03/02/2022
Visibility *feels* like the highest form of power when your most prized validation comes from being looked at. But the truth is, your visibility doesn't reflect -- or ensure -- your value.
Still, not fitting young, thin beauty ideals or being otherwise “unacceptably visible” can mean you're subject to discrimination and prejudice in employment, leadership and other opportunities, and generally less kindness from strangers. We are all responsible for uprooting these prejudices from our own minds and pushing back when we see unconscious bias at play in our own circles of influence.
For those who aren't actually experiencing (or at risk of experiencing) discrimination that affects your employment, housing, well-being, and other significant parts of your life, please consider that losing your visibility in this objectifying culture might not be as bad as you fear.
Think of your invisibility as a release from a faulty, s*xist value system. It is a forced removal from the endless game of searching for scraps of power in an objectifying culture that was never fully satisfied with your beauty or s*x appeal, and ensured you weren't either, despite all your efforts.
Your invisibility is an invitation to a better, more empowering way of valuing yourself.
Rather than relying on others -- including strangers and onlookers whose view of you is meaningless -- to reflect your supposed value back to you in their approval, your self-worth can become innate, self-directed, and a reflection of you as a whole, thinking, feeling, doing person.
You are more than a body and you always have been, whether or not others choose to see you that way, or see you at all. When you can see more -- in yourself and others -- you can be more.
For more body image inspo from Lexie & Lindsay Kite, PhD, read More Than a Body (available in hard copy, audiobook, and ebook anywhere books are sold here: https://linktr.ee/beauty_redefined) and find more resources at that link or morethanabody.org.
