Sunday, July 15, 2012

(No) Self Hate

Today I did something really hard for me, and I have had a blog post brewing in my head about it all day. I am going to tell you about it, but bear with me if I ramble, okay?

I am not nice to myself. This isn't a secret. I am full of so much self doubt and self loathing, and I know that it's irrational. I don't know how it got there. I don't know how this is who I became. I just know that I've never, ever been happy with my appearance, and that at every age, I've felt fat, awkard, and completely unattractive.

Then, I got pregnant. I felt fat and gross all through my pregnancy. I tried to spend some time and love on my body because, like, HELLO, it was GROWING A WHOLE OTHER PERSON. I still didn't treat myself with a lot of grace.

When Bea arrived, I knew that my body was going to take some time to recover. I mean, I grew and then pushed out an 8 (almost 9) pound baby. That wasn't easy on my spirit or my hips. I was willing to be forgiving while recovering. "It's okay if I eat some extra lactation cookies, I'm breastfeeding!" "I can TOTALLY have another Blizzard, I'm breastfeeding!" "I can go to Menchie's more than once this week, I'm BREASTFEEDING." Yeah, well. Let me tell you. It's not the magical salve that I think I had convinced myself it would be. Suddenly, my ass started knocking water glasses off tables and all my pants were getting tighter and tighter. (So much for my post partem smugness at being able to wear my pre baby jeans the week after delivering. Hubris, I tell you. Hubris.)

So now, my baby girl is 16 weeks old. It's been 16 weeks. I started running again a couple of weeks ago.... I use that term very loosely, as I've only gone a handful of times and I'm more "shuffling" to music while pushing a running stroller, at this point. I am barely fitting into my size 16 jeans and feeling like a blob with a spare tire and extra chins and puke constantly in my hair.

John and I have been talking a great deal about how unkind I am to myself. He yelled at me today for it in the car. Bea was really screamy all day and basically cried almost non stop from 9 a.m. to about 2 when we left the house. Before then, we laid around, unshowered, trying to get her to nurse and basically passing her off, back and forth, so that we wouldn't both be frustrated at the same time. I was complaining that I didn't get anything done today and that we were just now leaving the house at 2. He told me to knock it off, and that it gets really tiring, hearing me tear myself down constantly. He pointed out that many parents, when faced with a day such as this, would throw in the towel and say "Well, it's our day off, so fuck it. We'll do it all tomorrow" and that getting out and showered and baby packed up was a victory in and of itself. He pointed out that the way I talk to myself and about myself isn't setting a very good example for our daughter.

This is on my mind quite often since Bea joined us. How can I best model self love and acceptance and confidence for her? How can I help her to avoid the trap I fell into, of basing so much of my value and worth on my appearance? How can I best live and exemplify the quote I love, "There's no wrong way to have a body," when I am still so full of hatred for my face, my huge nose and small crinkly eyes, my large hands and broad shoulders and spare tire and front gut and huge butt and hips and thighs? How can I tell her that she is beautiful (and oh God, is she SO, SO beautiful) without letting her think that is the most important gift she has to offer? How can I show her that she should be proud and strong and thankful for the gift of her body and her strength, if I don't want to even look in the mirror and can't stop saying horrible things about myself.

I don't have any answers. I know that however I feel about my appearance, I didn't get it at home. My uber feminist mother was extremely careful to not equate outward appearance with success. We weren't allowed to have Barbie dolls because she thought (and now, as an adult, I totally agree) that they foster a negative image of a beauty ideal that is completely unattainable and put a huge focus on being judged for how you dress and what you look like. Mom always encouraged us to dream big, to be whatever we wanted to be, and that our looks were just not part of that equation. I remembered, this morning, a Halloween where I wanted to be a princess. My recollection of the conversation is hazy, but as I remember it, this is how my uber feminist mother reacted when I told her what costume I wanted her to make for me.

ME: I want to be a princess.
UBER FEMINIST MOM: A what?
ME: A princess
MOM: Why?
ME: Because I want a pretty dress!
MOM: You have pretty dresses. Are you sure you don't want to be something really cool? How about a dinosaur?
ME: No. Princess.
MOM: What about a doctor? Or an Astronaut? Or a firefighter? Or a monster?
ME: No. Princess.
MOM: But, you could be ANYTHING you want to be!
ME: Anything?
MOM: Yes!
ME: GOOD! I WANT TO BE A PRINCESS!

My uber feminist mother had been out-kid-logicked. I mean, what do you say to your 8 year old when you tell her she can be anything she wants, EXCEPT that thing that you have been trying and trying to steer her away from being? Mom sewed me a great princess costume. Then, after Halloween, it sneakily disappeared. The treat bag turned into the bag that held our bath toys. I don't know what happened to the rest of it. I'm pretty sure that Mom took it away in the hopes I wouldn't ever ask to be a princess again.


So, back to today. I am standing in my bathroom, remembering all the work my Mom put into trying to teach me that my body and my face and my outward appearance didn't define my worth as a person. And I still bought into it, despite all she did. Why?

I don't know. I know that my whole family have always struggled with our weight. All of us. I know that we lived in some small towns and I went to some big high schools where it was blatantly apparent that if you were beautiful, you were loved, and if you were gangly and weird and too smart and too emotional, and had big thighs and junk in your trunk, you were outcast. I know that I watched a lot of TV and read a lot of Seventeen magazine, and had the idea that I needed to be "sexy" as a young woman in my early twenties while careening after a terrible breakup (and then a series of terrible breakups with successively worse and worse men.) Which factor was the most influential? I have no idea.

