Living With Your Body…For Life

“I hate my thighs – they’re too big!” 

Although it’s distressing to think of any person hating their body, it’s especially hard to hear statements like this coming from girls as young as six and seven years old. Of course, each era and fashion trend conceives an ideal body image, and women of all ages end up comparing their bodies to that type, but it seems that only in recent years have very young girls joined in on this unhealthy activity.  Sadly, most people who participate in comparing themselves find their bodies lacking, and although few go so far as to become obsessed, I think there are far too many women with a negative view of their bodies.

     Yesterday, my friend S and I ended up discussing the issues so many of us have with our body image.  We bemoaned the effects of the media, discussed young girls we know who are already comparing themselves to the "ideal," and even talked about the cultural differences that seem to support or deny these kind of comparisons.  S had recently attended a baby shower for an African-American couple we know, and spoke with awe about the gorgeous Black women she saw there. She was amazed at how comfortable they seemed in their own bodies and marveled that the women were unafraid to be seen eating in public.  (What kind of world do we live in where it’s unique to feel comfortable eating in front of others?)  I get what S was saying; I distinctly remember a time I went out with some female acquaintances and directly experienced the ways women pressure each other to feel ashamed of food and eating.

Is this a dinner?

      On that night, a group of women in a social group I’d joined got together for dinner after shopping together. There were about 10 of us, and when our waitress came up to take our orders, I was the first person she turned to.  I’d planned on eating dinner and was quite hungry, so I ordered an entrée (complete with protein, starch, and veggies) and added a trip to the restaurant's healthy and fabulous salad bar.  As the women to my left gave their requests to the waitress, I noticed that the amount of food each one ordered was smaller and smaller until we reached the last woman.  She ordered a cup of soup. For dinner. She gave us the beatific look of a saint among sinners, and many of the other women looked chagrined and even angry.  When the food arrived, there seemed to be a competition to see who was the least hungry (and, thus, most virtuous) as several of the women pushed nearly full plates away, saying they were "stuffed."  I was appalled, but I still had to fight hard to eat the amount of food my body actually wanted, because the urge to join them in starving was very intense.  Mind you, this was with a group of women I didn't know well nor particularly admired. Imagine if they'd been mentors or idols of mine! 

     I’ve fought with food and body issues for most of my life.  It’s scenes like the one above that drove me to eat tiny portions around others, then binge when I was alone and safe from judging stares.  I hate to think of what that environment is doing to the women I know, their daughters, and any future children I might have. 

     Yesterday afternoon, I came across the following quote in a comment Nancy A. made to a blog post by Claire:

I went to a Catholic school, nuns and all, and I had one crusty teacher who used to get on the girls' cases about body image. That wasn't the term used back then, but that's what she meant. Anyway, if she ever heard any of us complain about our bodies, you know, "I hate my elbows!" she used to march us up to the mirror on the back of the classroom door, make us look at our elbows, and apologize to them--because those were our elbows and we were going to have to live with them for life. Believe it or not, for a gawky 13-year-old, the idiotic words "I'm sorry, elbows" (and we had to say it out loud in front of her) is remarkably cathartic! It brings great inner peace. It lets go of the noun-clutter of objects and brings life back to just living.

I loved this idea!  Although I’m not sure that the logic used by Nancy’s teacher is the entire reason we need to make peace with the body we currently have, I do think that apologizing to your body is a great step towards learning to love it.  We all have different bodies, but there is something lovely about every single one. S mentioned that she wished she could do something to help women see that loveliness, and perhaps Nancy’s teacher’s technique is one of those ways.  Maybe, in addition to apologizing to our body, we need to have a conversation with it, view it with our own eyes without the “noun-clutter of objects” and see what we, personally, find beautiful about it.  

Although it’s more of a tactile than visual experience, I have to say that one part of my body I enjoy is my belly, which is much, much larger than I’d like it to be (because I’m comparing it with the way I’m “supposed” to look, mind you…otherwise, how would I know how large it’s meant to be?). Regardless of its size (or perhaps because of it?) my belly is extremely soft, not just because of the fat below the skin’s surface, but the skin itself: it's like a baby’s.  I have no idea why that is, but the contrast between the immensely appealing texture of my belly (and the calming sensation of having this “forbidden and ugly” part of my body touched in a loving way) causes great consternation in my soul.  I think it may be because an appreciative view is so at odds with the highly negative way I usually regard that part of my body. This experience makes me think it’s quite possible that one of the best ways to challenge our media-influenced views of beauty may be to honestly assess how we, ourselves, view our bodies.  What do we like, regardless of what society might say?

Beyonce and her incredible thighs...

