The cake is a lie. Liberty is not justice. We are not free.
I attended a screening of American Denial. Although we were unable to complete the film because of DVD issues and a computer that suddenly needed 30 updates before it would operate, what I did get to see raised questions that I couldn’t answer. I want to share what I need to ask.
Are you looking at the evils granted by the color of your birth, as an oppressive blind man?
Are you buying your humanity, your right to exist, with the color of your education?
Are you willing to deny your blood, to embrace the hangman’s rope, in the name of love?
If you deny the demands of your father’s beliefs, are you also murdering the heart of the mother’s whom weep?
Did racism have to become, as opposed to the 1950’s and 60’s when it was “okay” to throw coke bottles at a little girl walking to the store with some change she’d saved jingling in her pocket, ironically, an underground railroad of hatred?
Does racism use the same tools of oppression as misogyny does or are they different? How are they similar?
When is impatience for things to change given over to frustrated tolerance that bubbles lava-like under the surface of civility? How long do we have to be patient before things actually change? What needs to happen before real change takes place? Isn’t 60 years long enough to think people would grow up already and see each other as humans? Or is it 160? 260? 560? How long is enough before it’s too much?
I used to have a son. He didn’t die nor get physically ill lingering in a hospital. He just walked away. The story of how he came to be in my life is as intense now as when he first appeared 21 years ago next month in a phone call from a liar.
Matt winning awards for his academics and a scholarship
I hear the words, “Keep a stiff upper lip” ringing in my ears, maintaining my distance from the heartbreak I feel and felt.
Before he was born, I longed for him to come home to me. I created the “perfect” nursery in Looney Tunes theme. I filled the dresser and changing table with all the necessities. I made curtains, blankets, and diapers. I can’t sew, but I did because those were straight lines. I put up soft lighting, filled the room with whimsical pictures and loving thoughts.
I’d done the chlomid and pergonal to no avail. I’d taken my temperature faithfully every morning. I’d resolved to adopt a child. I resolved to adopt THIS child. I went to every doctor’s appointment with his birth mother, my step-sister (sister=same difference). When she was about 5-6 months along she was burned out of her apartment by her neighbor’s murderers. My church, at the time, put together a care package of clothes and cash which I brought to her to help her rebuild. She got really sick towards the end of her January due date. The plan was for me to stay with her until the baby was born.
Lies were told to she and I which kept us distanced just far enough to not realize it. A week before my “son” was to be born, my sister called me as I walked in the door from picking up the temporary custody with intention to adopt papers up from our attorney.
“Hey, uh, we need to talk but I don’t know how to say this.” She sadly said.
“Whatever it is, just say it and we’ll work through it together.” I commented as I unloaded my purse, my coat, my manila folder holding the precious promise. “Hold on a second while I finish getting in the door.” My intention was to finish loading up the car and head from Northern Indiana in Lake Station to drive to Knoxville, TN.
“Mare, I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s okay. Really, we’ll work through it. What’s on your mind?” I asked as I prepared to sit down on my couch.
“I’ve decided to keep the baby.” She whispered but the words I heard were deafening.
“What?” I asked as I held the phone away from my ear.
I was positive the phone had turned into a cobra that was striking viciously at me. I couldn’t hear anything but the tremendous amount of grief that broke me in two. I fell to the ground with my hands held above my head in complete surrender. Every pore of my body screamed the words of my soul to the Universe. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t take anything into my body. I couldn’t accept anything with any clarity because it was all nonsense. It was absolute void as everything I’d ever tried to become collapsed upon itself in a tumble of hopes, dreams, ambitions, goals, promises, vows, and possibilities vanished in six words. Poof. Absence.
Less then three months later, my good friend Jamie K Haley was murdered. I was completely lost in the bottom of a bottle. I couldn’t find my way out. I couldn’t drown the feelings fast enough or deep enough to have any success which, of course, didn’t stop me from trying. My friends intervened, forcing me to choose them or death. I opted to live. For the longest time, I had no idea why I made that choice. When I say that, I mean twelve years of bad choices and horrible decisions that continuously punished me for my failure.
Thanksgiving 2004, after the death of my father’s wife (Truthfully a horrid person, judge me if you want to about that, but it is not only my perception), I was passing through to pick up my best friend’s boyfriend to return him to her in Arizona where I resided with my husband. I stopped off in Tennessee to visit.
My father explained that he was getting too old to take care of a twelve year old boy. He wanted to know if I’d consider moving closer to build a relationship with the boy because, “My health isn’t all that great and he’ll need someone to take care of him that he knows when I die.” That sounded fair and logical. I said I’d consider it.
That twelve year old boy (nearly 13 at that point) was the same child that had been denied me in 1995. That was the same child that I’d dreamed of holding, comforting, crying over, teaching, feeding, healing, reading to, guiding, exploring the world with. That child was the manifestation of my heart. Okay, that sounds like I may have romanticized it a tad (YES! I know, a LOT!) but before I go any farther in the story, go ahead and guess what my choice was…I didn’t even finish that sentence before you knew. Yes. I did in fact go back and talk to my husband about moving to Tennessee.