What I do know is that it would (will) break my heart to hear my daughter say some of the things about herself that are part of my responses when I get a compliment. John tells me that he loves me and thinks that I'm beautiful, I respond with "You HAVE to think that, you're in love with me." This is eerily similar to what I used to tell my Mom when she would tell me I was beautiful. "You HAVE to say that, it's in the Mom Contract." I will cry and cry and cry the day my gorgeous, perfect little girl tells me that she thinks she is ugly, or fat, or any of the things that girls think about themselves in our society when they don't fit a narrow ideal they've been conditioned to think they have to squeeze themselves into.


SO. In an effort to find some positivity about myself and my appearance, and in an effort to remind myself to be amazed by the work that my body did in growing my perfect little girl and now feeding her to be almost 15 (!) pounds and over 2 feet long, I decided to do something totally out of character.


I belong to a mama's group in Bellingham. It has over 1,000 members and I think I've talked about it before. It is moderated by a lovely woman that I feel I can now call my real-life (not just on the internet) friend. She and a few of the other members had a fantastic idea that was spurred by a similar project some mamas had done: A bare belly photoshoot of some real mamas' post partem bellies. Real women, looking really lovely, of all sizes and shapes, celebrating these amazing bodies that birthed entire humans. Real women, claiming their stretch marks and their rolls and their extra roundness and giving themselves the grace to be proud of what they can do, and thankful for the strength and power their bodies have. Real women, celebrating what they looked like, no matter what that was. Body positivity. Body love. Mama love. Combating self hate, all together.

I thought "WOW. What a powerful idea. I totally want to do that!" I joined the event and was vocal about what a great idea I thought it was. I was GUNG HO, man. Badass!

And then I forgot about it. I just kind of pretended it was a thing someone else was doing. That worked to stave off anxiety until about Friday. Then I started freaking out. I knew that two days from then, I would be standing in a public park with a few other ladies, in yoga pants and a sports bra, with my huge fat belly hanging out, being stared at by passers by and hobos alike... and there would be photographic evidence. I woke up this morning hating myself so much that I would not look at myself in the mirror. I brushed my teeth standing in the living room so as to avoid looking at my tired eyes, my breakout skin, my extra chin. I got dressed in the dark, my back to the mirror, after my shower. I didn't even look at what I put on, other than to check it for obvious vomit spots. I refused to put on jewelry so I wouldn't have to catch a glimpse of my too big nose, my linebacker shoulders, my boxy jaw.

The time came to start getting ready to go, and I talked shit to myself the whole time. I flat ironed my hair while thinking "I can't believe I haven't dyed my hair in over a year. I hate my natural color." I put on makeup while thinking "Why do I even bother doing this? My zits are going to show through anyway." I put on eyeliner and mascara thinking "I am going to look ridiculous all made up like this.. I'm going to be the most made up mom in yoga pants outside of New Jersey." I put on some huge jewelry, made for me with love by Courtney, and thought "Maybe if I wear a big enough necklace, people will just look at my boobs instead of my face, which are currently about twice normal size, so they just won't look up." I looked at the finished product and thought "I might as well give up. This is as good as I'm gonna get, these days."

I drove downtown to meet up with the ladies, remembering that I saw Margaret Cho say something once about her own self hate:

“So from the age of 10, I became anorexic, and then bulimic, and then stayed that way for about 20 years, until one day I just said, “Hey, what if this is it? What if this is just what I look like and nothing I do changes that? So how much time would I save if I stopped taking that extra second every time I look in the mirror to call myself a big fat fuck? How much time would I save if I just let myself walk by a plate-glass window without sucking in my gut and throwing back my shoulders? How much time would I save?” And it turns out I save about 97 minutes a week. I can take a pottery class.” --Margaret Cho


So. For my daughter. For me. For my friends. For the other women I know. I stood in Maritime Heritage park with my belly out, along with about 30 some odd other moms, and I let a professional photographer take my picture. Fat rolls, stretch marks, and all. I want my daughter to look back at this picture and know that in this moment, in this day, I decided to be proud of the body that brought her Earthside. I want her to see that Mama is proud to be who she is, and so SHE should be proud of herself, grateful for her strong arms and legs to run and swim and kick and dance with. She should be proud of her beautifully shaped eyes (all John, by the way) and her adorable nose (also John) and gorgeous, full lips (yeah, John, too) and her perfect feet (totally me.)

And I should be, too. No matter that it doesn't look how I want it to. No matter what. This is who I am, today, right now.

And I am thankful for this body, and for its gift to me and to John, of our little girl. And I am thankful for my health and my strength.

So, here is me, today:




And here is the photo shoot: (All credit for photographs goes to Tiffany Burke Photography)




2 comments:

Autumn said...

I am so glad we are real life friends and even more glad that you chose to come to this, love yourself and your daughter enough to be proud of you body and the incredible work it has done (and is doing!). You are incredible, an inspiration and... duh, beautiful.

Anonymous said...

i have so much to SAY! but it's 3am. i want to revisit this tomorrow. i too grew up with a mother and father who both had image issues but would have done anything to isolate me from that brutal world. of course, my body did turn out so very different than others...even in mexico they call me the "crooked tree." but, my point is...is that in my thirties i found Peace with my differences, and i'd love to share some of my incites with you...mostly because i've Always, ironically, considered you to be a stunningly beautiful, genuine and unique woman. i never realized that you struggled emotionally over your weight. to me, you just look like a beautiful gal with some hips! haha.. i do know one thing...john isn't Lying to you or telling you those things to make you feel better. he Means it. and, if i were you, i would Accept it and Love that you have a Man Willing to be vulnerable enough to Tell you. yes, vulnerable. there are many men who would not dare to express those things. ok, i really want to respond further....when i'm awake. :) great post!! thanks for your candor.