Warning: this post is about women being silenced, being made invisible. It includes discussion about rape.
A 1957 movie, The Incredible Shrinking Man follows Scott Carey, who after exposure to a strange radiation cloud and insecticide, begins to shrink relentlessly. As his size diminishes, everyday objects and creatures become life-threatening, forcing him into a struggle for survival and self-discovery.
An interesting premise for a sci-fi movie, not so much for real life, although the modern day lived reality certainly is life-threatening, a struggle for survival and a great big opening into self-discovery, that is, if you walk through that door.
With Ozempic Face in the news, I was looking back over time at the ‘societally acceptable’ size of women and how it has changed. For much of human history up until the end of the 19th Century full figured women were considered beautiful, healthy, and desirable. It wasn’t until the early 20th Century that thin was in. Before that, thin was a sign of poverty, a visual confirmation that there wasn’t any food in the pantry.
What started in the 20s with the flappers, and continued into the 60s with Twiggy, became the rage, tucking posters of the voluptuous Marilyn Monroe and a host of movie starlets into the dark corners of history’s closet.
The acceptable standard has leaned more and more ‘thin is in’ since then. Over the years, there hasn’t been a swing of the pendulum, tipping back towards a healthier, more robust female. What’s desirable has gotten thinner and thinner, moving beyond the incredible shrinking woman to invisibility.
There was another movie, The Invisible Man, that comes to mind. Interesting that all those movies were always about a man. Actually, not interesting or surprising, but it’s definitely a story for another day. Seems it’s always been about the guys, including the way women are being programmed to shrink while men are being taught to assert their power.
The programming has been non-stop, fashion models, movie stars, influencers, anyone who is anyone. Put the images out there and like lemmings stepping off a cliff, we simply accept it, try to emulate it, kill ourselves doing it, are rejected (by ourselves and others) when we don’t attain it, and even if we do succeed, we try to outdo what we’ve already done by dropping another pound, and then another. It’s never enough.
And no surprise, most men aren’t much help here. And yes, I say most men, because if it wasn’t most men, we wouldn’t be having this discussion right now. Male egos seem to be focused on their performance for the guys, in finding ways to prove their manhood, to get the girl, and spend little time thinking about the consequences of what they are doing, let alone the cost that is paid by women trying to force their bodies to meet a standard that is not natural to them. If most men were helpful, the moment one of them said or did something out of line, the moment they did something harmful to anyone, they’d step in and police themselves. They don’t.
What’s really funny, not haha funny, but you know, off, is that the men who demand this ‘thin is in’ ideal, who aren’t interested in womanhood, preferring girlish figures, aren’t necessarily rock stars, male models, actor-ish themselves. In fact, very few are. Hmmm … girlish figures. Is anyone surprised by the high incidence of pedophiles in our world?
So, this got me thinking. Yeah, I know that’s dangerous.
Why would one gender of our species want the other gender to shrink, to be made invisible? What is going on that brings that sort of hate to the surface? What level of mother wounds do so many men hold within them, that abuse is sanctioned, that they truly don’t care if the embodied source of life is demeaned, is raped and totally destroyed. if not physically, mentally and emotionally.
The programming has been intense and targeted. Have women been programmed to hate ourselves, to hate our body’s natural inclinations towards a fuller figure, to destroy our health in order to fit into an ever-decreasing image? Does that hate compel us to shrink, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually too? Does the male world genuinely desire invisible women, or have they been so completely programmed they have no idea what the consequences of their actions cannot but be? Has it been going on so long now, that it is ingrained, compliance built right in?
This is the generation of the incredible shrinking woman, the first gen to wake up to the fact that forces are in play to finish the job. They want us invisible, invisible until we are needed to put meat on the table or be the meat ourselves, until the child cries out in the middle of the night, until an additional paycheck is required, or nursing our lord and master is on the menu. Then we are welcome to show up once again. Is anyone shocked so many women are walking away from this man’s world?
I’ve been dumbfounded by that Snapchat message sent by one of the Cornell 57. When offered free pu$$y upstairs the response was, ‘I hope it’s not another fatty’. They had done this before. How many times? Lots. It’s been done for eons. If not this same group of guys, others. I don’t know one woman who hasn’t dealt with sexual assault in one way of another. My first experience was when I was 10. I was one of the lucky ones. It taught me to be wary, to pay attention, to never take anyone for granted. It only took my innocence, not my body or my life.
We have been programmed to be raped and to be quiet about it, to be thin and beautiful for our rapists, and afterwards to shrink back into invisibility. They’ll still rape us if we are fat, but they’ll complain about it. After all, they are entitled to the accepted standard.
Jane Doe’s family is being sent death threats. They have been swatted, an armed swat team knocking on their door, a situation that could have resulted in immense harm. Why? To silence them. To remind them of their place in the world, to make them shrink, to make them invisible until those moments when it is necessary for them to be seen … and if you think about it, that is really not all that often in a man’s world.
Women from the 20th and now 21st Centuries are the product of intentional programming. Men too, but their programming is of a totally different nature. Look at the prevalence of the manosphere. They are programming men to be takers, not protectors, users and abusers, and it makes me sick to my heart. The dangerous thing about programming is we rarely see it because it runs undercover. It is insidious, built right into the storyline as a given. Before we recognize what it is doing, it is already embedded in how the world works.
It’s not. Or at least, it doesn’t have to be.
Rape is not about sex. It has never been about confusion over consent. Every person understands what consent is. Take anything important from those 57 frat boys and they’ll immediately show you they understand, have always understood. Conversations about consent just pollute the waters and just maybe that is the intent. Keep it on he said, she said, and the status quo wins. It wins because it was programmed that way, not because the woman is never believed, but because no one really cares about women.
In this world, women are accessories. It was never about consent, it was always about power, the power to make those deemed lesser shrink, the power to remind them that they best stay invisible.
There is only one way to break the spell, to free ourselves from the programming and that is to identify the bad code, and its damning repercussions, and refuse to let it determine who we are and how we live in the world.
This is not something women alone will likely do. Men need to stand up too, but women alone could start the landslide. It would require a general strike: no more sex, no more housework, no more bringing home a paycheck, no more emotional support, a world without women. It may come to that. We won’t break the code by asking nicely.
We just have to ask ourselves, all of us, men and women, “How invisible are we willing for women to be and will anything worth saving be left if we let it run its course?”
