How I Learned To Remember What I Already Knew About The Opinions Of Others

I learned in my Consumer Behavior class last semester that the average consumer is hit with over 3,000 advertisements every single day, from television, radio, Internet, print, and even billboards. And only about 8% of each one of those ads registers on the conscious level of our brains. The other 92% access the subconscious recesses of our minds and stick with us much longer, without us even realizing it.

Sure, these messages influence our purchasing behaviors, but more than that, they reflect whatever values the advertisers imply are important to our society. Marketing starts to mold who we are as consumers, and it also begins to affect how we perceive the world, as well as ourselves. We can say we don't pay attention to commercials, and we can mute them during breaks from our favorite television shows; but they get to us, whether we like it or not.

So think about the power these ads have over the populous. Marketing is the fastest and most effective way to communicate a message to the masses. Many of these messages are good; they're positive, uplifting jingles for BBQ restaurants and serious PSAs for suicide prevention hotlines. However, can you imagine the potential damage a single advertisement with negative implications can have? Even if the negative message is only implied, can you fathom how bad a person could feel if they identified with any of the qualities perceived as negative by the ad? An ad, which is rerun several times, since repetition is key in marketing? What about if negative messages were implied from more than just one ad? Two, or twenty, or five hundred, or a thousand ads? What if the negativity surrounding certain qualities became so pervasive in our advertising, because the advertising is simply reflecting how pervasive the negativity surrounding those qualities is throughout our culture?

I'm talking about the omnipresent, pervasive, and normalized message from society, and in turn, advertisers, that women should be thin. Or at the very least, not to be fat.

Women, especially young women, are targeted by advertisers for products like shampoo, makeup, nail polish, and tampons. But they're also targeted for things like weight loss pills, plastic surgery, and even clothing products that are designed to make a person appear thinner. Young women are the market segment targeted by advertisers because advertisers mimic society. Society provides a cultural script that says young women need to be thin and beautiful, so advertisers come along and offer young women products to help them adhere to society's demands. How kind of them, hmm?

I am a twenty-one-year-old woman living in the Western hemisphere, in perhaps the most commercialized nation on the planet. I've never really had a problem with not caring about what anyone else thinks of me, least of all some advertising executives who don't even know me. But they do know me. They classify me together with other Caucasian heterosexual cisgender female people who make less than $20,000 annually and live in Wichita, Kansas and attend university and drive a car and wash their hair and drink alcohol and eat pizza and listen to Taylor Swift.

These marketers may not know me personally, but they've got a pretty good idea of how I'll behave based upon what society tells me to do. They can guess my hopes and fears and a multitude of other things, because it's feasible to believe that I'll behave in generally the same way as others in my demographic. The power of marketers derives from how closely I follow the cultural script I've been taught. If they can predict my behavior, they can sell me a product.





Now, I must say, that from a young age, I have always considered myself to be very accepting of my body, regardless of whatever flaws society may have perceived it as having. It is my body, after all. I've never really paid any attention to the demand that women be thin, because like most fads and trends, I couldn't be bothered to play along. I've never even really considered myself to be "fat" as society would like it, because, well, I just don't have time for it. It wasn't until this year that I really started thinking more about my body, and I became much more aware of its appearance. Though I certainly didn't intend for it to be, this became a problem.

It all began a little over ten months ago when I returned from studying abroad. I spent four weeks in France, going to school most days from 9 to 4, with little exercise beyond just walking through the streets and across campus. And I mean, I was in France. What do you do when you're in France? You eat bread and you drink wine! So basically, I spent four weeks doing nothing besides conjugating verbs and consuming complex carbohydrates. Don't get me wrong; I had the time of my life! In fact, I was so busy loving life that I didn't think very much about anything else.

I came home at the end of July. It's important to know a few things here in order to understand where my mind was at:
1. I was terribly heartbroken to leave France and my host family, and I went through some rough reverse culture shock.
2. I had missed my biological family while I was gone, but that didn't mean I necessarily wanted to be staying with my mother until school started.
3. Being home reminded me of the breakup I had just experienced prior to going to France, and I was no longer on the other side of the world from this reality.

