Last year I wrote a post about Jess Weiner’s body issues. I feel bad about it. I want to apologize and make amends. Jess Weiner’s body issues are Jess Weiner’s body issues. They are her issues whether she chooses to talk about them in public or private. My point could have been made without calling her out directly. Or I could have let the point go.

I don’t normally call people out personally, even if they are famous. I think it’s an international cop-out “they’re famous so they signed up for the entire world to say whatever they want about them.” No they didn’t. They’re famous and they are people and the entire world just uses this justification to allow their mean flag to fly.

This is one of the most effective ways we silence girls and women, especially politically and in important social activism roles. I’ve often thought that I’d make a good politician with effective with out-of-the-box thinking and lots of new ideas. But, I love myself and my children too much to go through the insane nonsense that we put politicians, especially female politicians, through in this country.

Oh, you made gang-bang porn with a Sarah Palin look-a-like? Hilarious! You forwarded a Photoshopped photo of Sarah Palin in a bikini carrying a semi-automatic weapon at a pool party to a billion people? So funny! Well, she did disagree with your politics and your sense of social right. She deserved it. (Yeah, not so hilarious. Really. Disgusting and disrespectful to all women is more like it.)

You’re a horrible mother!

You’re too fat!

You’re too skinny!

I can’t believe someone would marry you!

She’s a practicing Witch!

She’s a whore!

A woman would have to grow emotional armor the thickness of a T-Rex in order to withstand, to willingly subject themselves and their families, to this kind of treatment for being willing to serve . . . from other women who are supposedly on their own side (in their own political party or of their own social activist realm or religious denomination or whatever group or category a woman tries to make headway in).

So, to Jess Weiner, I’m making a public apology because I made public my criticism.

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Since I had the babies and have been on a journey to get back to my optimal weight by improving my lifestyle, learning to love exercise and eating consciously and intuitively I’ve learned a lot about my body. Since getting a thyroid condition and gaining the weight back it has occurred to me that there are two things about weighing 125 pounds – my goal weight – that scare the crap out of me and which I have a bunch of left-over negative feelings about.

1. The way other women treated me when I was thin. In general, when I was thin, I made very few new female friends. Women would call me “intimidating.” They would often be downright mean to me. I had several coworkers and bosses who took such an instant, vicious disliking to me that they made my life a hell whenever I had to interact with them. Fat girls, especially one in particular, would be especially cruel to me saying backhanded things about how “if they looked like me they would be married to millionaires” or “their life would be perfect, so they didn’t know what my problem was, why I was having all these normal problems with men.” (hint: because much of the male population treats women like shit, all the more so if they are thin and pretty.) Often other women, especially my fat friend, would sleep with my boyfriend or have phone sex with my lover and use excuses like, “but I’m fat, you don’t know what it’s like, I feel so bad about my body, I had to prove that I could get him too.” Sadly, it took me far too many years to finally ditch said friend and leave her to her big fat excuses. Since gaining 30 pounds I find that women are 1,000 times nicer to me, they approach me, they ask me to lunch, they don’t refuse my own overtures of friendship. I guess I am less intimidating. They don’t feel it necessary to tell me they “hate me” for being thin. I have far more female friendships than I did when I was thin and I like it. It’s more fun for me. A part of me wonders if I will be sacrificing my approachability if I go back to being thin. I don’t think I’d be okay with that.

2. When I was thin men treated me like their plaything. Not all men. But enough to make me wary of going through it again. During my thin years I was flashed by a drive-by masterbater, a movie-theater masterbater sat next to me, raped by a supposed friend while I was asleep, sexually harassed at every job I ever had from blatant comments like “I want to do you in the snow” from a 40-year-old married dude when I was 16 (he was not fired when reported, but they did move him across the aisle – generous of them huh?) to being fondled by a dirty old man as a waitress for $3 tips (yeah, I took him to court and lost and it was humiliating), catcalled about every time I walked down the street, men tried to pick me up and offer me money for sex when was waiting for buses, fondled and molested at every straight dance club I ever walked into, stalked and kidnapped by a boyfriend I broke up with and knocked around by a boyfriend who could overpower me. I could go on. Most girls have an experience like this to share. But, this many? Whether or not this was directly related to me being thin, I associate this type of male attention with being thin, mainly because when I gained 30 pounds the behavior stopped. Men stopped giving me all their abusive attention. And it was a relief. A huge relief. I’m not anxious to go back to that treatment. I make jokes and tell my body, “Don’t worry dear, the wrinkles around your eyes and your laugh lines will serve the same purpose as the 30 pounds.” But, I don’t think my body believes me, so she hangs onto the extra 30 pounds no matter what I eat or how much exercise I do.

