Sunday, July 09, 2006

You Don't Have to be Beautiful

Hey Kid,

Something alarming started happening a few years ago. I'd be out on one of my little body-hating sprees, complaining about my waist or my chin or my ass, looking for a little spritzing of compliments, and some implacable Buddha-type would invariably raise her doughnut eyes and lisp, "Everyone is beautiful." You know where that leaves a girl fresh out of self-validation? Out in the unenlightened cold, that's where.

I'd smile and say nothing but inside I'd get so mad. No, everyone is NOT beautiful! Saying so doesn't actually HELP anything. Why the hell should we believe you just because your version of, "All politicians are crooks," or, "All homosexuals are scary," makes a nice New Age soundbite? "All people are beautiful"?! We'd get a lot closer to understanding how you experience reality if you just said, "I am indifferent to my subtle reactions to the unique qualities of things."

Even the Tao Te Ching says that for something to be beautiful, something else, by definition, must be un-beautiful. It MIGHT be possible to say, "Every person is interesting," but then, by definition, you have to be able to point out things that are UNinteresting in the world, and then we start breaking hearts, and you feel like a jerk, and maybe we should have just kept our mouths shut, hm? Either we're willing to acknowledge that every thing has the capacity to uniquely assert its identity on our consciousness, or we shut up and drink tequila until everything looks good.

And besides, if everyone is beautiful, than I can only be incidentally beautiful, as opposed to stunningly beautiful, which is what I NEED TO BE IN ORDER TO BE OKAY.

On the other hand, this still leaves me obstinately feeling fat and ugly, which is my inalienable right as a female member of Western civilization. My mother felt fat and ugly, and her mother felt fat and ugly, and her mother before her felt fat and ugly, and if any of us stops sitting around talking about how fat and ugly we feel, why, it might just REND THE VERY FABRIC OF TIME!!

But I'll tell you this, kid, it hurts like hell. Those days where you can hardly make yourself leave the house because the mirror has crushed your soul like a bug? Those aren't good days. Those are days when I'm easy to push around. The thing is, "I" is more than my appearance, but on Ugly Days I forget that. On Ugly Days I let myself start believing the rest of me is as worthless as my the way I look, and that feeling lasts. It's lasted me into brief, vicious love affairs with mean, ignorant boys who weren't worth it, because I was looking for some kind of relief from the feeling of being unlovable. It's lasted me into despair.

And that's bad enough, but then I think of those boys I slept with because I didn't love myself, or the other people who felt fatter and uglier because a fairly thin, nice-looking woman like me said she was ugly. I taught those boys that if they could get a girl when she had no self-esteem, they could get the sex they wanted, no matter how mean or ignorant they were. I taught those people who listened that they should hate themselves too, setting them up for partners who won't respect them either. And what will all these people do when they have children of their own? Will they, in modeled steps, teach their kids to loathe themselves too? Will mean, ignorant people be allowed to control the whole world?

I don't want to do that to the world. I don't want to do that to you. I want to break the chain, rend the fabric of time, so that if only in me, you can see modeled a woman who refuses to capitulate to the fear of being ugly.

Having said that, I figured it out. If I object to defining everything that is as "beautiful," I have no right to define everything that I am by saying "I am ugly." The statement is equally reductionist. That "I" is not just my face or my hips. That "I" is my mind and my spirit. That "I" is my future. And since you are my future, that "I" is you. In fact, that "I" is everyone and everything that becomes unloved when I stop loving myself.

My goal, for you, and for the world, is to stop normalizing the idea that physical beauty and skinniness are the most important things. I'm just going to shut up about it. No more complaining, no more gazing glumly at the mirror. I might still struggle, but I don't need to spread it around. I don't need to teach it to you. You'll learn it on your own. But from me, you'll see that it's possible to rise above it. And if we can do that we will be, if not stunningly beautiful, still, absolutely stunning.

That's the plan anyway.



I love you.



C.

3 comments:

Leanne said...

"You" are beautiful...every last molecule, especially those little quantum particle thingies that connect you to the rest of us.

leafy said...

Aw, sweetheart, I can't stand having things to live up to. I can hardly live down most things as it is.

raingirl said...

I was lucky growing up. I liked my body in general and didn't worry about it much. But then I got pregnant and my breasts got bigger. I really didn't like it. Very silly really. Then after the second kid there came the anxiety that led to overeating and for the first time in my life (starting when I was about 45 - I'm 48 now) I am concerned about my weight. My clothes look terrible on me since clothes aren't built to handle a thin frame with a pot belly. And I fight myself about this daily - I don't want to pass this worry on to my daughter (who already has body image issues from our awful culture), I want to ignore it and pay attention to how healthy I am, I don't want to be controlled by the 'in' body type right now, I don't want to be worried that my husband doesn't want to have sex with me because I'm not the thin ballerina type that I used to be. Yikes - do I have issues or what?

Anyway, the idea of looking at ourselves as a whole instead of all the pieces is so wonderful. We are more than the sum of our parts.

-Laura of the northwest

p.s. There is a book about French women and how beautiful they are. But they also talk differently about each other. Instead of saying "you look gorgeous today", they say things like "you look like you just found a new boyfriend" (or whatever - based on feelings, not looks). Let's change our language, maybe it will help us.