It’s only December 2, and visions of terms papers and multiple choice exams are dancing in your head. New Year’s seems like a long way off. Of course, we all know New Year’s is the traditional time to make resolutions, and lots of people resolve to lose weight. I shouldn’t say people; I should say women and girls. A Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive Health-Care Poll of 2005 found that 32% of women resolved to lose weight compared to 18% of men. Whenever we invest time and money into our appearance, for example by dieting and exercising, we are essentially turning our bodies into projects. Most of the time it’s innocuous; going to the gym, watching our portions, but sometimes, for some women, it escalates to procedures like gastric bypass, or disorders like anorexia. Body projects become a problem when we think that we are only our bodies and we have nothing else to offer the world, that our thoughts and feelings have no value.

The problem with treating the body as a project, or a means of transcendence, is that the body breaks down, it will change, no matter what sort of drastic intervention we make on its behalf. Also, women have been associated with the body since antiquity, and the body has been regarded in Western civilization as a cage for the soul. Body projects just reinforce this idea. But there is a flipside (there’s always a flipside when you use feminist analysis, which is good and bad−another flipside!). Losing weight can give women a sense of mastery and control, and we can transfer those feelings of empowerment from our body projects to other aspects of our lives. For example, once I started exercising and watching what I ate, I decided to start monitoring my finances more closely, and I began depositing money in a savings account.

There is no easy place to stand; do you decide that you’re not going to care what you look like (as if that’s a real choice), or do you capitulate to the beauty myth? Or, do you try to negotiate, which is what most of us do, because we’re not automatons enslaved by the diet-beauty complex. Luckily, we’re all in university, hopefully we all know we’re more than our bodies, and that we’ve got something going on between our ears. If you’re thinking about losing weight as a New Year’s resolution, think about what you want to get out of it, because in the end, being just a body isn’t very fulfilling. As Marilyn Monroe said: “A sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing.” Here’s where I get sappy (‘tis the season, after all): If we all decided that our bodies didn’t need any ‘work’ and decided instead to focus our time and energy on developing our intellect or helping others, don’t you think that the world would be a kinder, better place? On that note, Happy Holidays, everyone!