Plans were made. My job as a radio DJ/personality/head copy writer got more complicated then it had ever been before, everything in my Arizona life pushed me towards a new life. I complied. In February of 2005, right after the boy’s 13th birthday, my best friend, her boyfriend, and myself were driven across the country by Charles Tupper and his son to live at my father’s house. My husband was supposed to join us later (which is a whole different story).
It didn’t take long before things were found to be amiss. The boy didn’t fit very well. He was skittish. Time passed, I divorced my Arizona husband, moved about finally landing in Oak Ridge with my joyfriend/current husband. In March of 2010, the young man came to live with me by court order because of the neglect and violent abuse he’d suffered at the hands of my father and his new girlfriend.
This is his story told to me by him, written by me to create a more gentle version of a vicious life:
Becoming Human
I was born abandoned. According to legend, I was either brought to my grandparent’s tattered life. Or I was saved from the state by them as a last resort; rescued from the hospital.
I had a brother, also known as God to Jack who was my grandfather. My brother was his everything but he was taken away by the courts. My uncle was murdered by fringe family members and my grandmother who died of Cancer. They were all gone by the time I was eleven, except for the worst one, Jack.
I didn’t get to say any goodbyes. The pain became my normal. It was the only thing that was real and tangible. I had nowhere to go and that’s right where I thought I was going.
Nobody heard me. Nobody stopped me. Nobody recognized me. Caine was gone and I was all that was left.
I became, over time, a non-entity. Nobody cared to listen to what I thought or felt.
My house was never silent. Rage filled the air with compulsive shrieks and blistering names that still sting. Jack and I had no quiet conversations at the dinner table. There were no jokes told. The questions that I had, of my losses, went unanswered.
Three weeks after my grandmother died, Jack moved Val into our house. Things became very different. At night, Jack gave me vodka and Val gave me beer to put me to sleep. It wasn’t long before Val started sneaking into my room and the nightly abuse began. In an attempt to protect myself, I slept in a bed of knives and swords that I’d collected. It didn’t work.
I screamed out to be saved, but Jack never came. I tried fighting against her, but my drunken youthful self wasn’t yet strong enough. I told myself it was all a dream. Nobody heard me. Nobody stopped what was happening to me. Nobody saw me. My family was gone and I was all that was left.
Boys I called my friends began to ask me to do things that I didn’t understand but soon learned. I became an object to be used.
Huffhead was the worst offender. He called me his friend and I called him mine. But I always returned to him. Even knowing that nothing I did for him was ever good enough, I returned. He always demanded more and more from me. No matter how he abused me, I accepted it. The abuse was normal. I’d learned my lessons well. I was so desperate for his “friendship” that I returned to him time and again. I didn’t deserve to feel good. I didn’t feel worthy of kindness or love. I didn’t know this wasn’t okay. How I was living was my normal.
The threat of losing another person was too much. I had no choice. I lost my identity and gave up control of myself. I deserved it. I no longer smiled because I didn’t deserve to feel good. I felt guilty about my basic needs. I felt shame for eating, drinking, using the bathroom, smiling, laughing, joking. In other words, the thought of me being considered a human was enough to make me cringe. Everything and anything I did was constantly criticized. I was never good enough. I wasn’t my brother and Jack reminded me of this daily. Jack called me so many bad names that it caught me off guard, sounded alien, when he said the name given to me at my birth.
I developed into an isolated zombie. Not the kind you see in the movies, but just as much of a non-human. I was an object who didn’t object to the abuse. I lived to serve in any capacity. I screamed, “I HATE YOU!” in my mind. Nobody heard me. Nobody stopped me. Nobody recognized me. I was gone. Yet I was all that was left.
I started hearing voices after my brother was taken. Sometimes they’d get so loud that my mouth would speak their words. My body was no longer my own. The voices became people that walked, talked, and acted differently while using my body. That’s when the forgotten times began.
I woke up in the strangest of places; in a driveway during a winter storm, in a shed, in a storm drain, in a different state all together. I began to lose hours and days worth of time. People would come up to me on the street acting like they knew me, calling me by different names. I didn’t let on that I had no idea who they were. Time no longer had meaning because I lost so much of it so often.
I didn’t realize I was a human being. I was so detached from reality that nothing seemed real. I tried sleeping for a year so I wouldn’t have to feel what little seeped through the drugs I’d started doing. I’d mastered, as I was taught, to turn pain off like a light switch that kept turning itself back on.
When I turned fifteen, my screams were loud enough to be heard by the courts. I got in trouble with the law twice in two months. I went to court to accept my fate with Jack and his daughter. She was a woman that Jack called a lying, controlling, bulldozer that ripped him off. I despised her at his word. After all was said and done, I was placed in Jack’s daughter’s custody.
In the three years that I’ve been with her, I’ve learned what it’s like to be happy. I am grateful that the courts finally heard me. I’m glad the judge stopped what was happening to me. I’m glad that they finally saw me. I finally earned my freedom and another life to learn. Somebody heard me. Somebody helped me. Somebody recognized me. My success is all that’s left.
2014
In August of 2014, he disappeared. My husband and I went to work, came home, and he was gone. He didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t say anything. Like the phone call so many years before, he’d decided to keep the baby.
