Mind Over Matter

Back in the spring, I spotted something that intrigued me.  This happens often—I’m easily intrigued.  But often with such things, I make a note of the idea, or tear that particular page out of that magazine, and then never think about it again.  This, however, has stuck with me.  It was an article I found about a lingerie company, Panache, which had done a campaign entitled “Modelledby Role Models.”  The campaign brought to light six women, all with impressive accomplishments, and used them to showcase Panache’s lingerie.

It was the unusual nature of this that caught my attention.  We’ve come to expect lingerie models to be perfect: long slender limbs, skin airbrushed to a bright glow, hair perfectly coiffed and face made up and suitably sultry.  There are a few companies beginning to move away from that, but for now, that is the majority of the ads that I see.  (Not that I go looking for that kind of thing.) 

Naturally, being a feminist and approving of anything that moves away from the objectification of female bodies and the upholding of an unrealistic ideal, I clicked the link.  When I clicked over, however, I had a little voice in my head saying, they’re not going to seem pretty to me at first.  Much as I liked the idea, I knew that part of my brain was going to look for the cellulite, the lines, the stray hairs, the rolls.  Just because a woman is smart and strong, doesn’t mean she’s beautiful.

Yet looking back through it now, I realize again what I realized then: I was wrong.  These women are beautiful, and I say that without reservation, without needing to muffle that voice of judgment in my head. 

What I’m wondering is, how much of this conclusion comes out of what I know about these women?  Is that voice of judgment silenced by the admiration I have for their work and their vision?  Or is that their passion and success somehow make them beautiful?  You may have come across this phenomenon in your life: you meet someone, and you look them up and down and think, meh, they’re all right.  But as you get to know them, their attraction becomes real, even physical.  Or maybe it happens in reverse, where you initially find someone very attractive, but as soon as they open their mouth…

We like to think of mind and body as separate things, but the fact is, they really aren’t.  We are all stuck in the body we were given, and it’s very clear from all the body-image struggles I’ve witnessed that our bodies have influence on our minds.  It’s nice to know that it works the other way, too.