Mia Freedman: The gaslighting of women. By women.

Listen to this story being read by Mia Freedman, here.

Last year, Amy Schumer got liposuction. A famous woman having cosmetic surgery is neither unusual nor surprising; the glare of celebrity is brutal on women's weight.

The shocking part is that she admitted it.

Schumer first mentioned it casually on Instagram at the end of 2021 but a few months ago, she showed off the results by posting two photos of herself in a swimsuit.

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The public reaction was swift. Some women were angry because they felt betrayed. Schumer has always used her comedy to skewer the way beauty standards oppress women. And now she's succumbed to those same shitty standards? 

They were aghast that a feminist pop culture icon would conform to the pressure to be skinnier. If Amy Schumer has to go under the knife to feel good, what does it mean for the rest of us?

But I actually think it’s subversive. Not the surgery but the disclosure. I think it’s generous whenever a woman, especially a famous one, is honest about what it actually requires to look a certain way. What you have to give up or endure or commit to. All the pain and inconvenience and expense and time.

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It’s a bullshit expectation that women must look permanently young and thin and beautiful but we must never be seen to be trying to do any of these things. It must be effortless. Because a woman who strives to change her appearance is… thirsty. Pathetic. Desperate.

So isn’t it a good thing for women when other women are able to tell the truth? When we stop having to pretend that conforming to oppressive beauty standards is easy?

*****

This is something I believe: any choice a woman makes about her face or body is no one else’s business.

This is something I know: if you’re a famous woman, any choice you make is invariably/somehow everyone’s business - to speculate about, to comment on and to compare themselves to. It may not be fair but it’s true.

And this is something I’m uncertain about: what responsibility does a famous woman have to other women to be transparent about her choices?

The answer, of course, should be none. Any medical or cosmetic procedure a woman has should be a private matter.

From IVF, egg donation, abortion or surrogacy to weight loss surgery, facelifts, Botox, breast implants, fillers and breast reduction... no woman should be forced to disclose any of these things to anyone if she doesn’t want to. 

And yet.

When you’re famous - or even when you just have a social media account - what happens when your personal choice is visible to the world? What happens when you’re pregnant at 48 or your lips are a different shape or your size has drastically changed?

What happens when people ask questions?

Do you owe strangers the truth?

I am probably the wrong person to answer these questions because I've chosen to share some very private things in my life. Miscarriage, abortion, infertility, my marriage breakdown, my nervous breakdown, anxiety. The thing is though, I've only ever written and spoken about these things in a controlled way at the time of my choosing, often many years later. None of these things were visible from the outside and I'm not famous.

When a famous woman's appearance changes, she doesn't have the luxury of time, perspective or control because the media speculation comes immediately. How did you lose all that weight? Have you had your lips done? Did you use donor eggs?

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Back in the 90s, when the only way famous people could communicate with the public was via magazine interviews, the celebrity profile meant something.

And for women, it always went like this.

The journalist would meet the actress / model / pop star at a restaurant and would duly note that she ordered an ostentatiously large meal  - usually a burger and fries with a glass or two of wine -  and wolfed it all down.  

When asked about how she maintains her ‘slender figure’ (seriously, the same tired questions were asked of every famous woman), she would carefully reach for more fries and confess, “I never have time to exercise and the gym bores me but I’m always running around after a toddler so that’s my workout!”

I once read an interview with Sharon Stone where she earnestly explained that she stayed sample-size slim by "laughing a lot and getting as much fresh air as I can”.

Similarly, a well-known actress was once asked pointedly by a journalist in a magazine cover story about how she looks so young and she insisted she was afraid of needles and just used lots of sunscreen.

At the time, this made women who were around the same age as this celebrity wild with rage.

Ask a Gen X woman about this and she will tell you immediately who the ‘sunscreen’ actress is. It is etched indelibly in our brains and many are still mad about it.

It made women angry because it felt like gaslighting. We could see with our own eyes that this woman's face looked objectively very, very different to a few years prior.

