Getting Down To It

First one arched brow then the other
is wiped away.
The rosy shading around the eyes,
the illusion of health and beauty,
all gone in one stroke.
The padded clothing,
the long, flowing scarf,
the dangling, swinging jewelry-
all discarded.
What is left makes me afraid.
A skeleton, a shadow,
a hollow shell
without a face.
Without protection or health or sex.
Where did I go?

I wrote that last April one night after getting myself ready for bed. That's always the hardest time of day for me. I have to take my makeup off and face the truth in the mirror. The truth that I suffer from a disorder that I cannot control, a disease that has taken something away from me and left me feeling incomplete and abnormal. I can pretend all day long that I am confident, that I feel beautiful, that I am healthy. But at the end of the day I literally have to wipe it all away.

I know I'm not alone. I know we all have moments where we have to be vulnerable and face a truth we'd rather run from all day. We all have to look in a mirror at some point. But here's the thing about mirrors: they only show us what we allow them to show us. If I stand in front of my mirror with eyes squinting in criticism, lips pursed in discontent, and shoulders slumped in defeat, the truth I will see is that I have allowed my circumstances to shape my identity.

If, on the other hand, I only allow my mirror to reflect back a head held high, eyes wide open in a search for beauty, a face marked by laugh lines instead of worry ruts, I will see the truth that I have the potential to be the person I want to be. I have the ability to define myself by my accomplishments, my relationships, my purpose, and my gratitude rather than by my disappointments or seeming deficits.

Who's to say that hairlessness is a deficit? Why should wiping makeup off at the end of the day feel so dehumanizing? I have a face. I have bright eyes that can communicate a depth of feeling. I have a smile that can attract someone who needs a friend. What do eyebrows do, other than add a frame to an already expressive face? At the end of the day, I am a work of art no matter what. I have shape and color and lines and movement. When you get down to it, the things we add to enhance our "beauty" will always be wiped away or stripped off--but our essence comes through in whatever is left.

So...

First one arched brow then the other
is wiped away.
The rosy shading around the eyes,
the dark and sultry lashes
lovely yet distracting,
all gone in one stroke,
lavish blinds drawn open
letting light flood the windows to my soul.
The padded clothing,
the long, flowing scarf,
the dangling, swinging jewelry-
all is discarded.
Graceful movements of the hands and mouth
free from cumbersome trappings.
What is left makes me hopeful.
A blank canvas, a sculpture,
a newly printed page.
Full of beauty and health and humanity.
Here I am.

Curvy Girls

Once again, conversations with people and thoughts I've been having are converging nicely into a blog post topic. Nice when that works out. The topic for this blog post started brewing in my mind last Saturday, when I went to my first Zumba class. I felt really self-conscious because I was one of few "skinny chicks" there. I know, I know--I can hear you groaning, swearing at me, etc. but hear me out. I know I am supposed to be thankful for being thin, and I am, but I have always wanted to be a curvy girl. Curves are healthy, feminine and very sexy. I feel like I'm stuck in a twelve-year-old's body most of the time. When my kids try to cuddle on me, I feel like I have nothing to offer them. My daughter has actually complained before about my bony hips poking her when she tries to hug me!

Anyway, I went to this Zumba class because a friend invited me, I love to dance, and I know I need to get my heart pumping more often than I do. But when I walked in I was afraid the women would glare at me and wonder why I was in there if I obviously didn't need to lose any weight.

So that was the first time I thought about writing this post. Odd as it seems, I need to redefine beauty so that I can accept my bony shoulders, flat chest and lack of hips and see them as beautiful.

Then I started hearing more and more comments about "big women" this week. After the Grammy Awards I heard more than one person talk about Adele's beauty, and how classy she looked, and how they love how "real" she is. By "real", we all mean "not skinny". I, too, love her look. I think it's wonderful to have a woman like her on stage and in the media. I just wish it weren't so...surprising. We're so conditioned we don't even realize that by complimenting a woman like Adele on her boldness in being big, we are solidifying the dichotomy between sexiness and curves. And by curves I don't mean big breasts and swaying hips. I mean an all around largeness that includes waist, thighs and butt. Yes, I said it.

Then a friend posted this video on Facebook entitled "Courageous Beauty". I was, of course, immediately compelled to watch. The speaker, Brittany Gibbons, talked about her experience as an overweight woman and a particular event in her life that required a lot of courage. Apparently she and others stood in Times Square in their bathing suits on The Today Show (I think that's what it was...) in order to start presenting a new kind of beauty to the world at large. She said she needed to redefine beautiful so that women of all sizes could feel better about how they look rather than constantly trying to live up to impossible expectations of thinness.

