The Girl Revolution » Girl Culture

Beauty Confession

Tracee — Fri, 21 May 2010 16:24:29 +0000

I have a confession to make. . .

I think I’m beautiful.

Because I am.

I honestly can’t comprehend why women hate their bodies, their faces, their hair, their boobs, the minuscule details that they pick apart in the mirror.

I’ve tried to get it. But, I don’t. Maybe that’s a good thing.

I think I’ve made a conscious choice. I think there have been a lot of influences that have convinced me I am beautiful, hot, attractive, etc. Many of those influences have been men. Many of them have been women.

When I was in 7th grade, I was in a carpool and I was sitting on a 9th grade girl’s lap (the car was very full) and she said, “You have the perfect thighs. They aren’t too big or too small. They are just perfect.” I considered her super-beautiful and beyond cool. So I took the compliment, figured she was probably telling the truth and just accepted that my thighs are perfect. Until that moment I hadn’t given my thighs a thought. I still feel pretty good about them.

Over the course of my 15 year dating career, I was told by boys and men that I “had the perfect breasts,” one man even said, “those will never sag because of their unique shape.” I still believe to this day that my breasts are perfect. The sagging is minimal. Perhaps because that man was right or perhaps because I accepted his statement as prophetic and my body, happily, didn’t feel the need to disappoint me or prove him wrong.

My thick blond hair, my beautiful blue eyes, my tanned skin, my ass, my bow lips and even my feet have received compliments.

I don’t reject these complements, I never did. I accepted them as true, and as I age, I still consider them true. I’m happy to see most of these features appear in my son and daughter. Lucky DNA.

Of course, others in my family share the exact same DNA, the exact same lovely features, and still choose to hate and criticize them.

Through childbirth and aging, I’ve had some weight issues. OK. But, as I lose weight, I’m realizing that I don’t feel pressure – social or cultural – to be more beautiful. I feel social and cultural pressure to be less beautiful, to criticize my body or my looks, to downplay my beauty and to say it’s unimportant or irrelevant or ridiculous or that the truth about me is that I am not beautiful no matter what compliment you give me.

Why?

To make the other women who feel bad about themselves feel better about themselves.

Which, I admit, I tried to do.

I acknowledge that the extra weight protected me from two things I genuinely needed protection from as I transitioned into the roles of marriage and motherhood: the criticism of other women and the unwelcome advances of men.

Except when I was overweight and not claiming my beauty I noticed that it had absolutely zero effect on whether other women felt beautiful or not.

Last year I had an incredible experience at a self-improvement workshop. We played a game where we sat across from a total stranger. We didn’t even know their names. We knew nothing about who they were or what their issues were or their families or jobs. Nothing. Except what we could see.

Then we were told to be harshly critical and tell the other person what we really thought about them.

I was very uncomfortable with this exercise because I did not know this other woman at all. I didn’t want to criticize a stranger and would have preferred to say something kind about her. I wasn’t sure this exercise was going to be useful or helpful.

She said to me a paraphrase of this: ”You’re cold and untouchable. You’re fake and phony and mean and shallow.”

What?

I think I said to her a paraphrase of this: “You’ve given up. You’re a victim. You’re not trying. You’ve put up boundaries.”

Based on?

I was wearing my nicest jeans and favorite shirt, my favorite red scarf, bold earrings, make up and I had recently had my hair done. I had put my best self forward for the first day of an unknown and honestly frightening experience.

She was wearing sweat pants, an ill-fitting shirt, her hair was unkept and in a pony tail, sneakers, and had not bothered to take care of some unfortunate facial hair.

My take-away from the experience was this: how I felt when she said those things was not a new feeling. It was a very, very familiar feeling. She felt inferior sitting next to me. She felt angry about that. I was representative of all the girls in high school who she had felt less beautiful and less worthy than.

I asked myself after that experience, “Tracee, how many years have you been fat or played down who you are and tried to gloss over and hide your true beauty to gain the acceptance of women like her? How many women have you allowed to be mean to you and diminish your value as a smart beautiful woman because she felt bad about herself?”

And the honest answer was a lot of years. In some ways, my whole life.

So what is the point of playing small if it’s not even going to make them feel great about themselves?

