9781626569768

and levels of depression, and also lowered self-esteem. About- Face. org
also highlighted a longitudinal study of adolescents that found frequent
reading of magazine articles about dieting and/or weight loss was
associated with weight-control behaviors and other psychological outcomes
five years later. 7
Confusing and stifling social messages about our bodies and identities
transcend gender. Daemon, one of only a handful of male participants at my
workshop, recalled his first memory of body shame at eight years old. He
took a hard tumble off a merry-go-round at the local playground and
scraped his knee badly. Bloodied and crying, he ran to his teenage and
twenty-something cousins, who were supervising the smaller kids at the
park. They immediately met his tears with laughter and taunting. The eldest
cousin admonished, “Man up, dude! Only sissies cry.” Daemon was clear
that the brief but impactful moment changed him; he shared how he had not
cried since he was eight years old. In those few brief moments, Daemon’s
cousins taught him that “man up” meant he must ignore both physical and
emotional pain to be considered a man. His tears were bad and his pain
inconsequential. Cultural and familial messages that reduce masculinity to a
bland soup of physical strength and stoic emotional response limit the full
range of human expression needed for boys to develop a healthy sense of
radical self-love. We call these dangerous ideas “toxic masculinity.” 8
Specifically, narratives that reinforce masculinity as synonymous with
muscles can lead young men to “crash diets, over-exercising, smoking,
increased drug and alcohol use or even taking dangerous supplements.” 9
For Daemon, it led to years of ignoring his body, avoiding doctors, and
masking pain with drugs and alcohol. Daemon said, “Having a stroke at
thirty-seven was my wake-up call. If this was being a man, I was ready for a
new definition.” Cultural and social missives about who we are supposed to
be and how our bodies are supposed to look are woven into the fabric of our
daily lives, and whether we want to admit it or not, they impact our sense of
self, often for decades to come. They become part of a larger story.
Let’s return to Keisha for a moment. Can we see how the messages she
received about her hair were cultural, social, and familial? Keisha recounted
this story of shame in a workshop twenty-five years later, her voice still a
cracked egg. I listened as she shared how she had felt unattractive and
unlovable for nearly three decades, all because of her hair. It was clear that
Keisha was moving through the world with her body-shame origin story