Perfect
Browsing through sites on anorexia, the blind repetition of one of the characteristic traits that pisses me off the most is (so-called) perfectionism. Perfectionism in this context is negative and as I understand it to mean, an almost manic longing for the impossible. To say that the anorexic aspires to a perfect body which to her mind is a sack of bones is as ridiculous as saying she has perception distortion, which sees her skinny body as fat. These girls are aware of their thinness though maybe not how thin they actually are. A perfect body, in her terms, is a lack of body, which is not perfection at all, but its darker negative.
Perfectionism of body seems better attributed to those crazy enough to go through plastic surgery, for I believe that the women who get fake breasts are as “mentally ill” as the female that starves herself, both are doing their bodies harm. Perfectionism is the norm expected of the body: botox away wrinkles, slice away the skin of old age, tattoo on eyeliner, go the gym and work out and out and out. A perfect body has become the wished for and now possible, norm. Who’s crazy now?
What is so wrong with perfectionism anyway? How did it get such a bad rap? Many artists were and are perfectionists and that doesn’t mean they didn’t know when to stop. If no one had any urge to “get it right” the world would be a sordid place full of half-people and half-places. But at the same time, while much is allowed to be good, hardly anything is allowed to be perfect. Perfection is a mystery owned by Nature. Us humans, we’re fallen, and that’s very far from perfect indeed.
The aspiration for perfection can also be spiritual, like the desire to transcend, it is experienced as elevating. My current version of perfection is different from yours, different from his or hers. Perfection is simplicity, an overwhelming well of forgiveness and love, empathy, goodness, humility. Perfection of alleged purity is not a good enough martyr for our modern society and so the “doctors” tell us we seek perfection in the pages of women’s magazines.
How many articles have I read that narrowed the cultural argument for eating disorders down to that? Forgetting we live in a world, interact with it, think about it; forgetting that there is no singular line of influence, skinny models starve the stomach, but a myriad of multi-dimensional interactions every single day.
But this piece isn’t about how I disagree with the medical label, so I’ll go back to the perfect.
The perfectionist anorexic desires to excel in sports or academics or anything else that lends easily to the scale of winners and losers. If perfectionism is a manic longing for the impossible, isn’t there a problem here? In males such behavior of success orientation is called ambition. The worst of these men carry their ambition to obscure heights where they are no longer able to see that it is even people who work below them. Or they are called workaholics, which is a lighter, more positive term.
But when the young girl desires to make herself, not through the nit-picking perfections of bodily maintenance (I’m speaking dress, make-up, etc.) but through the intellect or through sport, then we are called perfectionists. My god! Maybe they should just take away the choice! The difference between how these two “goals” are seen as appropriate—everything in moderation— for women is incredible. And deeply part of the problem.
I’m not saying that when taken to the extreme the perfectionist behaviors are not harmful and I’m not trying to make light of those deep in that cycle. But I am trying to point out something very obvious that the anorexic’s body is trying to say. Success is written in masculine terms, when women try to adopt those terms word by word, something horrible happens.
An ambitious young girl with all the world before her, who wants more than she sees the average woman to have through either the intellect or through sports, has a more difficult road, no matter what—as does anyone who wants something different. The trap has been set by history. Either she goes forward, adopting the masculine language of success along the way or she tries her damnedest against the flow. For a woman to achieve on woman’s terms, well, I guess that would be too perfect.
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