I see Facebook flooded with wishes of goodwill towards mothers. I do not resent or feel anger towards anyone who is a mother. I do not feel jealousy or unkind thoughts towards that are successful. I feel like a liar and outsider when it is wished to me. That chapter of my life is the most painful I’ve ever endured of which I have no control or power over in any way shape or form. It is my deepest grief and my truest human moment that I cherish because at least I got to understand, be, and for a short while, know the joy a parent feels.
Jamie Lopez is one of my favorite contemporary artists because she sings with her creations in a language I understand and frequently sing myself. She is alive, vibrant, willing to be compassionate, and shares her life with open arms. The painting I chose has owls and a mother which reminded me of an event that happened to me while I lived in Oro Valley just north west of Tucson, AZ.
If you don’t know what this is, you’re too young for me. 🙂
A few months ago, due to financial circumstances I had to give up having a cell phone. As my friends and contacts can attest, I was a full on addict. I couldn’t leave without my phone, I checked it at least twice every 10 minutes, and generally freaked out if I didn’t have my identity with me. And then, I had no choice but to abandon my preconceived notion of myself.
As I sit here today, I realize I don’t miss it. Not really. There’s only been one time that I really could have used one but I was in a hospital being monitored for heart issues anyway and my friend had one to notify my family if she needed to do so (thankfully she didn’t). Here are some things I learned about going “old school” with nothing but a home phone.
Control
I have more control over my life now than I did when I had a cell phone. I get to pick and choose easier by having only a home phone who has my number. It allows me to choose who I wish to spend my time with chatting on the phone. Unlike with a cell phone, I don’t feel obligated to answer my home phone because when I’m at home, that’s my time. If I want to spend time with people, I’ll go hang out with them. I am no longer strapped to everyone else’s beck and call. I decide what I want to do.
Money
I no longer have the overpriced expense of something that I didn’t really need. I figured out that I felt my cell phone was a measure of my worth in the modern world. I coveted nicer phones than I had because, well they were faster, bigger, whatever reason. I had a freak out because the phone I had got broken. If it weren’t for my friend, I’d have had no phone at all. But in retrospect, I needed to buy into the propaganda that I required one to fit in. I’m not one to do that. Money, although still not really a frequent thing in my pocket (YET!) is better spent on food, an occasional coffee out with friends, or other fun things instead of to a tether.
Ghost Calls
When I leave the house, I no longer have to worry about whether or not I received that phantom ring call. We’ve all had them. It’s the one that arrives precisely in the time it takes you to take your phone, check it, and put it back where you had it when it rings. Then the mad dash to answer it because the intuition that a call was coming in must mean DANGER! Well, usually, it was more mundane than that. It’s almost as if people are being trained like Pavlov’s dog to hear/feel the energy that keeps pouring into our bodies from those plastic gadgets.
Face Time (for real)
Yes, I’m aware there’s an app called that. Yes, I understand that it allows distant loved ones to chat with one another as if they’re right there in the same room. I get the practical side of that. However, I’ve found that if I’m really wanting to see a person…obvious here, go spend time with that person. I call up a friend and request an appointment. They agree or disagree. If they agree, I get to see them, hug them, smell them (which sounds creepier than it is), listen to their voice, watch their body language, visit with their spirit, etc. In short, I get to have communion with another human. I get to be a part of their life and they in mine. I value the time I have with people far more now than when I had a cell phone to distract me because I’m in the moment. I’m in the now. I’m not waiting for a call or text from someone. I’m with the friend or loved one I’m with. I mean WITH!
I made more minutes!
Every day, we’re all given twenty-four hours in which to accomplish everything we were born to do that day. When I was attached to my cell phone, I’d while away the hours and hours with some texting, some games, some messengers, some Facebooking, and many other past times. I am not saying those are bad, but they are massive time eaters for me. Once I no longer had those things to distract me, my creativity soared through the roof. I can pull off things I only imagined before I gave up my cell phone. I feel guilty if I don’t write, draw, paint, sketch, work material, or even visit with my tribe. Guilty because…well actually I don’t. I have time to do all the things I was born to do in this day. I can meet the world with my head looking up instead of down at a cell phone. I SEE people and have more time.
What began as a horror, has ironically, become a luxury. I am happier, more productive, I noticed the manacles of my identity haven’t been lost, but instead enhanced by not being forced to live in a little black box with a pretty case that I was never destined to live in at all. It’s been satisfying to me across the board. If you do decide to go old school and have a relatively good internet service provider, try the MagicJack Go. When you see how much it costs ($100 bucks for five years of service, I shit you not), you’ll see what I mean. Take control, my friend. Happiness is right in front of you.
Do not adjust your viewing, I’m a fat chick. That’s right. I know. I know. But here’s the coolest part. That’s not who I am, it’s just a statement of fact. For those of you who know me and those of you who are here to experience this talk, let me share some things I like about myself; my top ten list, if you will.
1. I am a strong minded woman with a passion for being alive.
2. I love the compassion I feel for others because when I help them, I help myself to a barrel of good stuff in my heart.
3. I love the way I see spirit instead of physical being. With very few exceptions, everyone I’ve met in my life has a divine spark that I can see and feel. And that’s fantastic!