And to be clear: it's widely accepted that many women - famous and not - have Botox and fillers and other cosmetic procedures and we are well past the point of judgment about that. You do you.

But by denying it and pretending it's simply due to sunscreen, it's a form of gaslighting: denying an objective, visible truth in a way that makes someone feel crazy. Or, in the case of women, makes us feel deeply inadequate. 'I use sunscreen so why does she look half my age?' we think. 'What's wrong with me?'

*****

The effects of gaslighting on women by other women is not just about looks.

Another mainstay of 90s magazine culture was the ‘miracle baby’ story. Remember those?

For decades, an actress, model or popstar would announce her happy pregnancy news, often for payment, in splashy words and pictures on the pages of a magazine. 

What changed in the 90s though, is reproductive technology. IVF and egg donation now made it possible for women to have babies for way longer and there were regular stories of celebrities in their mid to late forties and even early fifties having ‘miracle pregnancies’ at an age when previous generations of women were becoming grandmothers. 

This is despite science telling us that female fertility declines steeply 35 and is mostly done by 40  - with some rare exceptions.

If you looked at women’s magazines, however, you'd think that conceiving in middle age  was both common and easy. 

In the early 2000s, gynecologists and obstetricians began to speak out. They were frustrated with this celebrity miracle narrative, pointing out that they knew exactly how these women were becoming pregnant and it was thanks to intervention not miracles.

My own obstetrician told me at the time, "Every day I get distressed women wondering why Halle Berry could get pregnant at 47 and Janet Jackson at 50, why couldn’t they?'

The epidemic of fertility gas-lighting back in the 90s and 2000s was a major problem in terms of disinformation because it encouraged a generation of women to think you could have a baby naturally at almost any age.

So was it the fault of those women for not disclosing how they became pregnant?

I still don't know how I feel about this.

If a woman chooses to have fertility treatment or use a surrogate, is it anyone’s business? Of course not. But when you’re famous, your choices impact other women because they look at you and make assumptions about their own lives and bodies. In the absence of the truth - either by omission or deliberate disinformation (‘miracles’ ‘sunscreen’ etc) - other women will either feel terrible about themselves ('where’s my miracle?') or make terrible choices based on a misconception ('I have plenty of time to wait until I start a family'). Or both.

That’s a lot of responsibility for an individual famous woman to carry. And probably not something she signed up for when she decided to become an actress or a singer.

*****

In 2022, the new frontier of alleged medical gaslighting appears to be weight. With a number of very famous women losing vast amounts of weight, there's rampant speculation about how they did it.

Some of these women have reluctantly disclosed a few details about exercise or lifestyle changes that they’ve made while refusing to be drawn on details. Others have been more overt about their diet and exercise programs.

From the photos they choose to share with their followers on social media, it’s clear that these women are experiencing profound shifts in the way they feel about their bodies, posting shots that clearly show their changed shape. This is their absolute right and something which tabloids like to describe as “flaunting her new body”.

But is being in the world 'flaunting'? Is posting a shot where your body is visible 'flaunting'? And does anyone have the right to know how someone else has lost weight? The answer to both of those questions is no. 

The fact is that we may never know how they lost so much weight. Not unless they choose to tell us and not unless what they tell us is the truth. The question is: do they owe that to us, to strangers who know nothing of their personal choices around their health or their appearance?

I have one friend who is exasperated and distressed by the thought that famous women might be hiding the fact they’ve had weight loss surgery.

"It’s like medical gas-lighting," she insists. "I’m trying to lose weight and I’m doing all the things you’re supposed to do like eating healthy and exercising more and but I just can’t shift it. If other women are having surgery and saying it's , then I want to weep because I’ve been feeling like I’m a total failure and there’s something wrong with me that I can’t lose weight like they have."

Are they lying about it though? Maybe they haven’t had surgery. Or maybe they’re just exercising their right to privacy in a very public life.

Feature Image: Getty.

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