In order to be thin, I have to release my fear of being thin again and risk women hating me and men treating me like their entertainment. Am I ready?

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This is a thyroid. Notice how it is shaped like a butterfly. A butterfly is a symbol of transformation. It has lived a life as caterpillar then wound itself tightly into a cocoon and rested, then broke free, morphing itself with incredible amounts of energy, though it looked as if it was doing nothing but lying dormant for a long time, and then one day it stretched its wings and broke free of its confines; expanding itself to its full capacity with its peacock blue and vibrant orange magnificent wingspan, lifting off, fluttering on the currents of wind, landing on whatever pretty flowers or far flung limbs, high mountains or glassy lakes it likes.

Notice too that this organ is located on the throat, where the voice, the epitome of expression emits itself. Where we sing from and speak from, where we make ourselves heard from. Where we choose or not, to say what we have to say and where we allow our thoughts to come out from inside ourselves to be broadcast into the world; to be criticized or praised. We scream from here, we laugh from here, we hum a tune from here and when we do this place in our throat vibrates in a way that makes our souls heal from pain, sorrow and grief in a transformative way that is miraculous and holy. When we are infants the sounds we make are primal crying, cooing and laughing. Through our lives we cry from here; guttural sobs, whimpers, gasps of fear, whimpers of humiliation, all of it passes through this space. Every sound of emotion we have for our entire lives, really, passes through this space in our bodies. Every sound we hold back stops here. Notice too that when we are sad or “fighting back tears” this is the exact place that we get “choked up” or experience a “lump in our throat.” The breath of life, water, food, all nourishment passes here. All swallowing. The thyroid is a miraculous and symbolic part of our body. When it goes too slow, we are holding something back.

It was my alarm that my weight was climbing drastically fast that made me march into the doctors office and demand that my thyroid, which had been a minor problem before, be tested again. Alarm isn’t really the right word: FURY is the one. It turns out I have hypothyroidism. My thyroid is running slow. It is sluggish. Blocked. Not expressing itself quickly enough. The thyroid gland largely controls the hormones of your endocrine system. It also effects your blood sugar system, your brain chemistry, your energy levels, your ability to control your body temperature, your circulation, your ability to think with clarity, your ability to sleep, your metabolism.

Essentially your thyroid controls your emotions.

What interests me about my hypothyroidism is the message my body has for me here, right now. If you’ve read the work of Louise Hay or Dr. Christiane Northrup you too know that the mind, body and spirit are intensely connected, that when the body is out of whack or malfunctioning it is sending you a message, “Hey you, listen to me, I have something important to tell you from your deep, wise Spirit, from the Universe. If you don’t listen, you will get sicker. If you listen and act, you will heal.”

In Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life  for thyroid: Humiliation. Belief: I never get to do what I want. Affirmation: I move beyond old limitations and now allow myself to express freely and creativity. Hypothyroid: Giving up. Feeling hopelessly stifled. Affirmation: I create a new life with new rules that totally support me.

In Northrup’s Women’s Body’s, Women’s Wisdom she points out that the thyroid has to do with one’s will, are you begin too willful or overly compliant? It is a fifth-chakra issue and hypothyroidism often has to do with women who often have difficulty speaking up for themselves, holding their own point of view, may have overly soft voices, and have difficulty making themselves heard.  

This is what I know about my hypothyroidism: My thyroid is tell me “Hey Tracee, there is something you’re not saying that you need to say. You’re afraid. Say it anyway. Or you will be sick from not expressing it. From not saying it.”

My purpose on this Earth is to write; to express; to create with words; to create change with the power of my words. It is my Super Power. There are things that I alone was put on this Earth to say. No one else can say them in the way that I can say them and they MUST be said. When I say them, I am freed. I am the butterfly. When I don’t I have confined in the cocoon, stifled, restricted. I want to be the vibrant blue and orange butterfly!

Finish the book!