4. I love to paint, draw, and create things while listening to instrumental music because if I listen to music that has words, I sing along which breaks my concentration.
5. I write poetry when I don’t know how to express myself through other mediums. When other people read them, I feel naked.
6. I like that I have a voice that I didn’t have when I was little. I can stand up to people who are rude or bigoted or harming another. I had to earn that right for myself. I had to learn that gift for others.
7. I love to cook. I learned from my mother, my aunts, and my grandmother. It gives me enormous pleasure to serve a meal that has my guests pushing away from the table with deep sighs of satisfaction.
8. I am generally happy when I’m being mindful.
9. I appreciate that, although not formally educated, I can hold my own in most conversations on a variety of topics.
10. I love my sense of humor.
I got this idea to share my top ten with you from a graphic I found that was created by the National Eating Disorder Association. It shows up as number two on the list but, in my life,it’s vital to every day survival considering the onslaught of society via social and media networks.
One of the hardest things we do, as women, is to try to maintain a sense of self in a world that tells us our bodies, thoughts, beliefs, and ideals are the enemies of ourselves, when in reality it’s those external voices that have it all wrong.
What is body image?
Body image includes:
How we perceive our bodies visually
How we feel about our physical appearance; how we think and talk to ourselves about our bodies
Our sense of how other people view our bodies
Our sense of our bodies in physical space (kinesthetic perception)
Our level of connectedness to our bodies
In a study by Brown University,74.4% of average sized women thought about the way their bodies look frequently or all of the time. The problem with this is that the more a person thinks about their bodies, they tend to pick it apart. They begin to see faults that probably aren’t there.
She gave me permission to show this dramatic transformation.
001HeatherbeforeandAfter
My friend Heather Ives got checked into a hospital with undisclosed diagnosis a couple of years ago. The hospital released her and when she got home, she had a grand mal seizure. She weighed in, at that point, at 255lbs. In just over a year she has lost nearly all of the excess weight and is a healthy for her 125 pounds.
She said, “My perception is accurate about my body though, that’s what always bothered me about comments and stuff from people. I know I look good, I know I lost an ungodly amount of flub but I never reached goal and I know what I look like nekkid and it’s not pretty with all the loose flesh. It’s not like I was at a point where I didn’t need to lose weight and was just doing it out of insecurity or vanity or a need to be skinny.” She sometimes feels like a newborn learning to walk. A toddling body perception because her mind just can’t grasp that her body has changed so dramatically even though she knows it has. The truth is, she’s quite lovely, wicked smart, demanding but in the good way, and her compassion is outstanding. Despite her dramatic weight loss, she continuously has to battle her body but for a different reason due to end stage renal failure.
REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER IN ADVERTISING VIDEO
But how do we get to the point where we focus only on our shells? Body image, whether negative or positive, is shaped by a variety of factors:
Comments from family, friends and others about our, their, and other people’s bodies, both positive and negative
Ideals that we develop about physical appearance
The frequency with which we compare ourselves to others
Exposure to images of idealized versus normal bodies
The experience of physical activity
The experience of abuse, including sexual, physical, and emotional abuse
The experience of prejudice and discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, ability, sexual orientation or gender identity
Sensory experiences, including pleasure, pain and illness
I was probably about 12 years old when my Uncle Les who is 10 years my senior told me jokingly that my nose was too fat for my face. Because I admired him so much and trusted him, I took it to heart and for years I hated the way my nose fit on my face. I found it embarrassing. Now, it doesn’t matter to me. I like my face when I look in the mirror, but then, it was devastating.
I had issues with ongoing sexual abuse when I was quite young. Because of that, I viewed my body as something to hate and destroy. This particular hate was on a grander scale than that of my nose because our physical bodies are what people see first. They are how people decide whether or not we’re trustworthy, kind, or an asshole. It certainly didn’t help that between my 6th and 7th grade years I went from being flat chested to being very buxom. I hated my body so much that I had a breast reduction done when I was 22 years old. I do not regret that for the pain those boulders caused, but I wish I’d been able to see past the sexualization of my body enough to make a more informed decision.
I have an ex-boyfriend that I’m still friends with. While we were dating, I noticed several things that I did to myself reflected back to me in his behavior. He believed, and still does,that the value of his total person is found in his penis, just as I believed, but no longer do, that my value as a person was directly tied to my vagina.
In essence, I was a huge walking vagina that ran naked through the world fearing to be noticed but praying for my “worth” to be recognized at the same time. I read about celebrities and their lives and I longed to be as important as they were. I wanted to be seen and heard, felt and worshiped. I created a self-destructive cycle that created more self-loathing than I care to share. However, as I healed and realized that my body is NOT my value, nor was my vagina the only definition of myself, I began to see some really fez and bow tie stuff happening in my life.
All research to date on body image shows that women are much more critical of their appearance than men –much less likely to admire what they see in the mirror. Up to 8 out of 10 women will be dissatisfied with their reflection, and more than half may see a distorted image.
Men looking in the mirror are more likely to be either pleased with what they see or indifferent. Research shows that men generally have a much more positive body-image than women – if anything, they may tend to over-estimate their attractiveness. Some men looking in the mirror may literally not see the flaws in their appearance.