So, I was generally irritable and unhappy to be back in Ark City. Furthermore, I realized upon stepping on my mother's bathroom scale, that all that wine and bread had caught up to me. So, one day, near the beginning of August, I decided I'd go for a run.

This wasn't unusual for me, as I'd gone for runs off and on many times at Mom's house. I knew my preferred running route well, and it didn't present itself as very dangerous. It was only about a mile and a half total, but I ran it so inconsistently that it always seemed to be a challenge.

I came home, stretched, did some abs, and that was it. Until two days later when I decided I'd do it again. And after that, I kept up with an every-other-day schedule pretty well, running in the evening as the sun set so as not to die from heat exhaustion. School started a few weeks later, and I kept my routine pretty consistently by running on campus in the evenings. I was proud of my diligence and commitment to something that was better for me than Netflix. Then I started to notice my weight loss.

I hadn't begun running back in July with any particular motivation or goal in mind. I guess I just felt like I'd gained a little weight in France, I wanted out of the house and away from my mother, and I felt like exercising regularly was a healthy outlet for dealing with my residual emotions from the breakup. I wasn't doing it because I had a man "to keep happy" or because I thought I was grossly overweight. Overall, running seemed like a healthy thing to do just for me. And that's why I liked it.

I've never felt like I'm very good at running, and in high school some of my rude track teammates made fun of me because I stomped when my feet hit the ground. I was not highly involved in sports, and to this day, I don't consider myself to be very athletic. So it was never about that, for me. It was always much more about having my own personal time to let my brain flat-line and forget my worries. Running was an escape. But when I started to see visible changes in my body, which were confirmed by the scale, I got excited. I was proud to see that something I'd chosen to do by myself, for myself had benefited me in this way. But "benefited"? Who says?

My pants started to get looser and looser. I had to go buy new jeans, this time in a size 5 instead of a 9. My legs were no longer sore from running like they were when I started, but the mornings after doing an ab workout, I'd feel the burn while trying to sit up in my bed. I noticed my shirts and dresses were now laying more flatly around my body, and this made me happy.

But as the over-analyzing feminist that I am, I began to wonder if perhaps my happiness as a result of a change in my physical appearance was actually a good thing. I've always been a firm believer that happiness comes from within, and if something as vain and external as physical appearance was making me happy, that couldn't be a good thing. Right?

I kept running, though my every-other-day schedule started to waver as the semester progressed and I became busier. The cold weather moved in and I started making visits to the Heskett Center to run on the treadmill, instead. I didn't really allow myself the time to mull over my thoughts about my weight loss, because I was busy with work and school, and finals were approaching. But all the while, doubt started to creep into my mind about whether or not I actually wanted to lose the weight in the first place.

Part of me wanted to keep eating salad before every meal and doing crunches after I ran. Part of me wanted to go to the nearest grocery store and buy all the candy with high fructose corn syrup and genetically modified junk food as I could afford, and eat it all in an hour as I binged on Netflix. The cantankerous feminist devil on my left shoulder was arguing with the self-loving feminist angel on my right. And I was caught in the middle.

Had I actually, perhaps subconsciously, wanted to lose the weight when I started? Did that mean admitting to myself and others that there were parts of my body with which I was dissatisfied? That, in fact, I wasn't this portrait of an all-accepting, self-loving überfeminist? And did all of this mean that I valued my twenty-pound-lighter body more than I did the body I had in August? Did any of this have any bearing on the way I thought, and had I become convinced by my experience with weight loss to value skinny people the most and fat-shame others? My brain extrapolated possible conclusions well past the point of rationality.

Of course my thinking hadn't changed. My values and convictions run deep. If intersectional feminism were a color, it would be the same pigment as the blood that pours out of my leg when I nick myself shaving. I know this, in the very fiber of my being. So why was my brain running amuck with extreme ideas about what a change in my weight meant? Were people really treating me differently because of a few less pounds, or was my feminist brain just imagining things, as it sometimes does? There was just so much to reconcile.