Well, if you follow the link and find the video on YouTube, you'll see some pretty harsh comments about how she really isn't beautiful--she's just fat and lazy and she needs to stop showing off in her bathing suit and start developing a healthier lifestyle. Ouch.

There may be some truth in the part about being healthy. We all need to take care of ourselves. But in this society, obesity is not just a matter of laziness. We have grown up in a generation of convenience foods, a culture of sweets, and an age of depression and anxiety. No overweight woman wants to stay that way...but there are many factors that contribute to being overweight. And besides, just being thin doesn't guarantee health. So, while on the road to health, curvy girls should actually see themselves as beautiful. Are we saying that someone who is struggling with a food obsession is not beautiful, if that's the case? Thin people have addictions, too. Are we saying that being fat must equal being lazy? If you struggle with weight and you always have, how motivated are you to go into a gym with posters of thin sportswear models, TVs playing soap operas with plastic surgery models, and staff members who clearly do not need to go to a gym (or spend all their time there, one of the two)? Being overweight is not about being lazy. I'm thin, and I'm lazy. I'm weak, I waste time watching shows on Hulu, I have no lung capacity or endurance. But people tell me I'm beautiful. Based on...what?

I don't know where this is going. I guess I am supposed to appreciate being thin, even though I would really like a few voluptuous curves. Or maybe I am supposed to say "Curvy Girls, this is your time to shine!" or something equally empowering and affirming. I do want to say that, but I also don't want to be patronizing. Big women and bald women alike don't need slogans. We need to do what we can to be healthy and to see ourselves as beautiful. Convincing society that we are is a big job, but if enough of us get the confidence not to buy in to the market of packaged sexiness (one look fits all), then maybe the market will change and come to us: beauty in all shapes and sizes.

Anna Eleanor

Did you know that Eleanor Roosevelt's first name was Anna? I didn't. I also didn't know that she grew up a timid, fearful young lady who secretly longed for adventure but kept herself from it (like someone I know). I didn't even really know what she looked like. I had a vague idea, but I guess I had never thought about her much. Well tonight I finished a 700-page book called Eleanor and Franklin, by Joseph Nash. It's her story based on her personal papers and primary accounts from friends and colleagues. I learned a lot about the politics of the time (strikingly similar to the politics of now) and I really enjoyed getting to know Eleanor. But tonight I want to write about two very specific features in the book: her eyes, and her smile. They function as characters in the book, which is why I have been perusing the Internet for any and all pictures of her I can find. The thing about Eleanor Roosevelt: she was not a classic beauty:

Her mouth was described as "unfortunate", her chin was "receding" and her teeth "overly prominent". Her mouth is definitely something she was remembered for, both in terms of physical appearance as we look back on pictures and in terms of her outspokenness for the rights of women, children, workers and minorities (although this came much later in her life). Her eyes, though, were "soft", "serene", and a piercing blue, which we can't tell from the pictures. Countless people in the book were taken in by her eyes.

She married a good-looking, flirtatious, and ambitious man who chose her for her steadfastness and sensibility--and then found more feminine charms elsewhere. In fact, FDR's infidelity (which I also didn't know about) is one of two life-changing "events" that made Eleanor the activist she became. Until then, she lived in the shadow of her own insecurities first, then in that of her mother-in-law. She didn't actually begin to push herself into the adventures she had always shied away from until she was in her mid-thirties, as far as I can tell. (By the way, the other major life-changing event was the polio that confined FDR to a wheelchair, forcing Eleanor to represent him in politics while he was undergoing rehab therapies.) Eleanor knew she wasn't the "belle of the ball", but she lived in a way that made people fall in love with her despite the way her genes fell into place. She lived every day with the desire to be of service to her country and to people who needed her. She was tireless in her efforts to make things better for people who were struggling. It sounds trite--and I really am not doing her accomplishments justice. I don't have 700 pages to write about them all. All I can say is that she was beautiful. And she is exactly the type of woman we need to be reintroduced to today. I want to see an Eleanor Roosevelt Barbie. I want to see a role model that reflects a strong mind, a compassionate heart, and a body that can keep up with the demands of a world in need. What do you think when you see a picture of Eleanor Roosevelt?