Last night, after the conversation with S and reading this quote, I found myself flipping through channels and landing on the first installment of Oprah’s Surprise Special.  One of the performers was Beyoncé, who was wearing a modified tuxedo that ended at the top of her thighs.  Her toned and gorgeous legs were very much on display as she danced with incredibly energy and skill, while singing about the way women run the world.* In spite of the excitement and inspiration I felt as I listened to the words she was singing,  I realized that I was, subconsciously, comparing the width of her thighs to the size of the dancers’ thighs around her and to the ideal I, apparently, keep in my head for important times like this. What is that insanity and why is it in my head?  I had a crazy conversation with myself about Beyoncé’s thighs and whether they are too big.  How insane is that?  I worked hard on convincing myself that her legs are absolutely gorgeous and, obviously, very functional, but I can’t help the feeling I have that somewhere in my brain is the belief that she needs to be skinnier.

Sigh.  Obviously, it will take a lot of hard work to uncover and destroy the millions of messages I’ve taken in over the years about how women have to be in order to be beautiful and worthy.  I think the fight is worth it, though—if not for us, then for the girls who follow us: we all deserve to feel good about our bodies, even our thighs!

For more discussion of loving our bodies and the disturbing trend towards emaciation in our "role models," check out my post entitled "Sexy?".

*You can see Beyoncé’s performance in this video. It’s amazing!

"Emotionally Needy" vs., um... Being Human?

"Emotionally needy"?

     Today I read the fabulous SARK's eLetter, which was about being "emotionally needy." (Don't know about SARK? Get thee to your closest independent bookstore and check out her amazing titles. My favorites are Wild Succulent Woman and Eat Mangoes Naked, but they are all worth reading.)  

      
     She describes a recent article that says her work appeals to "emotionally needy adults."  SARK was not thrilled by this phrase, since it seems to demean her readers:

"Are adults who have needs, needy? It implies that people who exhibit emotions are flawed." 

As someone who, like SARK, has often been told that she's "too emotional, too sensitive," I feel uncomfortable with the term, too.  It's horrible to feel that your need for human contact might repel those around you; that your desire for emotional connection with people might actually drive them away... it's shameful and terrifying.  Even worse is the implication that one would need to classify the "emotionally needy" as a group, implying that there is also a group of people who are not in need of emotionally interactions and, of course, that those people must somehow be superior. But maybe that's my overactive sensitivity talking...

     After some musing, SARK makes her decision: 

I don't believe that adults with emotional needs are needy, and I believe that too many adults don't understand how they feel or how to tend to their feelings ... So I stand in opposition to the description; emotionally needy. I offer instead; emotionally aware, sensitive, human beans who can be openly vulnerable.  

I totally concur, especially the part about being openly vulnerable.  For those of us who are, as my mom puts it, "super-sensitive," it's especially hard to put yourself in situations where you feel open to hurt, but it's those very situations in which you are also open to joy, love, and growth.  At least, that's what I keep telling myself when I'm opening the door to yet another new experience that has me shaking in my orthopedic flip-flops.  As for being emotionally aware, that's something I have to work on every day.  Who knew that feeling your own emotions took so much work?

     How do you feel about the term "emotionally needy?"  Do you think that it's derogatory?  Do you think it's needy to have emotional needs? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Unique Stress Relievers

I had a really anxious day last week. Sometimes I'm amazed by how much jittery energy can flow through my body at one time, considering the “healthy” dose of anti-anxiety meds I'm on. In spite of "better living through chemistry," from time-to-time I find myself in need of something else to help calm my wild nerves. I've collected a couple of rather unique ways to cope, and I thought I’d share them with you in hopes that you find some inspiration!

1. At the Carwash ("work, and work...")

About a ten-minute drive from our house is an oasis of calm and peace: the Magic Carwash. There's something immensely soothing about this drive-through carwash:  from the shush, shush of the bright blue brushes that swirl around the car in a shower of foamy soapsuds, to the susurration of the long blue strips of chamois as the slide over the hood, and even the gentle swaying of the car as it's guided past each station. Sometimes, I imagine that I'm under the sea in a slowly swaying kelp forest, and since the ocean is one of my favorite places in the whole world, this fantasy gives me a sense of calm and rest. By the time my clean, shiny car slides out the other end, my spirit is restored and I'm ready to face the world with a peaceful heart.

Wheeeee....there goes my stress!