I recently saw a statistic that only 2% of women would describe themselves as beautiful. It was on that Jessica Simpson show, The Price of Beauty.

The “price of beauty,” in some ways is the contempt of other women.

I see it in my friends who have lost weight and been subjected to harsh criticism from coworkers and family members and friends. When they hit a normal BMI people call them anorexic or skin and bones and unhealthy. I’ve experienced it myself.

Logically I know that way more than 2% of women actually are beautiful. Yet, only 2% of them believe it.

I believe they’re beautiful, but when I tell them so, they insist that I am wrong. Or they insist that beauty is unimportant, trivial or a harmful influence of the culture and the unreachable and unrealistic beauty ideal.

I am beautiful.

I wish you felt beautiful too. I genuinely do.

But, if you don’t, that absolutely doesn’t give you carte blanche to be a mean girl and try to make me feel bad about myself to somehow make yourself feel better.

I hope, my daughter doesn’t cave to the pressure of feeling less beautiful than she inherently is. I hope she accepts compliments. I hope she feels beautiful. Because she is. Just like her mother.

30 Years of Learning To Avoid Girl Drama?

Tracee — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:29:30 +0000

Ainsley comes home nearly every day with a story about girl drama on the play ground.

It’s a long, drawn-out story about she said, then she said and I didn’t do anything and she’s lying so she can break up our friendship.

You know this story.

I wish I had a winning strategy to deal with this kind of nonsense.

But, I don’t.

My best strategy is to not hang out with mean girls and girls who like drama.

Except, it took me something like 34 years to be able to identify and avoid all the drama games girls can play. Am I a slow learner or does it take all girls and women this long to figure out girls’ very complex, nuanced, social games?

Currently, I have an amazing group of girl friends who don’t feed on drama.

But as late as last year, I was struggling with guilt over abandoning a person who had been toxic to my life for 17 years. I tended toward ridiculous amounts of loyalty. I see the same tendency in my sweet daughter.

I also tended towards ridiculous amounts of generosity in the face of takers masquerading as friends. Then my feelings were hurt when they kept being who they are – takers – and never returned my pattern of giving. I see the same tendency in my generous daughter. Just the other day, she was contemplating letting her best friend in class pass her in reading points so she wouldn’t feel bad. Do not do this, I told her. You always do your best. Your friend can try harder if she wants to be the best reader. You do not quit to let other people win. I want to see your friend do well. But, you don’t do less than your best for friends or boyfriends just so they can feel good.

How many years was I fat so other people wouldn’t feel bad standing next to me? I ask myself.

I attempt to hand-down the benefit of my very hard-won girls lessons to my daughter. Obviously, I’m wishing I could spare her some pain and heartache.

Ainsley will say something like, “_____ said her cousin, _____, doesn’t really like me.”

I’ll say, “Usually when a girl tells you another girl doesn’t like you, then the first girl is trying to hurt your feelings or keep your friendship to herself for some reason. She’s causing drama. Maybe she’s not really your friend.”

Then Ainsley gets upset – with me – for saying something bad about drama-causing girl #1 and making her feel disloyal to her true friend. This is sometimes followed by a lecture from daughter to mother about how her friend is “the nicest girl in the world and one of her best friends.”

What is your strategy for helping your daughter distinguish between the mean girls and the drama-makers and her true friends?

Teen Girls Aren’t As Stupid As I Thought

Tracee — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:00:01 +0000

Teen girls aren’t as stupid as I thought. I know, this is a totally pro-girl website. That doesn’t meant I think girls are always the smartest. Sometimes — especially when boys and men are involved — girls can be quite stupid. Myself included. Hell, historically, myself mostly.

I’ve been subbing at the high school and junior high this year. It’s pretty fun. I adore teenagers. I’m a freak like that. I’ll take a classroom of teens over a gaggle of snotty toddlers that want to cuddle with me any day.

Their regular teacher warned me that this class was really, really bad and that they couldn’t be trusted not to talk if I even let them whisper and she wanted names of anyone who uttered so much as a whisper and she would dully punish them.

Uh ok.

The whole not talking thing struck me as stupid when I was in junior high. It still does.