Why are women so much more self-critical than men? Because women are judged on their appearance more than men, and standards of female beauty are considerably higher and more inflexible. Women are continually bombarded with images of the ‘ideal’ face and figure – what Naomi Woolf calls ‘The Official Body’. Constant exposure to idealized images of female beauty on TV, magazines and billboards makes exceptional good looks seem normal and anything short of perfection seem abnormal and ugly. It has been estimated that young women now see more images of outstandingly beautiful women in one day than our mothers saw throughout their entire adolescence.
DISTORTED BODY IMAGE VIDEO
Also, most women are trying to achieve the impossible: standards of female beauty have in fact become progressively more unrealistic during the 20th century. In 1917, the physically perfect woman was about 5ft 4in tall and weighed 140 lbs. Even 25 years ago, top models and beauty queens weighed only 8% less than the average woman, now they weigh 23%less. The current media ideal for women is achievable by less than 5% of the female population – and that’s just in terms of weight and size. If you want the ideal shape, face etc., it’s probably more like 1%.
Here is a novel idea, let’s look at the insides of our bodies for a moment.
The average woman looks like this on the inside of her body.
001 graphic (It’s a picture of what a female’s guts look like)
About 15 years ago I took an anatomy class at college as a science credit. In the jam packed semester I learned amazing things my body is doing right now. Right now, my heart is beating, my lungs are breathing, my stomach is digesting, and my brain is reading this aloud using the muscles of my face, mouth, and throat to convey my message. My colon is doing its job, my spleen is doing its thing, and my entire body is a masterpiece of coexisting perfection. Even when I get sick, for example, my body works autonomously from my conscious thinking. I may have to do external things to help it heal, but a body pretty much takes care of itself. But, it’s just a shell. It isn’t who I am or who you are.
Let’s look at the qualities we are supposed to have as women. According to Audrey Hepburn, for example, she said:
Audrey Hepburn
We may feel like we’re constantly judged. We may feel like we’re looked upon poorly when in reality, people do not, as a rule, pay attention to half of what goes on around them.
When I was a little girl, I remember thinking several things about myself that I now feel a bit embarrassed to share, but here it goes. I wanted to have long hair but my unruly waves made me commonly look like I stuck my finger in a light socket, so my mom cut my hair short. Instead of being upset about it, I’d take baby blankets, place them on my head and tuck the edges behind my ears. Then I’d practice flipping it like I saw my Aunt do. It was the next best thing, but I kept my hair short for years because I was told that I had kind hair…the kind that belonged around a dog’s butt.
I liked to wear odd clothing combinations, for example, I liked stripes with polka dots and colors that didn’t go together. My Aunt Lizzie was in her high school years and one of the most beautiful women I knew. Her clothes, nails, and long hair were always perfectly matched and tidy. To emulate her, I put away my mismatched things. I couldn’t see myself being anyone else but her. This tied into what I was talking about before regarding self-perception and myself.
How comfortable are you with who you are as opposed to the woman you WANT to be? When you were younger, how did you think being the adult you would be? Personally, I wanted to be able to stay up as late as I wanted, eat whatever I wanted, and be happy as a mother. I wanted to write for a living or read but I never imagined nor thought I’d become who I am today. Although I pretty much do what I dreamed of, the pay kind of sucks right now but I have faith in the child I once was.
Reflecting back, I think of myself as a little girl viewing me at this stage in my life and that she may be disappointed that I haven’t written the novel I wanted to write, or that I haven’t painted the greatest painting ever, or even that I have not nor will I give birth in my lifetime. I do, however, think that scared little girl that couldn’t sit still for more than 3 minutes nor talk about anything that hit too close to the truth of what was happening to her, would be quite pleased. I think she would be happier knowing that everything would be okay and that sometimes family members idealized aren’t, but those that were once despised have become invaluable parts of my life. Yes, I think she’d be quite pleased because she knows I’m working towards my dreams.
What about you? Are you following your dreams to become the woman you imagined as a child you’d be? I encourage you to embrace that little girl with your adult self and join in unison to meet your ideal self.
A favorite quote of mine is by Oscar Wilde. He said, “Be who you are because everyone else is already taken.” Another favorite of mine is a phrase found in the 1960 novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr that says, “You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You area soul. You have a body, temporarily.”
I find both of the quotes fascinating because they break the societal standards that are dictated to us,spoon fed to insure our compliance in the gender roles we’ve been assigned by the faceless masses.
What if, another radical idea here,we looked at ourselves with compassion, love, and kindness as we do others? Would you say things to women that you say to yourself? Would we still see others as more attractive and beautiful than ourselves? What can we do to lift one another up instead of criticizing the bodies of our fellow humans? The outside of us is variable. We can change our hair, lose or gain weight, put on make-up,wear a variety of clothing that all mask who we are. They mask our insecurities, our self-deprecation, and our disbelief in our worthiness to be accepted and loved.
