What To Do When Your Friends Are Brainwashed

I'm reposting this from www.thedemoiselles.com, an article written by Lindsay. It's full of wonderful tips on how to subtly nudge your friends when they've turned into zombies (this is what my professor calls people who just goes and follows the bandwagon), getting sucked into all the hype/principles the media create. :D

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Everyone is “guilty “of telling at least one off-color joke in their lives. Everyone has poked fun at a friend or relative (hopefully in good nature). We’ve all participated in gentle jesting at the expense of others – whether we know them or not.

The line is blurry when it comes to “good-natured” when we start projecting our jests onto strangers. By-passers, friend-of-a-friends, that one girl from high school… enemies… This gets particularly difficult when you’re surrounded by your hilarious, quick-witted, love-’em-to-death friends and family.

This is something that I’ve been doing some considerable thinking on lately. I constantly have to remind myself that the people I interact with on a daily basis… don’t spend 3+ hours of their day reading studies on body image and its connections to advertising and women’s issues.

Because beauty ideals have been promoted via advertising for decades, even our parents have the ideas of “perfection” programmed into their minds. In fact, if it weren’t for our parents’ generation, would the entire anti-aging industry even be able to survive? I don’t think so.

But I digress… What happens when you begin to notice the injustice of gender-focused advertising and beauty ideals… but your friends don’t? You start to notice each time they point out not just their own flaws, but other people’s. You’ll notice, too, that most of the time – they don’t even notice. In fact, they often point out others’ flaws in a compliment.

“She’s so gorgeous! Man, 10 more pounds and she could be a movie star.”

“Ohh, she looks so pretty – too bad she had a breakout on her chin.”

“That dress is lovely, if only it didn’t make her thighs look so big.”

All good-natured, all generally positive – to the brainwashed ear. Those of us who have been woken up in terms of meta-messages know that all of the “conditional” elements of these “compliments” are directly related to beauty standards.

This technically qualifies as “bullying” – something that has been brought into the public eye a bit more lately. The strange thing about this brand of bullying, however, is that it’s totally indirect. It’s a product of media brainwashing that has been occurring for years.

So what do you do when your friends are brainwashed? You don’t want to smack them in the face with the body image & media standard bible, but you want to let them know that the girl on the corner isbeautiful in that dress, and the dress is lovely – and so are her thighs. Skin breaks out – it’s what it does! – and that woman is still stunning, regardless. Those ten pounds make that women as gorgeous as she is, she doesn’t need to do anything.

So how do you approach it without sounding like a crazy conspiracy-theorist, or offending those who are closest to you? Here are some tips that I’ve picked up along the way:

• Try not to embarrass them or make them feel badly for what they’ve said – that will make them feel awkward, and they may not be ready to listen to what you’re saying.
• When someone says something negative about someone else’s “imperfect” body – gently counter the statement, and a little minor self-deprecation may help to get the point across. “Hmm… I think her skin is lovely! I broke out last week on my forehead, it was lame but I still looked damn good. [insert cheeky smile] She’s super hot!”
• Don’t jump extremes! Leave the “At least she’s not _____”!” alone, and try to encourage appreciation of people’s features – regardless of what their “flaw” is.
• Don’t forget those who are closest to you: When your friends point out their own flaws, reinforce your position on self-love by negating their self-criticism and telling them that they’re still lovely.
• State your intention as your own personal project – “You know… I’m going to try to start appreciation people’s bodies however they look. Everyone is gorgeous! What do you guys think?” This takes the pressure off your friends and, because they know your intentions, it won’t be a surprise when you point out their comments in the future.