I'm eight years old in this picture. A skinny little thing, wearing my mother's lipstick, hamming it up for the camera, at once awkwardly self-conscious and completely innocent.
This is an anonymous blog. It's flagged with Blogger's “adult content” warning. There are creepy people who are going to stumble across this entry because they've typed “sex + child” into a search engine. Why, then, am I putting this image out there?
I can't encapsulate it in a pithy sentence, but it has something to do with what happened yesterday.
My friend Cate has been wanting me to meet another friend of hers, a woman she works with, whom we'll call Dolly. So I went over to Cate's yesterday afternoon for some wine & cheese & pleased-to-meet-you, and then later in the evening, the three of us went to see another friend's dance performance. Travis met us at the theater. The performance was spectacular -- far better than I'd expected, given that it was a free dress rehearsal at a local community college. Then Travis drove me home, and we spent 45 minutes or so lying on the couch in the community room, talking.
It wasn't that late when Travis and I said our goodbyes, but the door to my house was locked, the lights were out, and everyone seemed to be asleep. I got ready for bed and walked into the bedroom, only to find that, as usual, Parker had stretched himself diagonally across our bed, leaving no space for me. It's kind of a private joke between us. I laughed a little, and did my best to push him aside. He reached for me wordlessly, and pulled me to him.
And so, this morning, I found myself thinking about this picture.
For some reason I don't fully understand, Dolly seemed nervous to meet me yesterday afternoon. While we stood there in Cate's kitchen, Dolly told Cate she wanted the link to my blog. Continuing to avoid my gaze, she said she wanted to send it to another friend of hers. “Do me a favor,” I broke in, “Feel free to share the link, but don't mention my real name, okay?” I explained to her, or rather to the side of her face, that it wasn't so much my own identity I was worried about protecting. It's more that I'm trying to be respectful of other people in my life. Because I sometimes disclose personal details about my family, friends, and lovers, I'm careful to drape them in the sheet of anonymity, hoping it will afford them some measure of privacy. The other concern I have centers around my kids: how do I know that some psycho Bible-thumper won't decide that I have no business raising children? I don't relish the idea of someone like that just looking up my name in the phone book.
At this point, Dolly finally began addressing me directly. She seemed surprised that I would be concerned about people possibly harming me or my children. I explained that it wasn't like I was losing sleep over it – however, as long as there are wackos, perverts, and religious vigilantes out there trolling the internet, I don't want to take stupid chances. “Look,” I said, “If I were feeling really worried about disclosure, I wouldn't be spilling my private thoughts in a public forum.”
Cate: “Viny's writing because it's important. Because people have the wrong idea about polyamory.”
Dolly: “Polyamory seems like a good idea to me. It seems like going back to the '60's. Freedom, and just being yourself. No boundaries.”
While I chewed on that, wondering whether to point out that Dolly had some things right, and some things all wrong, the conversation shifted.
“You have really great boobs,” Dolly said. “Sorry, but I couldn't help noticing.” And then we were off to the races, that circus of self-criticism, body-envy, and “I don't look like I used to” lamentations that comes to town whenever women over 30 get together for some girl-time. Dolly confided that she didn't like her nipples. “Why not?” I asked. “They're too big,” she said. “Men don't seem to have a problem with them, but I don't like them.” She showed us a picture of the offending body part on her cell phone. Then she went on to worry about the cellulite on her legs. I said I didn't see what the hell she was talking about. “It's sweet of you to say that,” she said, “But it's there, I promise.” She pinched her tanned upper thigh to demonstrate. I told her there wasn't a woman over 15 without any cellulite.
I thought about all the conversations I've had with Lilianna about our bodies, our speculations about how, exactly, we women end up so critical of ourselves. We're forever evaluating and comparing, and sometimes it seems that the most beautiful among us are the most insecure.
Lilianna thinks maybe men are responsible for this state of affairs. More than once, she's referenced the time she went to one of those mythical “my parents are on vacation” parties. A bunch of teenage boys were watching porn in the living room, keeping up a running commentary on everything that was wrong with the women on the TV screen. These were porn stars, women who were no doubt devoting a substantial portion of their lives to maintaining their sexy image, but they still weren't sexy enough to escape ridicule. Lilianna sat there as each woman was ripped apart, feeling self-conscious about her own body, wondering what flaws the boys might see there. She was an uncommonly pretty girl, and at fourteen, as flawless as she'd ever be.
I've always felt that I kind of lucked out in the body department, but it wasn't until after my first pregnancy that I learned to feel comfortable in my own skin. Ironically, all those stretch marks freed me from the burden of trying, and failing, to be physically perfect. Sure, I felt self-conscious about those marks on my stomach, and Parker didn't help matters any. Several months after I had Denali, I commented proudly that I thought my stomach was looking a little better, and he agreed: “Yeah, you've got the stomach of an 80-year-old now, instead of an 800-year-old.” When I recounted this story to Lilianna, she was horrified.
But I'm not comfortable putting all the blame on men. We could just as easily blame women: what does it do to a little girl to watch her mother obsess about her appearance? My own mother managed to avoid the never-ending succession of fad diets and nip&tuck perfectionism that preoccupied so many of my friends' mothers; as a daughter, I've always been grateful to her for the example she set me.
As a mother, I'm sometimes struck by sadness when I think about all the things my daughter might end up hating about her body. Sienna's a darling girl, a miracle of perfection. But I'm sure she'll find things about herself to pick on by the time she reaches adolescence. We all do. At age 3, she's already absorbed the lesson that what she looks like matters. Whenever I put on lipstick, she'll say, “Give me a kiss, so I can get some lipstick on my lips!” Then she admires herself in the mirror. She's also convinced she ought to look "just like a true princess." Apparently, true princesses wear a fancy dress, striped tights, a conical hat, and rain boots. I will occasionally question some of her more outrageous fashion choices, but she always insists: "Mama, everyone at Trader Joe's is going to love me in this outfit!" At this age, it's sweet. She's only three. She's enjoying herself.
If I could give Sienna anything, I'd give her what she has now, but will most likely lose as she grows older: a childish delight in what her body can do, and all the ways it can be adorned.
I saw something like that delight last night at Georgia's dance performance. The dancers were all beautiful. Probably some of them worry overmuch about their appearance. There may even be some with eating disorders. But, on the whole, they looked like a healthy group of people to me. They were celebrating their bodies. And, sitting there watching them move, I too felt celebratory. It didn't even bother me that I couldn't dance like that if I tried.
First of all, I just wasn't cut out to be a ballerina. When I was a kid, my parents shelled out for three years of ballet lessons, but I was gangly and awkward in every position. What's more, I could never manage to decipher the non-verbal mumbo-jumbo of choreography. I always had to look at the girl next to me in dance recitals, and even so, I had a hard time copying her movements.
It's also true that, at thirty-seven, I no longer have the body of a dancer. Georgia's older than I am, but she's in far better shape. She dances, she does yoga, and all that work pays off. She looked great on stage last night.
I've chosen to focus on other things. These days, I don't even pay all that much attention to how I look. But I can tell you that I'm really glad to have a body, and I'm determined to enjoy it.
When I look at my eight-year-old self in the black tights and the yellow tutu, this is what I want to say to her: Honey, we're gonna make GREAT dance partners, you and I.
<3
ReplyDelete