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Angelina, "the most beautiful woman in the world" with her daughters

The Internet is inundated with criticism about media’s responsibility for girls and women’s body image these days. With the proposed Self Esteem Act, which demands responsibility of both government and media, and well-meaning, do-gooding, activist, pro-girl and pro-woman websites and non-profit organizations sprouting up like spring flowers all over the web.

I have to say I don’t like the tone of the general conversation. I also have to cop to having participated quite extensively in the things that I now see as a major misperception in the conversation. So, first I’ll say there is a place in the conversation for many perspectives and my former perspective came from a pure place of helping and it was how I genuinely felt at the time. I know it is coming from a pure place in the other pro-female, girl empowerment, positive body image websites as well. Many, many of these women and organizations do great work and help a great many people on their path to a positive body image.

Still, I have an issue with the direction in which the conversation is going. Let me explain my perspective.

It is disempowering to hand over so much power to media, advertising, marketing and corporations. Corporations and Photoshopped advertising do not have the power to decide or influence how I feel about my body. Because I have not handed my power over to them. I do not look at pretty photos of other skinny girls and women and think, “I am ugly because I don’t look like her.” That does not serve me. I’m perfectly happy with what I’ve got to work with. I have a positive body image. Because I choose to.

Definition: Body Image is how you feel about your body. 

Thus, it follows that body image is in only YOUR control. You’re the only one who has any power whatsoever to change it or influence it or focus on it or feel good about it or trash it in front of the mirror. These are choices you are making.

I’m reading statements that are ultimately disempowering to women and girls because they set women and girls up for inevitable failure. I’ll keep the statements anonymous because my intention is not to call out any one particular group.

 “Marie Claire asks its readers: “what will it take for you to love yourbody?” Uhhhh I don’t want to be a downer, Marie Claire, but it will probably involve magazines like yours getting rid of super-photoshopped models/ads and “GET YR BODY BIKINI READY” and “FREEZE YOUR FAT OFF” headlines, just sayin’. Does this seem disingenuous to anyone else?” 

The reason this is disempowering is that it ultimately sets girls and women up for successfully feeling good about themselves only if “magazines like yours get rid of super-photoshopped models/ads and various body-negative headlines.” Which is a fine and dandy dream but — IT IS NEVER EVER GOING TO HAPPEN. This is the United States of America and Marie Claire makes money off these body-negative headlines and images and they have a Constitutional right to do it. Congress is not going to change this. The President is not going to change this. We believe in Freedom of Speech and advertising and media is a form of that First Amendment.  They will continue to use negative body talk and edited Photography until it stops making them money, so indefinitely. Screaming into the Universe about the unfairness and wrongness of this may feel good, but it is essentially futile. Let’s say Marie Claire suddenly decides it can make more by going body positive — fine, then there’s still Cosmo, Cosmo Girl, People, tabloids, Glamour and on and on.

Fundamentally, women are responsible for the existence of these magazines and this type of advertising. Men don’t choose to buy these magazines or the products that have been sexualize, but targeted to women and girls. Women do. One has to wonder, if it makes them feel so damn bad about themselves, why they keep buying these rags? But the tragic fact remains that they do and that’s the sole reason that these magazines continue with this strategy. If women stop buying, they will change and not a minute before.

Because the drastic altering of American capitalism that women and girl advocates are demanding and dreaming of is never going to happen, and you’ve just declared that you can’t feel good about your body — and girls in general can’t feel good about their bodies — without this condition being met by entities entirely out of our control, you’ve just handed your power over the feelings about your own body to corporate America. “Here you go, you can control how I feel about me indefinitely and I’ll just keep screaming about how unfair it is,” is the true message. It’s powerless. It’s destructive. Handing over responsibility for one’s feelings or believing you have control over another’s feelings is a false believe and it sets girls and women up for all sorts of relationship disfunction, abuse, coercion, drug and alcohol addiction, eating disorders, poor self esteem, negative body image and bad choices. This is one of the core issues I deal with in Love Distortion: Belle, Battered Codependent and Other Love Stories.

“Standards of beauty have always existed. Beauty will continue to exist. It’s not beauty that’s the problem. It’s our commercialized culture’s obsession with peddling a narrow, one-dimensional and unrealistic image beauty that is used as the sole measure of a woman’s worth that torments and teases girls + women into reducing their aspirations + goals to a dress size or numbers on a scale.” 

