In “The Invisible Corset,” author Lauren Geertsen describes culturally inherited beliefs that make people feel uncomfortable and restricted in their bodies, as if they wore the whalebone corsets of long ago. While the invisible corset affects everyone in our modern society, it specifically targets women through the beauty, diet, and cosmetic surgery industries.
The five main “strings” of the corset are fear, domination, disconnection, mechanization, and coercion. As long as we’re wearing the corset, we see our bodies as machines to control instead of wise beings to trust. A machine isn’t capable of communicating with nature, healing itself, or making intuitive choices. Only a living being can do that.
3 Signs of Body Disconnection
Here are three key ways in which the invisible corset makes women disconnect from their bodies.
1. We Prioritize Appearance Over Experience
When it comes to makeup, chronic dieting, highly uncomfortable but fashionable clothing, or cosmetic surgery, I often hear women say, “I’m doing it for me, because it makes me feel good.”
A key sign that you’re acting from body disconnection is making choices that make you feel physically uncomfortable while thinking that you’re doing it “for you.” In reality, these choices stem from body insecurity, not true self-expression. Start to break this pattern by asking yourself, “What physically feels better to me?”
For example, does it feel physically better to be able to rub your eyes because you’re not wearing mascara? Does it feel physically better not to have needles injecting fillers into your lips or forehead? Does it physically feel better not to get your pubic hair ripped out with hot wax? If you weren’t sold the lie that “beauty is pain,” what uncomfortable beauty practices would you ditch?
2. We Force Ourselves to Fit ‘Body Trends’
Women’s “ideal body shape” goes in and out of fashion, just like clothing. In the 1500s, women bound their breasts and shaved their eyebrows to create a childlike, nonsexual look. In the 1600s, voluptuous curves and cellulite enjoyed time in the limelight (look up Peter Paul Rubens’s art for examples). In the late 1800s, women achieved an extreme hourglass shape with corsets and bustles.
After decades of idealizing curve-free bodies, this extreme hourglass shape is trending again. Women now achieve this look through obsessive dieting, liposuction, fat injections into the butt and thighs, and uncomfortable compression undergarments.
None of these “body trends” is based on biology (with, perhaps, the exception of the softer bodies of the 1600s), since they aren’t natural to most women’s bodies and are obtained through artificial and unhealthy means. It’s a sign of profound body disconnection to make one’s body fit a temporary societal trend.
3. We Expect Consistency, Not Cycles, From Our Bodies
Women often believe that we should “go back” to our pre-baby bodies, lose the weight that we gained through menopause, or erase every single wrinkle from our faces. All these “should” beliefs result from the fallacy that the human body is supposed to act more like a machine than a being, remaining unchanged throughout a day, month, year, or life cycle.
Cycles are laws of nature, whereas unchanging consistency is what one expects from machines. Bodies, especially women’s bodies, aren’t meant to be static because of the major hormonal changes that we experience each month, and over the course of a lifetime.
Catch yourself the next time that you’re “shoulding” your body. Ask yourself: “Am I comparing my body to an unnatural standard of consistency? Or am I allowing my body to experience natural cycles?”
(simona pilolla 2/Shutterstock)A Revolution of Reconnection
In her TED Talk, Yeonmi Park shares how she escaped the dictatorship of North Korea. She explains that the reason that North Koreans haven’t started a revolution against the oppressive regime is partly because they don’t know the freedom from which they’ve been cut off.
“If you know you’re isolated, that means you’re not isolated. Not knowing is the true definition of isolation,” she stated. In the same way, because we don’t realize that we’re disconnected from our bodies, we’re truly disconnected.
When you’re reconnected to your body, the enchantment of the world seeps in through your skin, filling you up with softness, magic, and reverence. It’s time for women to cast off their invisible corsets so that they can reclaim their ability to communicate with nature.
I can’t wait to see a world where women are reconnected to their bodies, completely free of body insecurities and totally immune to the propaganda of the beauty industry. I can’t wait to see a world where women know their bodies not as machines but as wise and beloved soulmates.
“The Invisible Corset: Break Free of Beauty Culture and Embrace Your Radiant Self” is available online and at all major booksellers.
© Kelly Brogan MD. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Kelly Brogan MD. For more articles, sign up for the newsletter at www.KellyBroganMD.com