybe people will think I'm over-confident if I don't criticize anything about myself. Implying that I wouldn't want people to think that of me.

Alas, 'tis true - and I think that, at least when it comes to body shapes and dressing up, it shouldn't be. It is really hard to have too much body confidence! That's kind of the point of the Dress-your-best challenge, as well as of any body image blog I've seen around the internet. 

My sister's comment reminded me of something else though, something that may be at the root of this reproach of overconfidence: 

The social script that allows - or obliges - women to bond over body bashing. 

"My thighs are so fat, I wish I was slim like you!" - "What do you mean, slim? Look at that belly pouch! I wish I was toned like you are!" 

There's a bunch of stuff going on in an interaction like this. Each participant puts herself down while complimenting the other. The motivations are manifold and I can only grasp them intuitively (I've never studied social psychology after all!), but here's an attempt:

One part of it may be to avoid competition and discord - because girls are told that competition is unfeminine and that creating a harmonious environment at all costs is their task. You don't want others to be envious of your good features because that creates discord, therefore don't let your good features shine - adopt a submissive manner, put yourself below others. Submissive behavior towards men as figures of authority is another script that women were taught, luckily much more in the past than in the present, but the remnants still seem to stick around, even in the interaction of women among themselves. 

The other part may be the wish to have someone contradict you - saying nasty things about yourself in the hope of having others jump in to correct you and catch a compliment that way. 

Of course if everybody engages in this script, everybody gets some compliments, nobody needs to feel envious or left out, and everybody is happy... or is she? The problem is that the bad things we say about ourselves stick around in our minds, and we end up believing them much more than the nice things others tell us. Ever notice how difficult it is to take a compliment without giving an answer that deprecates the lauded feature? Also, it's not like we actually avoid competition that way - we just turn it even more toxic by attempting to ban it, and it remains a nasty undercurrent in all interactions. Because this pattern of interaction fosters insecurities and low confidence, and if anything, these increase the need to prove oneself better than others. 

And that really isn't necessary - we know there isn't just one narrow beauty standard in the world, there's enough beauty for everyone to claim their bit of it. Competition may be part of human nature, but please, let's give it a level and healthy playing field without the stumbling blocks of self-deprecation. 

Still, it's scary to break out of long-standing social scripts. And if I say good things about my own body, that's exactly what I'm doing. There's no way this will prevent me from also complimenting others on their bodies - in fact, being happy with myself makes me more likely to notice good features in others, and to be able to acknowledge them without toxicity creeping in. But it may offend them just because it's breaking the customary behavior pattern, just because it's not what they're used to, and because it means they have to question their own habits. 

And since being scared of change is also part of human nature, they'd rather think there's something wrong with whoever is challenging them to do so, or with themselves. They end up believing that I can only do X because I have some imaginary feature Y, which they don't have, and envying me, or that I am really just impertinent for doing X because "it's not done!", and hating me for that reason. It's happened - I briefly lived with two girls who were very good at engaging in body-bashing-talk ("Ugh, I'm so fat, I should wear spanx all the time! Ugh, I really HATE my hair!"), and when I pointed out that their bodies were really fine, there was nothing to hate about them, without the addendum of self-bashing that would have been required to meet expectations, they turned their dislike onto me. It may not have helped that I was in fact slightly more petite than them, but it should really not have mattered because there's beauty at every size of body frame. 

Why oh why do we keep doing this to ourselves? 

[Take note that there are some few things I don't like that much about my body. I'm aware it fits the "young, slim, conventionally pretty" mold rather closely, and I honestly can't tell how much of my confidence comes from that (I've talked about this at length in an FFB post back in March) - but I'm also aware that my skin has a tendency to break out in pimples at the slightest hint of stress, and that my joints aren't the most stable, that my upper legs, like those of almost every woman above age 16, bear some of the dints commonly known as cellulite, and that I'm entirely un-athletic. Does this make me hate my body, though? Not on most days. And I am pretty glad about that because there was a time when I hated my body non-stop, and it really wasn't fun.]