This is another comment that disempowers women and girls because it hands our own personal power, a completely integral power innate to each individual, to “commercialized culture’s obsession with peddling a narrow, one-dimensional and unrealistic image beauty that is used as the sole measure of a woman’s worth that torments and . . . yada yada yada”

Really? In your everyday life are you looking at magazines and advertising and deciding that your worth is about one-dimensional beauty? Does looking at magazines, Internet and television really torment you and change the way you feel about your body and make you decide that you can’t be a lawyer, doctor or scientist? Really? Goodness, perhaps you should tune in to Oprah’s Lifeclass and figure out how to resolve these issues. I find the whole idea that media has this kind of power over our individual feelings about ourselves extremely disempowering and very minimizing to the authentic and powerful tenacity of girls and women.

Tracee & Ainsley, the two most beautiful women in our world

I also find it extremely removed from my reality and my daughter’s reality. Extremely removed from the reality of every woman I’ve ever met, truly. My daughter doesn’t feel one-dimensional because Hannah Montana and Demi Lovato are pretty and Photoshopped in magazines. Nor does has she decided she’ll just be a shop clerk because she saw too many minimizing Photoshopped photos of pretty, thin girls. These things don’t torment and tease her. They don’t torment and tease me.

Why? Because we aren’t defining ourselves from the outside. We are defining ourselves from the inside. If a person defines themselves from the outside they are screwed, tossed around by every person’s opinion, every fad or trend, every marketing ploy. That is something women and girls, humans in general, need to work on. Self image an inside job. It’s difficult work, fraught with confronting the ego, but no one else can do it for you.

My daughter and I are filtering craptastic media out of our lives so they have little influence, that’s huge. (Girl and women advocates are saturating themselves in the worst of it and it’s skewing their perception of the issue.) My daughter and I are deciding that it feels better to accept a compliment as truth instead of refusing one out of false modesty. We are choosing to accept our bodies and choosing to treat them kindly. We are not handing our individual power to feel great about who we are and what we look like to anyone else, especially not the soulless media.

To do such a thing is well, quite simply, stupid. Don’t you want to keep the power over how you feel about your body and who you are for yourself? As your personal domain? Because, guess what? You have complete and total dominion over your own self esteem and body image and it’s not that complicated, it’s not rocket science. Most of it, almost all of it, is just habit. You either build self esteem-building habits or self esteem-destroying habits. You choose. Because its yours. It doesn’t belong to the media and it never will. You Choose.

To be clear, women and girls have every right and obligation to stand up to advertising that diminishes and sexualizes women and girls, reducing them to objects. It is intentional and it’s not fair and it is wrong. But, I’m a big believer in language. God created the entire Universe with words. They are enormously powerful. There is a world of difference between saying “I don’t like your advertising and I’m not going to buy your product and I’m going to flex my considerable muscles to influence as many people as I can to join me in not buying your product until your advertising improves,” than saying “I can’t feel good, and girls in general can’t feel good, unless you change your advertising.” The first statement is powerful and it will make a difference with enough powerful women’s and girl’s positive energy behind it. The second statement is so disempowering it can only increase poor body image.

Lastly, on a Spiritual note: that which you focus on expands. It’s a Universal Spiritual Law. Maybe its time to reevaluate what you really want to expand in this great Universe of ours.

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This is real beauty. You have been blessed. What you see in the mirror is real. Other people will notice you. Beauty is an asset that will provide you with opportunities. Be grateful for it, but realize that it’s not your only asset.

You were also blessed with brains, intelligence, a sense of humor, creativity, a thirst for knowledge, kindness, love, compassion and many other unique gifts. These assets will provide you with more opportunities as you pursue your ambitions and passions. 

Confidence is sexy. Brilliance is sexy. Intelligence is sexy. A sense of humor is sexy. Knowing who you are is sexy. Being comfortable in your own skin is sexy. 

—excerpted from Ainsley, Wonder Years by Tracee Sioux

Evidently, I am the only girl advocate on the Internet who thinks the Self Esteem Act, which is supposedly going to make its way to Congress is a stupid waste of time. The Self Esteem Act is a “truth in advertising act,” a bill attempting to force advertisers to put a tiny little sentence admitting they use Photoshop on photographs in advertising — which is also somehow going to “save girls’ self esteem.” Google it. Everyone is simply head-over-heals crazy in love with this idea. It’s supposedly going to make such an impact on how girls feel about themselves and prevent eating disorders and solve all these body issues that the media causes with their evil ways of making women look too thin and too pretty (and girls are too stupid to be aware of Photoshop you know).