2. On The Swings

I've never been any good at sports, but I did learn one athletic skill in elementary school: how to pump my legs while swinging so I didn't need anyone to push me.  Even though I'm scared of heights, I’ve always found swinging to be a source of great joy. I still love an occasional ride on a park swing when I'm down, but the time when this brought me the most peace was when I was in college at CLU.  My junior year was the most stressful time I had as an undergrad, and I found myself in great need of a stress-reliever after tests or big presentations. I'm not sure how it started, but I developed a ritual of making the time to always spend 15 minutes on the swings in the park near my dorm room after each tough assignment or test was over. It always calmed me down, and sometimes, I even convinced a friend to join me!

3. My Bathroom

Okay, this one’s weird enough that I even contemplated keeping it to myself, but I find my bathroom to be one of my favorite places for stress relief!  We renovated our upstairs bathroom a couple years ago, and it has truly become my haven.  Decorated in my favorite colors, with a periwinkle blue floor and bright yellow walls, I find it both peaceful and energizing.  There are three huge windows under an eave, so I am able to enjoy sunshine without being too hot in the summer.  There are a million lights around our mirror, and every bulb is full-spectrum, to chase away my winter blues, but we have them on a dimmer, so I can turn them way down to take a comforting bath with candles.  My latest book is usually there, too.  The fact that it’s a place where I can shut the door and shut out the world has a lot to do with why I find my bathroom a perfect place to cope with anxiety.

4. The Beach…on an overcast day

Notice: gloomy beach = happy Laurie! :)

While I’m fairly certain a sunny beach is a favorite place for most people to relax, I find the beach helps me most when it’s overcast and deserted.  I like to walk on the cool, wet sand, listen to the seagulls and waves, and breathe in the sea air. Just the smell of the salt water makes me shoulders sink down to a healthy position and drives away any anxiety that has me in its grip. The gloomier the weather, the better…probably because it means I can be alone with my thoughts and enjoy my favorite place in the world on my own terms.  I stay away on those hot, sunny days when the beach is covered in sun worshipers, but if it’s overcast and cool, you can bet I’ll be down by the water!

5. Laughing!

Scientists have frequently touted the health benefits of laughter, and I’m sure you have your own “research” that supports their claim.  It’s hard to feel stressed or gloomy when you’re laughing until your sides hurt!  So laughing itself is hardly novel, but I find that what makes me laugh usually is.  You know when you’re in a theatre watching a movie and suddenly, you hear someone laughing loudly although everyone else is silent?  That’s me!  I have a strange sense of humor and things that make me laugh seem to rarely inspire others to the same response.  I find that absurdity and irony provide the kinds of laughs that make me feel everything will be alright, so when I’m feel anxious, I keep a look out for those kind of things.

Now that I’ve shared some of my more unique ways to handle anxiety, I’d love to hear what you do.  Please share your tips and tricks in the comments section; I look forward to learning some new ways to keep my cool!

"Handsome" in Pink?

When I was a teen, I spent one summer as a camp counselor at a local Jewish school.  If all the campers went home early, I was sometimes recruited to help out with the day care for preschoolers.  During one of these stints, a preschool teacher explained why one of the little three-year-old boys ran screaming away after a little girl offered him a pink toy.  Shaking her head, she said, “That’s Samuel. His favorite color was pink, but his father was so worried about what that might mean [insert meaningful look here] that he told Samuel that going near anything pink would make his penis fall off. Samuel’s been terrified of all things pink since then.”  We fell into a troubled silence as we contemplated the long-reaching effects of Samuel’s father’s fears, how he handled them, and what damage this had already done to Samuel, who was a loner and seemed quite anxious at all times. Granted, I’ve often seen this kind of fear in parents in my years of working with children, but never to this extreme, and although nearly twenty years have passed, I’ve never forgotten it.

Then last fall, I read an inspiring blog post by Nerdy Apple Bottom (NAB) that seemed to present the opposite side of this issue: her five year old son decided to dress as his favorite female character from Scooby Doo for Halloween and she fully supported it.  However, his choice to dress as “Daphne” didn’t go over as well with some of the mothers of his classmates.  The issue here is not a boy dressing as a female character: in fact, as NAB notes in her blog post, the whole point of Halloween is to dress up as something you are not; e.g. dressing as a ninja doesn’t mean your child is suddenly going to have martial arts skills, nor does anyone think that he/she will grow up to become an actual ninja. The problem isn’t even with how her son was received by his peers (high fives from some and no notice from others), but how his peers’ mothers reacted.  They tried to bully NAB and her son into following their rules about what is and isn’t acceptable.  They reasoned that this was the best thing to do because if their rules weren’t followed, the kids would make fun of NAB’s son.  Yet, that wasn’t actually happening. 