I began to think I liked it better when I was "fat and happy" because then at least I could dish out the "your opinion of my body doesn't matter" attitude and people accepted it. When a "fat girl" says that, she's just that: a fat girl, automatically silenced by her appearance, and invalidated by her nonconformity to societal demands. When a "skinny girl" says that, she's a stuck-up bitch who can't take a compliment. Before, I was familiar with defending my appearance to those who criticized it, and funnily enough, I never found myself being one of the critics. But accepting compliments based on my physical appearance -- some kind of "accomplishment" at making myself more attractive to society -- has never really sat well with me. It's a strange, convoluted, messy entanglement between my brain, my heart, feminism, and patriarchy; but, I know I'm pretty because I think I'm pretty, not because someone else does. I guess the problem came when I started to wonder if people were treating me nicely because of who I am and they genuinely wanted to treat me nicely, or if it was just because I had recently dropped the weight of a very small child.





It wasn't until very recently, like within the last two weeks, that I came to an epiphany about this mess of emotion and flawed logic that was brewing in my head. I wasn't unhappy because I had lost weight. That was never the change that caused any of these problems. I was unhappy because I started to worry about what other people thought about the weight I lost. Before I lost the weight, I had already accepted myself and my body the way it was. I already knew what I looked like and how to expect people to treat me based on it. (Not that it was ever nearly as bad as many millions of other people in the world, by any means.) But it was familiar. Then I lost the weight, and as a result, I expected people would treat me differently, because I know a woman's physical appearance is her most important quality in our world, for some godforsaken reason. Then I became so acutely aware of and militantly defensive to everyone's interactions with me, that I was thinking so much more about their opinions of me, than I was about my own opinions of me. And that's just it!

I realized that because I've been indoctrinated by society, via television ads and magazine covers for twenty-one years to believe "thin is in", that I was the one who actually internalized the message. Me, with the impenetrable wall of feminism specifically designed to detect and repel patriarchal garbage in every form! I had somehow unwittingly allowed the messages from advertisers to creep into my brain, and then I let the opinions of others overpower the importance of my own self-acceptance. I had handed my power right over to the patriarchy. Then I sat and wondered where it was I had gone so wrong and why I was in such a state of emotional unrest. It was because I started subconsciously comparing the state of myself to the unattainable standard which the advertisers set for me. Then I constantly wondered how closely I measured up, instead of simply not caring, as I'd always done before.

I never realized that I had actually changed two variables, not just one. Instead of blaming the real culprit, which was ever giving a damn about what others think, I blamed the most visible change I could think of, which was a change in my physical appearance. Because, once again, we've all been taught that a woman's physical appearance is what matters the most. It just goes to show that even the most passionate of know-it-all feminists can be taught to play right into the hands of a patriarchal society if they are exposed to its harmful values enough.

I never should've worried for a second what anyone else thought about my body. It is my body, after all. I never gave the opinions of others a second thought before I lost the weight. Because I already accepted myself as I was, and I was happy with that. Then my body changed, and as I had to begin accepting myself as I changed, I began to worry if perhaps the rate at which others were or were not accepting me had anything to do with it. Happiness does come from within. It comes from accepting yourself and loving yourself right now, today, right where you are. Consciously or not, no advertisement can ever sell you that.

So I look in the mirror today, and I see a woman whose body has indeed changed. I see a woman who knows she can run farther and longer than she ever even tried in high school. I see a woman who really, honestly did accept her body before she lost the weight, and who wouldn't hesitate to give a middle finger to anyone who disagreed. I also see a woman who worried herself entirely too much over the thoughts and opinions of others about her body for a time. I see a woman who got caught between two opposing sides in a false dichotomy of options for women in our world: unmotivated, lazy, fat girl, or healthy, vegetable-eating, athlete. I see a woman who is somedays both, lazy and healthy. I see a woman who painted herself into a corner with internalized patriarchy without even realizing it, because the message was ingrained so deeply into the subconscious of her brain. I see a woman, whom for a time, played right into the cultural script that society has laid out for women to always be concerned about the perception of their physical appearance. I see a woman who felt more pressure to remain skinny after she'd lost the weight, than she ever did to lose it in the first place. I see a woman who knows her happiness, along with her self-worth come from within herself, and nowhere else. And I see a woman who realized all of this, just now, as she wrote this, and who became very relieved as soon as she understood, once again, that the opinions of others -- advertisers, a patriarchal society, or anyone else -- have never actually mattered in the past, nor will they at any point in the future.