Personally, I think it’s going to cost a great deal of effort and have no impact at all. Let me explain why.

• The government is not responsible for the self esteem of anyone. Period.
• Media, marketing, advertisers and corporations are not responsible for the self esteem of anyone either. Period.
• You and only you are responsible for your own personal self esteem. Your mother is not responsible. Your husband is not responsible. Your boyfriend is not responsible. Your best friend is not responsible. Body Image is the relationship you have with your body and your image in the mirror. Self esteem is the relationship you have with who you are. It is your responsibility alone. If it brings you pain, then you bring your own pain. If it brings you joy, then you bring your own joy. Deal with it, either way.
• Maybe you’ve noticed, but no one in Congress can agree on a single thing. What in the world makes you think they are all going to huddle up and say, “Oh the girls. Yeah, we won’t force corporations to give women equal pay, but let’s force these same corporations to put a tiny disclaimer on their advertising copping to using Photoshop. Why didn’t we think of that Ladies?”
• There are bigger fish to fry in this country right now. In other words, I personally, and a lot of unemployed Americans might agree with me here, believe there are a lot more important issues that Congress should focus on — unemployment and job creation, tax equality, a world economy on the brink of collapse, hundreds of thousands of mortgages that are underwater or in foreclosure, people drowning in debt. You know, things a tad more significant than whether you’re looking in the mirror and saying, “I hate my thighs,” no matter how many times I’ve advised you to stop doing that.
• As Tina Fey says in her brilliant book, Bossy Pants, no one under 80 doesn’t know that advertising is Photoshopped. In fact, tweens and teenagers are better at using Photoshop than Photoshop artists employed by magazines. Why do people presume that kids are idiots who don’t understand computers? They come out of the womb Internet Savy. It is WE who find this shit shocking and have to wrap our brains around it, not them.

There are actually things that DO work that take a lot less effort than trying to get Congress to pass a lame bill that’s never going to make a dent in anyone’s self esteem.

• MOM — Mothers have, and will always have the biggest influence on their daughters. Don’t believe me — try to get your mother’s voice out of your head. I’m 38 and have been unable to accomplish this. If you’re 60 or 80 you have been unable to accomplish this. So, make good use of it. Tell your daughter she’s beautiful. Tell her she’s got a great body.
• If you’re a mother, make peace with your own body and get a self esteem. Nothing, but nothing is going to replace this. Not a bill. Not a law. Nothing. Grow a Self Esteem.
• Make it against the rules to talk badly about your own body. My kid gets in trouble if she calls her brother a name. Likewise, she gets in trouble if she calls herself a name. We don’t call names here. Period. We don’t “feed” negative body talk with a bunch of B.S. sympathy either, “oh poor baby why do you feel badly about yourself?” If it’s something we can fix, we fix it. If it’s not, we tell her it’s perfect the way it is, and that it’s simply not okay to bash yourself. Period.
• Tina Fey, again in Bossy Pants, recommends we embrace Photoshop because it’s here to stay and it’s better than plastic surgery and we should simply add a credit like a photo credit to the work. Photographed by, Tracee Sioux. Photoshopped by, Tracee Sioux. This is free and doesn’t involve Congress and serves exactly the same purpose as the Self Esteem Act.
• Dove’s viral videos, Campaign for Real Beauty were genius. They were targeted to women. They should target some to girls. Publish them where tweens and teens hang out on the Internet.
• If all the non-profit organizations that are gaga for this Self Esteem Act pooled their resources they could make Public Service Announcements informing girls about Photoshop and educate them about self esteem. Run them during iCarly and Gossip Girl, thus reaching their actual target audience. This would actually be effective  instead of wasting their time and energy on something futile.
• Church youth groups, Girl Scouts, Campfire Girls, 4H, and other organizations need to address the issue of healthy body image and will do a better job of it than a tiny sentence on some ads that kids will never read.
• School Boards should make sure healthy body image and media education is in the health class curriculum. Parents and girl advocate groups should make sure School Boards do this. Cause that’s how the system works.
• Parents or grandparents can write their daughters a book or just tell them about beauty and sexiness and Photoshop and what it is and isn’t. Novel concept, I know.

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