Questioning What's Better
Questioning What's Better
'Better' can be a watchword that tips us off to beliefs and rubrics that need to be questioned.
The end of philosopher
's book Unshrinking: How to Fight Fatphobia startled me with its radical proposal: What if, instead of creating new, better, even more inclusive ways to assess bodies, we were to "transcend the mode of assessment entirely"?“Body reflexivity offers an escape from the apparently exhaustive options of positivity, negativity, or neutrality, by proposing a different focus. Rather than changing how bodies are assessed, it urges us to transcend the mode of assessment entirely.”
Manne argues that even well-meaning ideas, such as body positivity or body neutrality, still exist within a mode of assessment. They affirm the question of validity even while trying to subvert it. They encourage critique, even if the goal of the criticism is to find what's 'good.' As a result, these ideas are readily taken up by people who probably don't mean to do harm but reinforce conventional norms and perpetuate the status quo.
What if there is no good or bad? No measure of value? All bodies become sick. All bodies break down. All bodies experience some version of lightness, struggle, and pleasure. Why attach a qualitative assessment to any of it?
The reason Manne's proposal startled me was because it called me on my own bullshit. Politically, economically, and existentially, I believe all bodies are, as Manne puts it, "valid and indeed [a] valuable way of being in the world." And yet, I assess my own body daily. Because conforming to norms makes life easier. Because crafting a certain physicality signals a higher class, a more elite status. Because I know I can do better.
"Self-help is frequently about asserting our autonomy," explains
in What Tech Calls Thinking, "not by rejecting societal norms or our historical situation but by understanding them better than other individuals in society, and thereby coming out ahead of others in our situation." Replace "self-help" with wellness culture, momfluencing, the coaching industry, fashion, entrepreneurship, or productivity hacks; the idea is equally true.We learn to value ourselves (and devalue others) through a filter of social Darwinism, pitting us against each other in the race for resources. If I can figure out exactly how I need to become better, then I can get my piece of the pie.
Put differently, our culture loves assessing the relative value of individuals—especially those who stubbornly refuse to conform to norms by choice or by birth. Assessment creates and reinforces competition. And that competition can be exploited for profit.
Any assessment of normativity inevitability leads back to an assessment of the capacity for labor (and vice versa). Nonconforming bodies are assumed to be less fit for work, less capable of generating sufficient value, less deserving of resources or accommodation, and more likely to increase costs and reduce profit. Creating a culture of continual assessment not only encourages self-control but, as a side benefit, manufactures countless opportunities for money-making because 'normal' is expensive.
It is no coincidence that so much of political discourse today revolves around whose bodies count, what bodies are supposed to be used for, and whether some bodies can be disregarded (or discarded). Warnings about childless women, gender ideology, immigration, vaccines, welfare fraud... one thing they all have in common is a fear that people today are insufficiently conformed to their roles in the economy.
If women don't produce and raise more babies, we won't have enough workers paying into Social Security. If trans people don't conform to something as simple as gender, they won't conform to the standards required to maximize productive output. If people are allowed to collect welfare, they won't take the jobs they're so generously offered.
One infuriating political ad frequenting evening YouTube time features a nurse saying she chose her career to help people. She adds that recently, it's become difficult to do that. The first time I saw the ad, I assumed the next line was going to be something like, 'because of draconian regulations on healthcare for women and trans people.' But no. She says it's hard to help people "because of the open border." Immigrants, she explains, are taking up time and space in the US healthcare system. Never mind that immigrants are people she can help; they're not the right bodies. They're not paying into the system. Their bodies are not valid bodies as far as she's concerned.
These fears justify the movement that pushes for rights to be curtailed and dignity to be withheld. They point to the belief that a body is only valid if it can be optimized to fit its role in the economic and social order. These fears belie an investment—in every sense of the word—in a rubric that assesses some bodies as better and others as worse.
Whenever I think about this radical idea of transcending assessment, I bump up against a certain resistance.
That resistance comes from the fact that I enjoy a challenge. I like to push my edge. There's part of me that really wants to hold on to the opportunity to pursue better. If you're reading this amidst resistance, this might also be a sticking point for you.
In those moments, I remind myself that 'better' easily attaches to outcomes without intrinsic hierarchy. For instance, is publishing more frequently better than publishing less frequently? No. Publishing more frequently might lend itself to a set of outcomes, just as publishing less frequently lends itself to another set of outcomes. One set of outcomes isn't better than the other—they're simply not the same.
'Better' easily attaches to outcomes without intrinsic hierarchy.
Is running five miles better than running three miles? No. One is only farther than the other. Is reading more books in a year better than reading fewer? No. It's just a meaningless statistic one can track on GoodReads.
So maybe 'better' needs to be a watchword as we navigate the 21st-century economy. 'Better' tips us off to an assumed judgment. It shows us we've made an assessment when, most likely, none was necessary.
Some choices or actions are better than others—but only within the context in which they're taken. It's the context we need to understand and question.
'Better' can prompt us to reimagine the value we assign to certain qualities, to question the need for ordering, and to reconnect with the true purpose behind any action or desired outcome.
Manne adds to her proposal that we transcend assessment that her husband often tells her, "I don’t look at you with a critical eye.” Instead of offering the usual, 'You look great in that dress,' or 'You're beautiful,' he affirms that he's not peering through any lens of judgment. Is it possible to see beauty without judgment? To feel attraction without assessment? I think so.
As
told me, there's a stark difference between 'beauty' as human value—a human need—and the 'beauty' the beauty industry (or fashion, or fitness, or wellness) tries to sell us. I think the same is true of personal growth, love, pleasure, and, yes, work. There are the commodified, assessed, and marketed versions of those values. Then, there are the values that transcend those shallow definitions.Those values don't require a critical eye. There is no better or worse. Those values just are.
Self-Control, Surveillance, and the Body at Work
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Wow, I absolutely love this! It’s likes cleaning a pair of glasses and looking at the world without the smudges!
I would question the notion that self-help/self-improvement is always oriented towards a personal success or improvement over others. It could also be seen as a way to more effectively contribute to the collective. It could also been associated with a fractal holographic view that the more I heal and grow the more healing and growth becomes accessible to those around me.
There’s a developmental model I’ve studied and work with called STAGES developed by Terri O’Fallon that claims that as humans we go through developmental cycles some that are more individually oriented (think 2 year old and then think the self oriented businessperson) and others that are more collectively oriented (think high schooler and post-modern democratic socialist). The trick is to recognize the limitations and shadows of given stage and orientation to the world, while also recognizing the gifts of that stage. Anyway, it’s a whole be thing, but I thought it was worth sharing.
As always, thanks for your thoughts and writing!