The Race to the Ideal

Running in Central Park over the weekend got me thinking about female runners. With so many athletes in New York City for the upcoming marathon next weekend, it is hard to miss the overt slenderness that comes with the “ideal” runner’s body: tall, lanky, waif-like, with less than an ounce of body fat. These bodies are not the typical athletic type. They don’t have broad shoulders or an obvious muscular build. They are just really skinny. Runners have an incentive to lose every pound, particularly long distance runners: For every pound lost, one can run 2 seconds faster (Note: I learned this in high school from a Runner’s World Magazine article). 2 seconds for 26 miles means almost a minute per pound, which could mean the difference between winning and losing the race.

There seems, therefore, to be an inherent connection between female athletes and the body “ideal” that has been perpetuated by the media. In the same way that Karen Dill presents the paradoxical stereotypes, athleticism and a waif-like image of a woman in need of being taken care of can be seen through the female athlete (Akbari, 10/20). The woman as an athlete is strong and fast, impressive at her trade. But after the race she can dress herself like a model and appear to be the “perfect” woman any man would want. She has succeeded in achieving the Cinderella myth (Wykes, 210). Women are held to body standards that are beyond what we conceive as possible. As Maggie Wykes describes, “the female body is a spectacle, both something to be looked at, whether real or mediated, and to be looked through in the search for feminine identity” (206). Women should be healthy, fit, agile, and beautiful; all adjectives that have transformed to be synonymous with slender. The combination of athletic success, “sexual success and financial success are … modeled on a certain body image” (Wykes, 212). Women must covertly work their way to the top of any field they wish to be a part of, using their “feminine wiles” and beauty to be truly successful. The problem with this expectation is there is a further stigma attached to being obsessive about attaining these ideals – women should not starve themselves or “work out like a crazy person,” they should just embody the ideal image. Runners are able to use their sport as a disguise. They train for the race, not the image, and therefore can continue their extreme ways of “hyperactive exercise, slow eating, and obsession with food” (Wykes, 218) all in the quest of getting a better time and training run the next day.

Physical fitness is often used as a means of relieving stress and discomfort that people feel on any given day. But my question is, what is the source of this stress? Is it due to constantly trying to be perfect; the perfect mom, wife, sister, daughter, friend, student, teacher, employee, boss? Do we find perfection through our own expectations, or those imposed upon us by the media and other outside forces? Diane Israel’s film, Beauty Mark: Body Image & the Race for Perfection seems to ask some of these similar questions of herself and the people surrounding her. Israel, like I suspect many runners and athletes do, used her sport in order to conceal the problems of her own image problems. Losing weight in the name of gaining a better time, winning a triathlon or a marathon was acceptable to the people in her life. She was an athlete, not an anorexic. But the source of her problems came more through an ambition to control her life. She felt unfit and unhealthy, and therefore ugly if she ate normally and did not exercise three times a day. She had to be superhuman to feel worthy of her own humanity. She therefore fell to the pressure that every woman begins to feel: “it [doesn’t] matter if you [are] healthy, exercise regularly, and [aren’t] overweight,” if you had a little, natural fat on your body “you would be dismissed as slothful and lacking moral fiber and self-respect, not to mention lazy, self-indulgent, insufficiently vigorous, lacking control, sedentary, and old” (Douglas, 261). Israel felt all these things about herself if she didn’t follow her strict exercise and eating plan just so. She, by the influence of other sources throughout her life, is made to feel less than human when her routine is not followed.

So through looking at these readings, film, and upcoming athletic event, are athletes disguised anorexics? Are they the only people able to use their disorder for “good,” making a living directly from their ability to over exercise and under eat? All people, ultimately, want to be accepted. It seems that lately the only way to be accepted is to subscribe to the stereotypes and expectations that are set forth by the media to achieve a socially acceptable and increasingly expected body type.


Works Cited:
Akbari, Anna. Race, Gender, Body Image and the Media, Beauty and the Body in an Image Society. 194 Mercer Street 210, New York University, New York, NY. 20 October 2010.

Dill, Karen E. How Fantasy Becomes Reality: Seeing Through Media Influence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 88-140.

Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1995. 245-268.

Israel, Diane. Beauty Mark: Body Image & the Race for Perfection. Perf. Diane, Israel. She-Art Production: 2008, Film.

Wykes, Maggie and Barrie Gunter. The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill. London: SAGE Publications Ltd., 2005. 94-221.