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Women's power has historically been proscribed from the high places in government, the economy and religion. We live in a world of haves and have-nots, where each person is above some people and below others on a pyramid that has very little room at the top.  Women have been at the base of that pyramid worldwide for many millennia.

Still today most cultural symbols of power are male--from political heads of state to multinational corporate executives to high-ranking clergy to the very images of divinity itself. This is changing very slowly in some Western societies, but these changes have their price.

We are taught in families, schools, on the streets; in children's games, on television, in commercials, with dolls and toys that a girl’s/woman’s power can be primarily expressed in 3 ways: her physical appearance (especially her heterosexual appeal, body shape and size), motherhood, and food.

Body Size and Shape 

In this most recent women's movement (women's liberation movements go back to women's enslavement thousands of years ago) the struggle to embrace wider circles of power beyond these has been a violent and confusing one and has consistently come at the price of our “permitted” body size.  The more power we exert in traditionally male fields, the thinner we must be (look at the “executive look” or the expected size of female senators, etc.)  Anorexia and bulimia are most prevalent in areas where the successful or powerful woman has her body on display, such as in the Olympic and professional sports, modeling and entertainment industries.

For young women in particular, power is vied for on the basis of appearance, social skills, poise and "popularity"--in other words, a girl can "win" over other girls by getting more male attention.  When a girl accepts the parameters that establish the hierarchy between groups (that boys are more important and that male criteria for girls--poise, attractiveness, etc.-- must be met) she is learning to deny her own personal power.

Food

Women have almost always, cross-culturally, wielded power over food.  Even in hunting and gathering societies, it was the women gatherers that provided daily sustenance for their clans, where the hunter's provisions were more ceremonial and glorified than substantive in nature. In today's societies, it is still primarily the women who do the gathering (shopping), preparing, cooking, and serving the food.  Furthermore, since the industrial revolution, having power over food has taken on more and more significance.  It has become (more than before) the power to give or withhold sustenance and nurture--something all human beings, particularly children, need for their physical and emotional survival.

Motherhood

Why are our female children expected to welcome their newly blossoming womanhood with a diet?  Why does our society rage against fat, especially fat women? How much more profound a message can we give to our daughters than to tell them their appetites must be reigned in, their bodies submitted to external measures of acceptability, while we try to simultaneously tell them their choices in life are unlimited?

Since most other avenues to power had been blocked, the power over food and nurturance has tended to be overused, abused, and clung to by women for many generations. The stereotypical fill-in-blank (Jewish, Italian) mother is famous for such uses and abuses.  Forced overfeeding, use of food as reward or enticement, withholding of food as punishment, are all familiar methods to most of us.  And it is usually the mother that introduces her daughter to the world of dieting.

This is not out of cruelty (though dieting is akin to daily starvation and causes the same symptoms) but because mother’s know that their daughters’ survival may well depend on their body size and appearance.  It is a paradox that mothers in our society are placed in – one that needs to be questioned and challenged. We women are starving ourselves, starving our children and loved ones, gorging ourselves, gorging our children and loved ones, alternating between starving and gorging, purging, obsessing, and all the while hating, pounding and wanting to remove that which makes us female: our bodies, our curves, our pear-shaped selves.

A New Approach to Power

Women today, while asserting one need, are often (unconsciously) denying another.  Why is it that to "succeed" in so many fields --so many women feel they must take up less space (get thinner)?  I see this image of women climbing higher and higher up the ladder to “success” and getting thinner and thinner, until the most "powerful" women eventually disappear into thin air.

There is another solution, but it is more painful.  And that is to let go of the power over food in exchange for new forms of power. This means no more dieting or putting others on diets, no more using or abusing self or others with food.  Letting go of our compulsive relationship to food and our obsessive relationships to our bodies just might free us up do make an impact on the world.

To feel entitled to take up space, to take our place in the world and share power equally with men, we must first learn to give up this drive to "trade off" one need for another.  We must gradually, haltingly, but persistently lay claim to each and every human right, one after the other.  To do this, we must make use of the greatest source of strength and power we have: each other.
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