“This typical, insecure girl”: Young women’s stories about the importance of women’s body weight in a dating scenario

Abstract

In Iceland concerns have been raised about the unrealistic body ideals young women are presented with and their impact on self-esteem and body image. Quantitative research confirms these concerns and indeed it seems that women are unhappy with their body weight throughout their life course. At the same time, research into the cultural and social discourses that underpin and shape young women’s ideas about the relation between body weight and femininity, has been scant.

This article adopts a feminist poststructuralist framework to explore young women’s (18-24 years old) ideas about the importance of body weight when dating. This is based on research that used a story completion methodology to explore the sociocultural ideas participants draw on when making sense of the topic. In the research, participants were randomly presented with either of two different story stems and asked to complete the story. In the first story stem a fictional female character is on her way to a date and notices when she looks in the mirror that she has lost weight. The second story stem is identical apart from the female character noticing that she has gained weight. The participants were approached on social media where they were provided with a link that directed them to the task on SurveyMonkey. In total, 81 participants provided stories. Out of these, 73 stories could be used in this research. When participants had completed their stories they were asked two further questions about the story character and then asked to answer some demographic questions. The stories were analysed thematically. The analysis resulted in 4 themes: (1) the body should not disappoint (him), (2) looks facilitate/are an obstacle to good self-esteem, (3) the body and the self constitute tasks that must be worked on, (4) resistance to body ideals consists in accepting your body.

It was interesting that most of the participants seemed to assume that the story character was heterosexual and was on her way to meet a man. In the stories collected we saw clear signs of postfeminist discourses where women are presented as the entrepreneurs of their lives, free to make choices that shape their lives. In many of the stories it was assumed that it was the young woman’s responsibility to ensure that her body was of value so that she would not disappoint possible lovers and herself. It was also clear that slim bodies were deemed to be of more value than fat bodies. What came across clearly was that it was the young woman’s responsibility to work on her body and mind-set so that she could be “the best version of herself”. In the stories where the fictional character had gained weight, we detected much body shame and even repulsion towards the fat body. The thought of gaining weight was described as filling the character with much dread and anxiety. When the character had lost weight, she was described as excited about the date but also filled with dread because she anticipated that no matter how much weight she lost it would never be enough. A common description of the story character was that she was a typical anxious and insecure girl who needed to sort herself out; that is, the causes of her problems rested in herself. In contrast, some of the stories seemed to draw on feminist discourses criticising societal pressures on young women to be slim. This resistance was particularly apparent when the character had gained weight. The stories outlined how the story character decided to ignore the slim ideal so that she could accept and love her body. The paper provides an insight into the complex relationship young women have with often hostile socio-cultural ideas about the young female body and the constant surveillance and work those ideas demand from them. We call for a greater interrogation of cultural ideals that either blame young women or their peer group for their anxious relationships to their bodies. We also conclude that the storycompletion method is useful for collecting data. Despite some of the stories seemingly being written in jest they overall presented a rich and nuanced scenario. As such they provide clear insights into the cultural and social discourses participants have access to when writing their stories.