I think she redefines beauty. Get to know her for yourself.

Picture Perfect (or, a Picture of Perfect Health)

The denomination to which my church belongs puts out a magazine, and this month's issue is all about seeing weakness as a strength. I have been thinking about this in terms of "beauty". One of the hardest things about losing my hair is looking sick, when I'm actually quite healthy. Hair is a sign of health, and the absence of hair usually means the presence of illness. And that makes people uncomfortable. It doesn't feel like a strength to have the essence of my femininity be missing from the face I see in the mirror. This week some dear friends lost their baby boy, Drake. He lived for 3 days. Looking at the pictures they posted of him, he looked so...healthy. He had perfect little fingers, a cute button nose, all the things a beautiful newborn baby is "supposed" to have. The problem was with his heart, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the pictures. It was heartbreaking to look at him and try to wrap my head around the fact that this perfect-looking body had a weakness that could not be surmounted. Where did the phrase "a picture of health" come from anyway? No one is in perfect health, physically or emotionally. Why do we feel the need to project images of health? Yes, of course it's normal to desire good health. That's the way it should be. Drake's passing was so hard to accept because, truthfully, we know that babies should not die. We know that tragedies should not happen. Drake's passing, though hard, was a precious moment inhabited by love and surrounded with prayer. That beautiful moment highlighted, for me, the dark reality that babies and children are dying by the hour all around the world--and that should not happen. We know this. But we want to see a different reality on a daily basis, a picture perfect world where health is in and illness is out of sight, out of mind. In my ESL reading class at Loyola we are reading Lois Lowry's The Giver. In this dystopian novel, we see a community where sexual desires are "treated" with pills that suppress natural thoughts and urges. This led to a group discussion about how our society tries to manage and control things like hyperactivity, anxiety and depression with medication. We don't want to be confronted with illness, weakness or deviance. We want to convince ourselves that life is essentially safe by avoiding the sights that remind us how messy and fragile life actually is. This post is not meant to make anyone feel guilty. This blog is dedicated to the idea that we can and should begin viewing ourselves and our world differently. If we can't yet see beauty in tragedy and weakness, at least we can push ourselves into closer encounters with people who do not present us with a picture of perfect health. Then we can begin to discover the beauty in suffering as it helps us to see God showing himself through community.

Bald Barbie?

So I have been half-heartedly following this story about a bald Barbie being put out by Mattel. Apparently the Barbie doll has quite an impact on little girls and what they aspire to, and girls with no hair feel less-than-pretty in comparison to the shelves full of painted faces and long blonde locks. Who knew? Well I have put my support behind the idea. Not only for girls in chemotherapy, but also for girls with alopecia, girls with friends who have no hair, girls with moms who have no hair, boys who walk down the toy aisle and see what "pretty" is supposed to look like, etc. etc. There is some controversy though. Some people feel that little girls who have cancer don't need to be pandered to with a plastic doll, while girls who don't have cancer don't need to be scared by seeing bald Barbies. I think we can look a little more broadly. I don't mean to say that the issue of children with cancer is too small--obviously, it's a huge issue that deserves a lot of attention. But the Barbie doll issue gets me thinking about the larger issue of how we see each other. Whether it's feeling scared by seeing baldness, feeling sorry for people who don't have hair, or telling a bald girl to "Rock it!", we recognize that there is an accepted, agreed upon standard of "beauty" and people who don't meet that standard are left to strive for it or desire it. When I think about it, maybe I shouldn't support the bald Barbie. Maybe I shouldn't support Mattel's Barbie at all! Now, I have family members who work for Mattel and I think any toy company has the potential to make a lot of children very, very happy. Nothing wrong with that. But the idea of the Barbie doll itself is what angers me a little. A doll with an impossibly proportioned body, designer clothes and gaudy makeup? For little girls? I decided to look into the history of the Barbie doll. From what I can see, the Barbie doll was and has been intended to be a reflection of the fashion trends of the times. But this is circular, because Barbie also sets trends. At the very least, girls see Barbie as someone they want to look like. So I think a bald Barbie is a step in the right direction. Let's get some different looks on the shelves so we can start to normalize the fact that standards of beauty are most often unattainable by the general public, at least without cosmetic help. Normalizing differences--there's a concept. I welcome your comments.

(picture found at http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/01/18/american-cancer-society-blogger-apologizes-for-bald-barbie-flub/)