Your body is unique. You get told this but we are also told that we need to be this weight, have this color of hair, whiter teeth, less buttocks, more boobs, longer legs, and a myriad of other imperfections to be corrected. But, suspend your disbelief for a moment,what if you’re designed perfectly as you are right now? What if your body is perfect? Okay, I see that some of you are sitting there thinking, are you crazy woman?! Yes, to answer that question. But even with my body not being a societal standard of beauty, I’m content in my skin.
I’m going to be working on losing weight, not because I hate my body but because I don’t want to have to tell the doctor that my Type II diabetes is flaring up any more. I want to be healthier AND content in my skin. I’ve been abusive to my body for longer than I’ve loved it and it shows. But what I see in the mirror doesn’t match my definition of myself at all. I look at myself with compassion. I say to myself out loud, “Not bad, there lady.” Or “I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to live my life.” I don’t focus so much on my body as I do on my perception and appreciation of it.
This next video is called 50 Nude Women. It is a short, lively video montage featuring hundreds of realistic images of women’s bodies. The purpose is simply to show what women’s bodies actually look like. The women in this video are not professional models. They are regular women from all walks of life who volunteered to be photographed forth is project. They range in age from 21 to 95 years old.
Margot Roth, editor & producer wrote:
“I came up with the idea for this video a number of years ago when a male friend in his mid-twenties told me he got “grossed out” by the large breasts of a woman he had started to date. (They“hung down.”) He had never seen large breasts in person, and those he had seen in pictures were for the most part, fake (i.e., standing perfectly upright despite their magnitude).
I was rather horrified that he might break up with this woman because of his unfortunate visceral reaction to her breasts, so I ran out to find some sort of resource that would show him lots of examples of natural, realistic women’s bodies. (Wasn’t sure he could get“desensitized” in a couple of days, but at least he could get a sense of actual, real breasts…)
However, I was kind of surprised when I couldn’t find a resource like that, especially since images of women’s bodies are virtually everywhere in popular culture. (And we especially love the naked ladies!—thousands of years of art history prove our fondness.)
No doubt it’s due to the inherent beauty & appeal of the female figure itself that depictions of it carry so much power: to inspire us, to transport us, and, well, to make us buy things.But now the over-idealized woman has become such a pervasive image in print,TV, and movies, that she’s begun to sink into the collective subconscious as a standard for women. That’s the unfortunate part.
In my search for a helpful reference tool that showed women’s bodies, I did find a number of photography “art” books& erotica/porn, but the images were either over stylized, over sexualized,or both…I was looking for something very simple & straightforward.
Since I work as a film editor, I thought it would be relatively easy to make a short video ‘catalogue’ that showed a variety of real women’s bodies of all ages.
So a couple years later, with the help of a lot of friends & generous people, I organized this shoot…”
Joan Brumberg, author of The Body Project, notes that the female ideal, and the pressure to achieve it, have become unrelenting. Not only are women encouraged to be thin, they are presented with a physical ideal that is diametrically opposed to the softness and curves more natural to the female body. The flip side of this experience is an ideal based upon exaggeration of male physiology. The authors of The Adonis Complex, state that hyper-muscularity has become increasingly important to men as a symbol of masculinity.
These ideals are not only biologically unattainable for most people, but downright dangerous. Just take a look at Barbie and GI Joe Extreme. If Barbie were life-sized, she’d be at 76%of a healthy body weight – a weight consistent with acute hospitalization. And GI Joe would have biceps almost as big as his waist, and bigger than most competitive body-builders!
Very few women possess the genetics to naturally produce the ultra-long, thin body type so widely promoted, and when they do, it isn’t usually accompanied by large breasts. Moreover, there are limits to how little body fat a woman can possess and still have normal hormonal functioning. Below a certain level of body fat and dietary fat, a woman’s body cannot produce the estrogen needed for ovulation and menstruation.A woman also develops a higher risk of stress fractures because normal bone breakdown is accelerated in the absence of estrogen, and osteoporosis becomes more likely.
The same thing goes for 6-pack abs and the “ripped” look being promoted to men; the ability to have very defined abdominal muscles is genetically endowed, and the hyper-muscled physique of action figures and male fitness models is impossible to achieve without illegal anabolic steroids. UCLA’s Student Nutrition Action Committee (SNAC) webpage on Body Image and Eating Disorders puts it very succinctly:
“It’s physiologically impossible to gain unlimited pounds of pure, bulging muscle mass while maintaining an ultra-lean, ripped body – even when following the “perfect” training and diet program. Once you reach your maximal muscle mass, any further gains will come from both muscle AND fat. So, men who have greater muscle mass/size tend to have higher body fat percentages as well.”
Every day, however, we are told that these unattainable bodies are normal, desirable, and achievable. We compare ourselves to these ideals and feel displeased with our bodies for being so different, and when we fail to make ourselves over in the image of these ideals, we feel even worse because we can’t seem to succeed at something so supposedly straightforward.
From a graphic:
“Hey you! Yes, you. Stop being unhappy with yourself. You are perfect. Stop wishing you looked like someone else or wishing people liked you as much as they like someone else. Stop hating your body, your face, your personality, and your quirks. Love them. Without those things, you wouldn’t be you. And why would you want to be anyone else? Be confident with who you are. Smile. It’ll draw people in. If anyone hates on you because you are happy with yourself, then you stick your middle finger in the air and say, “Screw it. My happiness will not depend on others anymore.” I’m happy because I love who I am. I love my flaws. I love my imperfections. They make me, me. And this me, is pretty amazing.”
