apples to apples. | unpunctuated life

The most recent issue of Woman’s Day magazine has an article called “Love Your Body (and Your Flaws, Too!). While this type of article is far from uncommon in magazines geared toward women, I was surprised by one suggestion:

“If you can’t quit playing the ‘Do I look as good as…?’ game, at least compare apples with apples, advises Dr. Mintz [a professor of psychology at the University of Florida Gainsville]. Avoid ‘upward’ comparison to celebrities (who could ever look like Angelina Jolie?). Focus more on realistic women, like your neighbor or other moms at the supermarket and the way they take care of themselves. ‘When you change your comparison standard to one that’s more real, you’ll find that you measure up a whole lot better than you thought,’ says Dr. Mintz.”

I have to say, I take issue with this advice. It seems like everything else I’ve read encourages women not to compare themselves to anyone at all! I know I, for one, struggle with the playing the comparison game, but I always try to remind myself that it’s useless. Someone is always going to have prettier hair than I do, wear better looking clothes, and run faster, but those are likely never to be the same person. Maybe I’m just unusual in my unconcern with celebrity styles and looks, but at least personally, the girl next door is always going to inspire more jealousy for me than Angelina Jolie.

I learned a great lesson about jealous comparisons in high school. One of my friends came by one afternoon in tears, upset about a physics grade. As I hugged her and tried to make her feel better, she exclaimed, “I’m so jealous of how easily school comes to you! I feel like I work so hard and can never make as good grades as you do.” I was stunned, because I had often been jealous of how beautiful and graceful this particular friend was. The take home from that experience for me was that jealousy is wasted energy. Just be you, because there’s likely someone out there who is jealous of you over something that may be entirely unexpected to you.

I think social media outlets have also had a negative impact on our tendency to compare. People tend to put their best face forward on the internet, and it’s easy to think, “Well, so-and-so ALWAYS has a good time and posts the cutest pictures on Facebook and has such a put-together house on Pinterest. I’ll never measure up to her.” But there are almost certainly things that so-and-so struggles with that might come naturally to you. We are all created differently, with distinct talents and personalities and looks, none of which is inherently more valid or more desirable than any other.

So I have to say I’m stunned to read a female professor of psychology suggesting that you compare yourself to other women. I guess I can somewhat understand that she’s encouraging us to have realistic expectations of ourselves, but I think that can be done without comparing outwardly. Instead, why not compare your current attributes to where you’ve been in the past? If you’ve made it a goal to say, type faster, why not measure your speed and revel in how much you’ve improved? Why do you need to go find out how fast Susie Q types in order to feel good about yourself?

What do you think? Am I over-reacting or misinterpreting the suggestion? Do you struggle with making comparisons?

michelle

I can see both sides of this. I totally agree with you that comparing ourselves to ANYONE isn’t a good path. I also agree that it’s much easier for me to be jealous of actual real people in my life than celebrities. Celebrities are mythical anyway. However I can look at the advice given above by the professor and I can see how if I were to look at, say my neighbor… and ask myself, “she lives a very similar life to me. What does she do in her day that allows her to ____________?” I can see how that would put me in a more reflective mode and allow me to possibly adopt some changes in my life that would allow me to do/be/have more of what I want in my life. I guess it comes down to our attitude in making comparisons. I have a best friend who is an incredible athlete. And when I compare my athletic prowess with her it can be depressing. However in January I looked at her in terms of WHAT was SHE doing that allowed her to be a great athlete? You know what? She’s training 3-4 hours a day. I’m unwilling to put in that much time. However I was willing to put up MORE time. And I’ve seen big time increases in my athleticism. So I have found that looking at what other people are doing and deciding if it’s worth the time and effort in my own life has been a good thing. BUT… I didn’t have the spirit of jealousy or ill will toward my friend. I think that’s the big thing to watch for.
- http://unpunctuatedlife.com/ Laura Lindeman
  
  It’s a great point that comparisons don’t have to inspire jealousy. Thanks for your well-thought out comment!
Deborah Levine

One other thing about celebrities is that what we see in photos has been photoshopped and what we see in movies is the result of extreme amounts of makeup and hair care just before every shot. So in that regard i think the person was right. when i look at other women my age around me i feel that I stack up pretty well.And then have you ever seen Oprah without makeup? I’m not being snarky. She admits it too. She looks pretty rough. All that being said, I know what you mean about why compare yourself to anyone at all but it’s hard not to. On days that I feel bad about myself I just try not to look in the mirror because I understand that what I see when I look at myself is not at all what other people see.
TheGirlintheAfternoon

“If you can’t quit playing the ‘Do I look as good as…?’ game, at least
compare apples with apples, advises Dr. Mintz [a professor of psychology
at the University of Florida Gainsville].

Obviously I’m getting this quote without the rest of the article, but in the first part of the sentence (“If you can’t quit playing…”) it seems like she or he is implying that it’s not good to play that game at all, but if you have to do it, at least focus on more reasonable comparisons – which seems like a good first step, tbh.

This maybe isn’t the best thing to say, lol, but I became much more comfortable with certain parts of my body after moving to UA. Part of that was my growing immersion in the fat acceptance movement, but also? It was looking at and comparing myself to the types of bodies on this campus that wore running shorts every day. My legs look better than some and worse than some (realizing, of course, that “better” and “worse” are variable standards, usually based on really messed up standards of beauty) and just about the same as many, and it was incredibly freeing – I wear shorts almost every day now! So in that sense, comparing myself to others really helped me.