Although the reaction of the other mothers is appalling, I found it more worrisome that NAB’s son, even at his young age, was already aware that other kids might make fun of his choice, and was concerned about wearing the costume, even though he really, really wanted to.  What kind of world do we live in where a five year old preschooler has to worry about being made fun of by his peers?  I realize it’s part of human nature to make fun of those who deviate from our norms, but it’s not something our society should accept, promote, or ignore: it’s our job as adults to help kids learn how to interact in a civilized, polite way with others, and that includes telling them that making fun of others is simply not allowed, period. I learned this lesson long before preschool, but it was certainly reinforced there.  Worst of all is that this boy was attending a preschool associated with a Christian church.  If this preschool is teaching the values that Christ promoted, how would making fun of others be allowed?

The J.Crew ad that set off "Toemageddon 2011"

          As you can probably tell, I have some strong views about letting kids—especially boys—express themselves in whatever way works for them.  Watching this video on the Daily Show brought those views into play, yet again.  Jon Stewart noted that a recent advertisement for J. Crew, which featured an employee of the company, Jenna Lyons, and her son, Beckett, playing, had led to "Toemageddon 2011" on the major news networks. The issue? Jenna’s son likes pink, and in the ad, she has painted his toenails in his favorite color.  All of a sudden, everyone was discussing whether this could make her son become gay or transgendered, whether the ad was "blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children," and even suggesting that encouraging children to participate in activities outside heteronormative gender roles could lead to adults who have no interest in having or nurturing children.

As I watched Stewart’s segment, I couldn’t help but wonder why people feel so threatened by any challenge to the gender roles they cling to?  We have an undeniable need to separate the world into black and white dichotomies—it’s something I find myself falling into often—but that doesn’t mean that doing so serves us well. In fact, I can’t think of any time that dividing the world into two categories has ever been beneficial, although I could easily be overlooking something.  Overall, however, I think we’re able to function better as a society when we embrace and get to know our “gray areas” as they actually are.  Is it not better for us, as a society, that girls wear clothes that allow them to move and do not endanger their health, as the clothes of the past did?  Nonetheless, people of even seventy years ago would probably be appalled to see women wearing pants. I think, instead of giving in to our urge to compartmentalize the world, we must fight our instincts: we must admit that not everything fits into a category, and we must see how that can benefit us, rather that assume if it doesn’t fit, it’s either a threat or not worth our time.  I explored this issue at length in my blog post, Binary Categories, so I won’t say more about it here.

Instead, I’d like to focus on why we think it’s possible for the application of nail polish in a color we consider “girly” (even though it used to be considered a masculine color until the 1940s…) to make a boy gay or transgendered.  You cannot make someone gay or transgendered. Nor can you make a gay person straight or convince a trans person to happily live as the sex they weren’t meant to be. A gay person’s attractions are just as naturally occurring as a straight person’s: one never knows from where they arrive, and they are utterly outside of our control.  A dear friend of mine, S—who has a gay mother and sister—shared a story with me about her early dating life that illuminates this fact.  S had brought another female date home when her mother drew her aside to tell her that she should really stop trying. She knew S wasn’t gay, and told her that she would love her no matter what.  S was trying, very hard, to make herself gay, but it didn’t work.  She’s happily married to a man now.  Research shows the adopted children of gay parents are no more likely to be gay than those raised by straight parents.  You simply cannot “nurture” someone into being gay. 

Transgenderism is, likewise, not something you can be made to feel. Transgendered people truly suffer, feeling that they are trapped in a body that does not reflect their gender. A recent survey found that 41% of transgendered people in the United States have attempted to commit suicide. This is “more than 25 times the rate of the general population, which is 1.6 percent. And among trans people ages 18-44, the suicide attempt rate was 45 percent.”  Other studies I have read show that trans people who receive hormone therapy have a lower rate of suicide attempts, though it’s still greater than the general population.  After sex-reassignment surgery, the rate of suicide attempts for transgendered persons drops to the same as the general population. Those facts convinced me of the great need for support of our trans community.  Obviously, running ads in which a boy’s toenails are painted pink doesn’t do that, nor could it possibly be the intention of J. Crew.  While some pundits may consider a boy who follows heteronormative gender rules in all ways except for pink nail polish to be “transgendered,” they couldn’t be more wrong.  In addition to support, we obviously need to do a lot of education in order to help our fellow Americans understand the plight of our trans friends and neighbors.

This little guy enjoys getting his nails painted!

Our world has enough stress in it as it is, and our children grow up so much faster these days.  Can’t we reduce the pressure on them and let our kids play in whatever ways—and with whatever colors—make them happy?* 

 

*Like, for instance, the way this mother has…