What does your body do for you? What sort of things does your body do every day? Mine has hands that can type, massage aches, and pet my dogs and cats among many other things. My mind is rather quick witted, sees patterns that repeat, figures out solutions to problems that other people have been stumped by. I have some pretty rocking boobs, fantastic legs that carry me where I want or need to go for the most part. My arms are perfect for hugging, but not that great at swimming. My feet are as pretty as my hands and I have a fantastic smile. I love the way my eyes get bright with excitement. I love the way my nose is straight if not a bit broad, but it fits over my lips just so. I love what my body does for me.
Dustin Hoffman portrayed Michael Dorsey an unemployed male actor who dresses and lives as Dorothy Michaels, a woman who lands a leading role on a soap opera and becomes famous. In this video, Mr. Hoffman describes what it was like preparing for the role.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN ON TOOTSIE
In contrast, women are not only seen as the weaker sex, but have been objectified throughout history for their beauty. This next video called, “Women in Art,” is by Philip Scott Johnson. It was nominated as the Most Creative Video at the 2nd annual You Tube Awards. The music is Bach’s Sarabande from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, performed by Yo-Yo Ma
500 YEARS IN ART
However, throughout recent history,women are not portrayed as prettily. In fact, women have become more and more objectified. It is my firm belief that we can change this pervasive attitude towards women by starting right here, right now with a true view of the women we encounter, but particularly with ourselves.
I propose the Pinkie Swear Ideal. If you are consistently negative in your self-talk towards your body, try this for three days. It’s a small commitment. It’s three days. The pinkie finger is pretty much an extraneous limb. It doesn’t really do anything and if you lost it tomorrow, your grip and such would not, in the long term, be affected.
Look at your pinkie fingers. Pick one or both to use during this exercise.
For the next three days, whenever you look at that finger, look at it as if it were your most prized possession.Look at it with love and tenderness. Think a positive thought about that pinkie. You can say anything you’d like about any other part of your body, but that pinkie is the loveliest creation in the Universe. It’s perfection embodied in that little non-essential piece of flesh. If you think a negative thought about it, correct it out loud. “No, this is perfection, right here in my pinkie.” It’s all about the pinkie. Be compassionate to that pinkie because it’s, for three days, a crucial beauty.
Pinkie Swear that one of the very least of your body parts will be fully, totally, absolutely loved by you. Every time you notice it, love it. Every time you glance at it, think positive thoughts.
At the end of the three days, think of how easy or hard that was for you to love that small part of you. Were you able to be compassionate, kind, loving, and attentive to it?
My next three day challenge is to pick your least favorite body part. The one that if you think about it makes you cringe. It’s okay if you have several, but I’d like you to pick the one that just can’t imagine loving completely. Is it because of outside influences that you don’t like that body part/scar/health issue? Is it because of your own self telling you that it’s not worthy of your love? Why?
The only way that I’ve been able to get to a point of self-acceptance is by changing the self-talk in my head to that of positive, loving thoughts towards myself. By breaking down the individual parts that we’re constantly criticizing and changing the way we talk to ourselves, we’re beginning a revolution that begins with a Pinkie Swear to love our bodies just as they are. We can work together to see ourselves in a gentle light despite the many years of self-abuse. I discovered that by changing how I saw myself, my perception of the outside world, despite the distortions found all around via social media, advertising, and rude comments,begin to fall away. The confidence in my skin began to be who I am and it felt good to know that to myself, I am worth loving, worth the care I require, and most of all, that my skin, my body, and my appearance are perfectly human and as an end result, perfectly me.
I just read this article: RIGHT HERE. In fact, I’ve read several in the past week that were lists of this or that empowerment, strength, courage, etc. With each new one I read, I find myself thinking either I’m naive, or I am this, or I am becoming this already, or even I’ve surpassed this.
Now, I know I’m far from perfect because I know what goes on in my head and am sometimes quite surprised about what comes out of my mouth, but my curiosity lies in my blind spots. Am I seeing myself clearly? Am I measuring my self-value and self-worth accurately and if so, against what scale am I placing the measuring stick? Am I comparing myself to others? Am I looking at my previous bodies of work and realizing how far I’ve come?
I spent three months this past winter, holed up and sleeping. I called it my hibernation, but I was trying to come to terms with the loss of my identity as a mother to a boy I love deeply but whom I couldn’t protect any longer. I hid in my own thoughts, avoided contact with people unless they darkened my doorstep. I went through daily motions without passion or conviction. I spent a lot of time contemplating my own identity.
Before the boy came to live with me, I was wild, scattered, driven to succeed at nothing and everything at the same time. I lacked focus, direction, but most of all, I was missing a sense of responsibility as an anchor. I was adrift without anchor.
After he came to live with me, I gladly gave up so much of who I was that I turned into a fierce Mother Bear who defended her cub so viciously that nobody could harm him. He opened my eyes to just how much sacrifice a mother makes for her offspring. It was during this time that I realized the damage I’d caused my own mother. THIS happened.