Three Days of Internet Dating

I'm not even really sure why I thought it would be a good idea. Scratch that, I didn't think it would be a good idea. As someone who considers herself a vocal feminist as an adult, and as a child who grew up in the Internet age, I knew already that there is almost never any overlap between male strangers online and good ideas. I guess I was bored and I thought a little bit of attention sounded like fun. I don't know. Regardless, I searched the Play Store for a dating app and made myself an account.

The timeline of these exploits is short: a three-day period, spanning from Thursday night through Sunday night, last weekend. I deleted my account and uninstalled the app right before going to bed on Sunday, without any warning to any of the potential "suitors" with whom I'd been chatting. Yeah, I'm a cold-blooded heartbreaker. I figured it was the best way to end my little curiosity-turned-social-experiment.

My experience in the world of online dating brought with it some of the gross things I had anticipated, but it also opened even my know-it-all eyes to some positive encounters that I hadn't expected. I didn't sign up for it with any intention whatsoever of writing about it afterward. That thought occurred to me later, after I'd begun to receive some of these interesting messages from strangers. I've saved screenshots of parts of my experience, and I guess I perceive it as an archive. I'd like to share a narrative of my adventure, and reflect upon the lessons I've taken away from it. I've classified the strangers into distinct categories, which I'll explain along the way.

First, let's take a look at my own stats. Here's the data I entered for my own account on the app:

  

I tried to fill in the data as honestly as possible, but I also wanted to cast a large net and see what I got in return. So as not to isolate anyone or make myself a target for trolls, I refrained from plastering "I LOVE FEMINISM" all over the place. For equal opportunity, I checked the boxes for both men and women and I chose every option for "interested in" except for long-term relationships, because ew. And boy, did I yield some fascinating results. (I knew from the very beginning that I was never going to meet up with any of these people in person, because I have watched way too much television and I'm a little paranoid. So I felt totally safe to be as bold as possible from the safety of my keyboard.)

Out of over 200 messages through this three-day period, only two women messaged me (both were very kind and much less aggressive than the men). The rest were heterosexual cisgender men, and I would estimate that approximately 90% of them were white. The remaining 10% were composed of Hispanic or African American men, and I didn't attract a single Asian. (It is important to note that I did answer a question about the importance of dating within my own race at the beginning of the process, and I elected that race did not matter.)

Below are the images I uploaded to my profile, all five of which came from my Instagram. I am about 99% certain that this little sociological observation of mine wouldn't have happened had it not been for what I call the Pretty Principle. Basically, in a society as stuck on physical appearance as ours, there come certain privileges with possessing the physical characteristics that society tells us are most valuable (whiteness, thinness, blue eyes, blonde hair, clear skin, new clothes, etc.) Now, that's not to say that the people who possess those traits are doing so for the simple purpose of benefiting from them. They are oftentimes just simple genetic phenotypes over which the person had no control. But, that does not mean the person does not derive (intentionally or not) certain benefits from possessing them. I have blonde hair and blue eyes. I enjoy curling my hair and wearing makeup.

I like to take selfies when I feel pretty (as defined by myself, but influenced by the values of Western culture), and I have enough confidence that I do not need someone else to tell me I'm pretty; I already know it. These things being the case, I can't help but wonder: what might my online dating experience have been like if I had not uploaded these specific images? What if I had portrayed my online persona as someone else, without these highly-valued traits for which so many people swiped right? They never would've made it to my profile to read the things I typed (out of my heart and brain) if they hadn't initially seen the image of my face to lure them there in the first place. It's more than enough to make one ponder the unjust ramifications of physical appearance. But, this is what I look like, so this is the (privileged) experience I live; and as such, this is the online persona I translated from real life into cyberspace. I uploaded five photos, typed some stuff into the profile, and waited for the boys to come to me. I never sent a single message first. That is the Pretty Principle. (Also patriarchy that says boys are the ones to pursue girls, but whatevs.)

