One of the blogs which has stolen my heart recently is Eat the Damn Cake, written by Kate, a friend of mine and a bright and thoughtful writer.
Honestly, not all of her posts resonate with me. Mainly, I think, because I don’t have any striking, niggling, or even fleeting issues with my body. Or: I like the way I look the majority of the time. And some of the time, a lot of the time, I love the way I look. I often feel “left out” of feminine friendships and conversations when the topic turns to, “Oh, I wish I didn’t have these arms,” or “I just can’t stand my neck.”
Kate and I share a deep commitment to valuing dialogue, so I e-mailed her, saying, “Sometimes your blog doesn’t resonate with me…” And she asked me to guest post.
My post, “Stephanie Talks Body Love,” is an attempt, by me, to explain both why I am comfortable with the way I look, and also why I try to resist the negative self-talk that too many women my age (in my opinion) engage in.
The post has gotten a lot of comments– all of them from women who either applaud my statement, or wish they could share my confidence. It’s slightly odd, given that I can be–in the middle of many a’night–riddled with anxiety, to think, “I am a confident women.” In this arena, however, I surely am. I mean– I work at it to some degree, inasmuch that A: Men don’t so frequently undergo such self- and societal-scrutiny, and I don’t think that’s fair, and B: I am an educator and an advocate children, and I will be darned if I will allow negative voices (that aren’t true) to work against my girl students.
Well, there are other reasons. It’s a lot to unpack. Haiti, and malnourished orphans have a little to do with it. My deeply held belief that I am a beloved child of God (and clearly God would think I am beautiful) has something to do with it, the way I have been influenced by Dominican sisters (in Truth, in true beauty and Grace, in What Really Matters), and in the way the most influential “images” of women in my lives come from literature, not from ads. To begin with.
I want to write more about this. I also want to answer the commenter who asks, “What’s the difference between self-confidence and vanity?” This is actually a question I ask myself in regards to my academic abilities, but I think it’s worth articulating how I feel about personal appearance. I also want to connect my ideas with those of other women who have influenced the way I think… Perhaps a short series on this blog will be forthcoming.
Being comfortable with who you are and how you look is so important. I was always pleasantly surprised when a guy was interested in me in school because I knew I didn’t look like the “ideal woman.” I think though that if I obsessed over anything it was more my curly frizzy hair then my body type. I was lucky that even though I was not thin like my parents and two of my sisters and my brother, I knew that I was built like my two grandmothers and they were both ladies to emulate. They seemed very comfortable with themselves, so why shouldn’t I. I know my mother used to police what I ate, but I don’t think I worried as much about my shape as she did. Ironically now my mother has a big tummy, once I got her into comfortable clothes she doesn’t seem to comment too much on it. She has vascular dementia and forgets that she just ate, so she eats a lot more than she ever did when she was younger. The old her would be appalled to see how she is now, but she also never wanted to be the person she is now with advancing dementia. I only worry about my body shape because I want to grow old as a healthy person. I know my weight adds to some of my health issues but right now while I am the fulltime caregiver for my mother I am not going to deprieve myself, I just need to make sure I don’t “eat all the damn cake.”
beautiful post. beautiful guest bog. beautiful friend.