But then, like a thief in the night, he vanished without even a goodbye. I realized, as I visited an old friend tonight, how much that still hurt, but I discovered something far more valuable.
As I was telling the story of his childish and shady betrayal, I let it go. I looked at the last six weeks of my life and realized that his leaving gave me yet another gift. It allowed me to reevaluate who I wanted to be now that I’m “grown up” (I still can’t say that with a straight face.)
I said, in my daily conversations with my ceiling, “I am a writer.” And poems, stories, articles, and slogans came gushing out of me as if in a torrent of violent overflow. Lyrics fell from my fingertips as if a different entity had taken up my pen for me. Words dripped from my pencil which allowed me to assemble my work into a Kindle BOOK. I felt astonishment, but considered it a stroke of lucky happiness, finally.
I pondered to myself out loud, talking to the ceiling, but not really. “I am an artist.” BANG! ZAP! BOOM! (Really, that was the kids playing basketball outside!) I was informed of an art gallery requesting pieces for a set up based on Identity. I submitted a couple of pieces and I was on display a few Saturday’s later. When I say that, know that one of the pieces I was showing was a nude of myself. I really mean *I* was on display! I got asked to do a solo show on June 20th in Knoxville, TN AND to give two workshops. Then I got asked to donate for a great cause pride event called Art OUT, so I’m doing that too. I was quite pleased with the success of my declaration. I find myself throwing hours and hours into writing and art.
Harm None; Watercolor/Mixed Media 8X10 $30 FOR SALE!
I spoke to my ceiling again (Yes, I know. Maybe my ceiling is magic, right? Only it happens when I’m not home too.) I said, “I really dig music. I should make some.” My friend, Professor Pudgytums in New York, sent me a pair of headphones (REALLY NICE ONES, THANK YOU!) and said, “Do it.” I made MUSIC. I’m working on a new song with the super talented Laura Davis. She calls me up and asks, “Hey, do you want to make music tomorrow?” Sure, why not. Every chance I get, I’m willing to go create.
This whole time, I’m thinking to myself. Are you sure? Are you really doing this? Are you having fun? Are you following your dreams? Are you living your passion? Are you accepting the…Let’s just say, I’m asking myself a lot of self-check questions in a day to see if I’m meeting my own personal standards and level of expected integrity for the day. Did I put in every bit of effort I could to make this world a bit better? A bit more beautiful? Okay then, carry on.
But with all the questions, I didn’t know if I had fallen off the cliff of self-identity, if I were pushed, or if I willingly had spread my wings to fly. I felt uncertainty and self-doubt start to creep in. I hate those more than I hate questions. Instead, my pastor, unbeknownst to him my questions and struggles, posted THIS LINK on his Facebook page.
“The smartest, most interesting, most dynamic, most impactful people … lived to figure it out. At some point in their lives, they realized that carefully crafted plans … often don’t hold up… Sometimes, the only way to discover who you are or what life you should lead is to do less planning and more living — to burst the double bubble of comfort and convention and just do stuff, even if you don’t know precisely where it’s going to lead, because you don’t know precisely where it’s going to lead.
This might sound risky — and you know what? It is. It’s really risky. But the greater risk is to choose false certainty over genuine ambiguity. The greater risk is to fear failure more than mediocrity. The greater risk is to pursue a path only because it’s the first path you decided to pursue.”—Daniel H Pink
Quite frankly, I’m a bit scared to talk to my ceiling again because I’m beginning to think there is a power greater than me making sure I have the best life possible. In the meantime, I’ll just keep making art, writing, drawing, dancing, laughing, and drinking copious amounts of Kawphy because that’s what writer/artist/lyricists do and I am happy doing what makes my spirit sing with wild abandon.
The Universe beckons with unlimited views, of endless possibilities, of impossible creativity
The Milky Way skitters about like a kitten, while I chat with Orion about deniable topics
I sing a new planet to life while dancing spirals around a tangerine moon
I embrace a tree that has soft pink fur and mint green fingers that hug me back tendril-ly
My body has infinite form. It is how I discovered you searching for me at just the right moment.
Just as I am immaculate in my divinity so are you in yours, together we are creators and destroyers.
Come, let’s dive into black holes to be born again and again like an eternal slip and slide
So that we can laugh with one another in the air of different worlds,
So that we can sing in languages so ancient they’ve not been invented yet
So we can make love under waterfalls of diamonds or daisies while clouds hold us aloft
Let every trouble we’ve ever known fall desolate and lonely into the darkness
Come, let’s join as one; dividing centuries with our offspring flourishing anew each season
Let’s burn rage to the ground, wash tears from our children’s eyes, breathe death to life, and fill our footprints with the petals of flowers that sprout into massive forests of lively discussion.
Let every wonder be a present of unlimited views, endless possibilities, and impossible creativity.
Life is a patchwork of moments — laughter, solitude, everyday joys, and quiet aches. Through scribbled stories, I explore travels both far and inward, from sunrise over unfamiliar streets to the comfort of home. This is life as I see it, captured in ink and memory. Stick around; let's wander together.
Mare Martell 