However, some guys were stumped by my being pretty and also having a brain:

I assume it's part of the dichotomous system in which our entire world operates. You know, the one where everyone is allowed to fit into only one box out of two? (Pretty OR intriguing, virgin OR whore, boy OR girl, democrat OR republican...) There are never more than two options, and a person can certainly never have qualities of both.

Compliments on my physical appearance have always been secondary in value for me. I just feel like I have much more control over my actions, my beliefs, and who I am as a person, than I do over which genes manifested themselves on my face. That's why I like it much more when someone tells me I'm smart or nice or brave, than when they say I'm pretty. (Again with the dichotomies.) So I couldn't help but chuckle at the guy who thought this was a good initial message, as if I would be tripping over my feet to reply:

And these guys, whose sheepishness was probably supposed to be part of their charm:

 

(I do hear it a lot, but that doesn't mean your self-deprecation is attractive, nor that you shouldn't have confidence in your statements.)

Some of the pickup lines I received actually made me laugh quite a bit. (I love corny pickup lines, but I didn't tell any of them that.)

This guy who totally appealed to my white girl love of FRIENDS. (I read his pickup line in Joey's voice in my head.)

And this dude whose match criteria included Rod Stewart:

But this one made me scratch my head the most, by far:

But then there were these boys who all basically decided we were perfect matches. (Spoiler: no, we're not.)

At least that one dude didn't like dichotomies, I guess. The third dude told me he was going to cry after I read his messages and didn't respond. (Because guilting a woman into chatting with you by sarcastically telling her you're going to cry is a healthy way to start any relationship, and it's definitely void of any kind of power struggle.)

Some guys took this whole online dating thing way too seriously:

"Personal defensive tools" or just being a douche? You decide.

Some of these men were pretty persistent and just would not leave me alone. I initially replied to some of them, then they wouldn't stop bothering me. But even if I didn't respond, some guys just kept sending me messages, like maybe I'd change my mind:

 

What is a woman supposed to take away from these kinds of interactions? I can deduce that these men have learned that complimenting a woman on her physical appearance right from the beginning will improve their chances with her. Just keep complimentin' until she likes something you said! (Pro tip: maybe you shouldn't say "I'm bored" in the first sentence.)

However, these two dudes were particularly creepy to me. They're good examples of why the "Block" button was invented. The first guy got upset with me because I responded to his message before I went to work (for a measly three hours!) but then I stopped replying to him while I was clocked in. GASP. That guy, in specific, really ticked me off. But the second man, he just kept messaging me with more and more disgusting, unsolicited detail and he was one of the reasons why I was very pleased to delete my account at the end of all this. What makes a person think they can talk to someone like this? I was clearly not responding. That means stop. If the person you're chatting with is responding with anything else besides positive feedback (like an affirmative yes), or not responding at all, that means stop. Seem a little rapey to anyone else, or is that just me?

This is why it's important to stress not that "no means no," but that "only yes means yes."

HE MESSAGED ME 46 TIMES. We're strangers. He's older than me. He has no right to harass me in such a way. LEAVE ME ALONE.And then there were these guys who were much more direct with what they really wanted: 

Sounds like I could star in my own Fifty Shades of Grey movie if I really wanted to. Thanks, Dudes of the Internet.

But, no, I'm not interested in trading any pics.

And, no, I do not want to meet you, either.

The last three were from the same guy.

These men are all much more of the age to be best buds with my father than to have any business messaging me on an online dating site:

I just turned 21.

I also noticed that mentioning anything at all in my profile about speaking or studying French got me some predictable responses:

This (American) guy's initial message was asking me how I am today in French. He even told me I am a "very interesting person :)".

This Wichitan asked me if I would like to dance with him, then he told me he loved me. (To be fair, he claimed he didn't know what it meant, and I sort of believed him.)