I went back to reading the 3rd book in the Twilight Series, Eclipse. What I won’t do for The Girl Revolution, caught off guard with nothing to read, with access to a junior high library.

If you’ve been here before you know that I hate the Twilight Series because I think Bella is the stupidest girl character on the Planet Earth. But, whatever, at least girls are reading. Who cares if they’re reading training material for being a battered girlfriend?

That teacher was so right. As soon as the girls saw what I was reading they started talking about Twilight. This is, after all, THE girl-culture phenomenon of their time. They couldn’t escape it if they wanted to. Everyone’s talking about it, everyone has seen the movies, read the books, bought the branded accessories and school supplies.

Bella is so stupid! one girl said.

Really? How so? I said, totally shocked.

She wants to die. Don’t you think that’s stupid? they said.

Yeah, I think it’s stupid, but I thought girls thought it was romantic, I said.

No, she’s totally stupid. She goes for Edward and he’s totally ugly! they said.

In the book he’s not ugly, he’s the most beautiful man in entire history of mankind, well vampirekind! I argued.

In the movie he’s ugly and pasty. Jacob is sooo hot! they declared.

One girl pulled out a photo of Jacob. He’s hot.

So, you don’t think it’s romantic to give up everything and die for a boy? I asked.

No way! I don’t want to die! Why would you want to die? Would you want to die with an ugly man? they asked.

I hate to break it to you, but most of you will probably die with ugly men. Look around ladies, this is as good as boys get, eventually they are old and bald and pot-bellied, I said. I’m sorry I can’t help myself. The truth pops out of my mouth before I can stop it sometimes.

They looked around shocked and laughed.

One of the boys said something like, Twilight is so stupid.

To which I responded, Smart boys will read it so they know what girls want. Otherwise they’ll constantly be wondering how come they disappoint their girlfriends.

Seriously, you don’t want to give up your whole life, your whole family, your ability to have children, college, careers and all that for a boy? I asked them. I thought perhaps I might cry with relief.

No way! Besides, she should have gone with Jacob, he’s way hotter, they said.

That settles it. There is hope for the future of girls in spite of trashy-romance-novels-turned-propaganda-for-eternal-marriage.

In fact, now that I think about it, it makes those girls smarter than lots of women I know. At least for now, while it remains hypothetical.

Female Bias

Tracee — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:00:14 +0000

“The bias came from an unlikely source — female reviewers.”

This is from a report on Politics Daily about our collective bias against females.

Is it an unlikely source? Really?

Think back on your life. Is it really shocking that other women are holding women back? Who was harsher on Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton?

Men? Not nearly as vicious, in my opinion.

Who’s been your worst boss ever?

A man? A woman.<——-

Maybe they’re all just better. At everything. Men, I mean.

“So despite the Post’s good intentions, this “democratization [did] not guarantee impartiality,” according to Rouse, “because favorites could still be identified” by photo, name and resume.”

News Flash you will, and I will, and all girls will, be favored or not based on our photo, name and resume.

The Washington Post chose a male to compliment its 78% male columnist roster as America’s Next Great Pundit. There’s only 12% of women represented in PunditLand. The Washington Post and its readers chose a man. It’s readers chose a man.

The whole freaking world just likes men more than women, boys more than girls. Dispite all the murder, violence, war and rape – we still like what they have to say better. It is the way it is. They must be better at everything, all evidence points to it.

What can be done?

Brick Walls

Tracee — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:00:49 +0000

There appear to be a great many still-existing Brick Walls in front of girls and women. Take this article Guys Still Hog Role of Intellectual Heavy Weight, which examines my professional frustrations.

My own Brick Wall is generally in the form of The Family Budget. Sometimes I, unfairly, imagine my husband as the guard dog protecting the wall.

When we come on brick walls we need to ask ourselves some questions and teach our daughters to do that same:

Scale it?

Have someone give me a lift?

Hack away at it little by little?

Tunnel under it?

Go around it?

Jump over it?

Chisel a hole through it?

Bomb it with dynamite?

Melt it?

Deconstruct it?

Remove it?

Climb it?

Who can help me get over it?

Who can I take with me?

You get the picture.

Rethink your Brick Walls.

(Image here)

The Work/Mothering Cohesiveness of Sarah Palin