New Year, New You … True You?: Reconstructing Identities and Cultural Standards

Welcome to 2019, everyone. With the ushering in of a new year comes the seemingly incessant need for a new “resolution.” But is it really a need? Or are we dealing, rather, with a set of societal norms and the pressure we feel to conform to them? It’s a pressure that’s hard to escape. We’re annually inundated with questions of a New Year’s resolution by strangers and loved ones alike. What, I must ask, are we resolving to do? The intention behind the concept of a “new start” seems hard to argue with. Who would disagree with a person’s desire to better themselves? The bigger question, however, seems to situate itself in the motivation behind this desire. How are we bettering ourselves, and for whom?

So many of these New Year’s resolutions, particularly for women, are centered in a reformation of one’s physicality. They manifest as a need to reconstruct one’s body to fit into the societal standards of beauty women are forever subject to: hourglass figures, clear and wrinkle-free skin, healthy diets, perfectly coiffed hair, etc. The list is suffocating and exhausting, consistently reinforced by deals on gym memberships, diet campaigns, and pictures of skinny, picturesquely-happy women which circulate on social media in an internet plague that has no cure except, of course, to commit to a “new you.” Or, perhaps more aptly, to commit yourself to these norms.

At the forefront of this campaign toward new-year body goals is the WeightWatchers Company. Their homepage currently features the tagline “New Year, Brand New You!” over a series of articles which all center around perhaps the most popular New Year’s resolution: losing weight. One of these articles, Sally Hammond’s “5 Steps to a Workable New Year’s Resolution,” declares “Who hasn’t spent a New Year’s Eve resolving to be svelte by spring? Then by mid-February, you’ve sold your rowing machine and bought a new couch.” As Hammond suggests, the resolve to lose weight at the beginning of a new year is an immensely popular one. The rhetorical question “who hasn’t” encourages us to feel like part of a universal desiring group. Also significant is the subtle shame imbedded in her words for those who fall behind on their weight loss goals. The rowing machine transforming into a couch attaches failure to abide by the Hammond’s guidelines to laziness and diminishing motivation. Her language makes explicitly clear the pressure placed on weight loss: commit and trim down like everyone else or admit to laziness, to societal representations of couch potatoes and other undesirables.

 Her rhetoric also attaches to the well-known concept that bodies change with the seasons. A “winter,” aka heavier, body should melt away with the snow. A summer, aka “swimsuit” or “beach,” body is firm, toned, and the only one that can be attractive when displayed to the masses. Winter bodies need not attend. Everyone desires to be “svelte by spring.”

While Hammond’s subtle employment of group think and body norms may disturb us after closer inspection, what’s especially troubling is her first step to making this year “successful.” The first of Hammond’s steps? “Making your resolutions public … Share them [your weight loss goals] with one or more people so they can help you stay on track,” Hammond insists. In other words, make your body someone else’s business. Directly subject yourself to these societal pressures. Involve people you communicate with or see often in the reconstruction of your physicality. After all, they are most likely dealing with the same struggle. Aren’t we all? Who hasn’t?

This article brings our attention back to the resolutions we make to ourselves  society at the start of every year, and the pressures/ideals that surround these commitments to reformation. With every “what’s your New Year’s resolution” we encounter, there is also an implicit suggestion that we are falling short and need a “resolution” to do better; who we are is not good enough, society demands more from us. The failure to commit to a resolution is painted as a failure to commit to the betterment of oneself. Yet the failure to complete a resolution creates a vicious cycle, projecting the pressure of these resolutions into a new year. Even the completion of a resolution will only result in the formulation of another; it is a psychological war which we can never win. The reason behind this perpetual loss is that we can and will never meet these societal ideals. Who we are, how we look, will never be good enough.

Perhaps, rather than reconstructing ourselves, we should be more committed to appreciating and accepting who and what we are in this moment. This lofty goal, part and parcel of feminist theory, may be facilitated with an interrogation of the commercialism and societal ideals that force upon us the need for a “new you.” The aim of this month’s posts is to interrogate our need to reconstruct our bodies, minds, and identities to fit the cultural standards of who and what we should be. The toxicity that is inherent in what should be a time of positivity and hope should not pass unnoticed. Neither should the assertion that who you are at this moment is not enough. Join us during the month of January as we interrogate the real weight that really deserves our attention this season: the pressure to conform our bodies to the cultural standards of beauty we encounter everywhere we turn.

Natalie El-Eid is a PhD student at Syracuse University. Her research is focused on postcolonial studies and ethnic literatures, with a particular focus on the Middle East. She is also interested in gender, identity, and trauma. And cats. She is especially fond of cats.