But this guy! He was French and he lived in France and I really just can't help myself when it comes to speaking French with the natives. All bets were off. I had a genuine conversation with him. (Take note, Internet creeps. Alyssa is a sucker for the foreigners.) He told me he thought I must have a pretty accent when I speak French. *fangirl squeal* (I don't; it sounds awful. But he doesn't know that.)

Harry Potter was also a hot topic of conversation. And to be honest, I could talk about Harry Potter with just about anyone.

 

I'm actually a little disappointed I didn't get any "mind if I slither-in" jokes, now that I think about it. I have higher expectations from the Potter fandom.

And, of course, the one section in my profile where I said "feminist" did draw me a little bit of attention. Though thankfully, it wasn't too terrible, and of course, I know better than to reply to Internet trolls on a dating app.

This was this dude's actual picture. A photo of him holding a gun with his face whited out. I wonder what his views of feminism are...

This adorably original troll.

This guy who told me he considers himself a part of the first wave of feminism because he considers it to have the least amount of "female entitlement"... whatever that means.

This dude who got a legitimate round of Emoji applause from me for his apparent understanding of boundaries and consent.

And this fella who was legitimately stumped by me and my response to the following question:

I wish real life interactions with other people had settings like this, where I could answer a question for myself, choose which answer I wanted the other person to have, rank it in order of its importance, and calculate a compatibility percentage as a result. For all types of relationships. Seems like that'd save a lot of wasted time.

And, out of all the messages I received, I did get to chat with at least two genuinely nice people:

I'm not sure exactly what I expected to get out of such an experience. Like I said, I didn't intend to write about it. But after about a day's worth of solicitation and pickup lines, I couldn't not do it. I got the attention I wanted, and then some. But after three days of exhaustion from having to keep all the different boys straight and making sure to reply to them all when they messaged me, I decided the online dating life is not for me.

My opinions of online dating haven't really changed from what they were before I did this. I've always thought of the idea of "falling in love" with someone on eHarmony or Match or even BlackPeopleMeet.com sounds ridiculous. If it works for you, then more power to you. But personally, I believe it's nothing more than a capitalistic opportunity for businesses to profit from during the Internet Age, due to everyone's desire to be loved. But maybe I'm just a cynic.

I was certainly not looking for romance, nor did I expect to find any. If anything, this little adventure of mine has just made me appreciate my free singledom so much more. A lesson I have learned in the last year of my life is that there is a profound difference between being "single and ready to mingle" and being single for yourself, by yourself. They're worlds apart and the implications are different for everyone. "Playing the field" for three days exhausted me. I just simply do not care enough to try to keep up superficial conversation with strangers about small talk and things that don't really matter to me. To me, the definition of being single is that your time isn't obligated to anyone else, and you don't need to spend every waking hour with your cell phone in your hand, and your eyes glued to it. Singledom is about independence and self-discovery, being resourceful for yourself and resilient in your own interpersonal growth. And I experienced absolutely none of that during this three-day period. I felt stress to keep people's lives straight, pressure to reply on time, and annoyance and the constant onslaught of online patriarchy I'd come to expect... Certainly not the self-sovereign feeling I've come to know and love.

So, on Sunday night, shortly before I turned out my bedside lamp, rolled over and went to bed, I deleted my account and uninstalled the app from my phone. I felt a little bit bad about it for the handful of dudes who were actually pretty nice. I was just going to disappear into cyberspace and they were never going to hear from me again. I imagined I could hear the sound of hearts breaking as I became an electronic ghost to them. We had a splendid three days, but I guess that's all it was meant to be. Some of the boys were from Wichita, and I hope I don't ever run into them face-to-face, or worse, have them in class next semester. Can you say A-W-K-W-A-R-D? Oh well. What's meant to be, will be. There is something to be learned from every experience in life, and I don't think this one was without value for me. That being said, I certainly don't think I will ever want or need to do it again. Once was enough. And if I can learn something, possibly help teach others, and even chat with some new friends along the way, then I call it a successful lesson in life.

So for now, that's the end of this love story. I've got more important things to do.