Barnmaven

Welcome to our world, fellas.

Have you ever listened to the BJ Shea morning show on Seattle's KISW? 

Me either.  I hate talk radio and morning programs.

Except we were stuck on 405 trying to get out of Bothell and back to the dry side of the state after seeing Bonnie Raitt at Chateau Ste. Michelle the night before, and my random station surfing landed me on this particular show right as the hosts were discussing a most interesting topic.

According to a recent study, women are now more interested in men for their looks than for their money.  Men?  They're more interested in a woman's intelligence than her looks. 

From the reactions of the shock jocks on the show, you'd think this was the worst news EVER to hit the airwaves.  At one point one of the guys was going on about how male movie stars are too good looking and it sets women up to have unrealistic expectations of men and how they look.  Dude, did you really just say that????

Imagine.  Men bemoaning a double standard created by movies and the media that sets an impossibly high standard of physical perfection for one gender.

One of the hosts, I'll assume it was BJ, went on to say how the over-50 women he and his wife knew that weren't married were simply unhappy and that women had better learn to be less picky or they might end up (horrors) alone and unmarried.   Spinsters.  GASP! 

I think he might have been taking the study results a little too seriously and reaching a fairly unlikely conclusion, but then again, it was talk radio, and I know ratings depend on the hosts' ability to get their audience lathered up about something, anything at all.  Even so, as deliciously entertaining as it was to hear men object to being treated like arm candy, I think BJ has a couple of good points. 

I disagree that one needs a husband (or wife) in order to be happy.  Being partnered is great for many people, but there truly are men and women who are quite content to live unattached.  Relationships are hard.  Relationships can help us accomplish our goals, but there are times they can hinder us as well.  When you hook your wagon to someone else's star, you take on each others' concerns, desires, frustrations, needs and wants.   Personally, I'm happy that SG is as hands-off as he is when it comes to giving me space.  As much as I love him, as much as he loves me, we both have things we enjoy doing alone or with our individual friends.   I know myself well enough to know that mostly I am one of those people who wants to be in a relationship.  Even so,  I'm grateful for the times I've been on my own, for learning not just to be okay with that, but to actually like it.  Finding your bliss is a more pure evolution when it isn't being influenced by a partner.   

When it comes to looks, though, my gut reaction is that BJ Shea is correct.  Yes, we are attracted to the people we're attracted to, but there is more to a person than their physical appearance.  If someone is just looking for the chemistry of a fling, I suppose limiting your criteria to simple appearance is fine, but when it comes to seeking relationship material, looks don't count for nearly as much.  Research indicates that the more time we spend with someone, the more likely we are to enter a relationship with them.  Chemistry grows when we find someone who matches our emotional needs, not just our physical desires.

BJ also contends that most men aren't really that shallow.  I agree, but I'll take that to another level and say that most people aren't really that shallow.  I think we all have certain types that we are attracted to, and certainly everyone can appreciate visual appearances, but I think the majority of people are looking for long-term commitment really do pay attention to a lot more than looks. 

Even so, people have the right to be where they are, even if that happens to be a place of depthless interaction and missed opportunity to appreciate others' finer qualities.  Its true that I can still work up a head of steam if I dwell too long in the false standards of beauty our film and print media create for our daughters (and apparently, now, our sons), but its also true that I'm less bothered by this phenomenon than I used to be.  I give less credence to arbitrary rules of beauty set by people whose opinions matter little to the reality of my life. 

Is it more important for one to look good or to be good?

Is it more important for one to be beautiful or to be interesting?

Is it more important for one to be flawless or to be self-reliant?

Its not that you couldn't be both, but if I had to pick one characteristic over another, I'll choose character over looks every single time. And the amazing thing about that, is that the more you know and appreciate a person, the more you are able to see the beauty of them.

You're Beautiful. No, Really.

Jane Devin wrote another great thought-provoking blog post yesterday about beauty.  I'm a huge fan of Jane's writing.  Her book Elephant Girl was as haunting a memoir as I have ever read, but her use of language as an art form makes it impossible not to read her, even when what she's written about is ugly and painful.

So anyway, beauty.  Jane writes, "We’re never going to make it okay to not be physically beautiful if we don’t get off this beauty kick we’ve been on for so long. We’re not going to change our futures and those of other women as long as “beautiful” remains a priority. We’re not going to change the culture that places such an inordinately high premium on female attractiveness as long we keep promoting beauty myths through the lies we tell ourselves and each other."

  I posted on her FB wall that I wasn't sure I agreed, and I mentioned my now-deceased friend Peg, who was morbidly obese and losing her hair thanks to Rheumatoid Arthritis and a cupboard filled with medications both toxic and ill-suited toward maintaining one's weight and hair volume.   Whenever I saw Peg, or when I think of her now in my mind's eye, I see beauty.  I see large brown eyes with impossibly long lashes and I hear the softest, most soothing voice imaginable.  I hear her tinkling laughter as she regales me with yet another story about her Boston catholic family. 

I concede the point that we give too much emphasis and value to the concept of beauty when we try to compliment someone or try to boost their self esteem.  But I also believe we misuse the word "beautiful." The term has been warped by our media to mean an almost impossibly achievable standard of physical appearance.  And Jane isn't really talking about the people who miss this standard by some small or even medium mark, she's talking about when the whole person doesn't come close due to physical deformity or flaw and that the act of trying to make someone feel beautiful when they aren't phsyically attractive is to her a disservice.

I know Jane's opinion comes from experience and from her own sense of self, her dedication to speaking the truth as she sees and feels it.  We talked about it back and forth on Facebood a little, and to a large extent I agree with her...but there is a space between that extent and my own feelings about looks and attractiveness.

What I wish were possible was for the propensity toward shallowness to somehow disappear from the human gene pool.  Its not ever likely to happen, but I can still dream about it.  I'm raising a girl, and there's no doubt that females are held to much stricter standards than the male population.  (In general, that is, because there are certainly men and women who possess no such incremental measurements of beauty when appreciating one another or their partners. )  It starts so young, with the TV shows for tweens that have mostly very attractive and thin lead characters, and their not-so-cute and maybe-a-little-dorky and often a little fat sidekicks.   Its pretty easy to decide which character you'd rather be -- and pretty easy to look at yourself and see all the reasons why you could never be her. 

It only gets worse as we get older.  Movies and television use all the tricks of makeup and lighting, props and camera position to disguise that which is unacceptable and magazines taking it a step better and photoshopping models and movie stars to the point where the real person and the picture no longer resemble one another.  And these are the people we are supposed to emulate?  How can we emulate them?  Trust me, if I could photoshop my ass for real to make it a couple sizes smaller, I would.  Well, maybe I would.

I'll never forget the really average-looking guy who came up to me in a bar when I was in my very early twenties, and said (right to my face!) "You'd be a really attractive girl if you didn't have such a big butt."  I spent every day of my life from that day forward feeling horrible about the size of my posterior.  One doesn't forget that sort of comment. 

How do we teach people to value themselves and others by non-physical standards?  How do we teach people that diversity in size and color are not marks of shame but badges of uniqueness?  How do we get human beings to learn how to give a compliment that doesn't include the words except, but, if only and however?

To address Jane's point, what about those who fall far short of the current physical standard of beauty?  Is it a disservice to seek beauty in those who feel they have none?  Do we need to know we are beautiful?  What is beauty anyway? 

And maybe that's where I see the difference in people -- my definition of "beauty" is subjective.  It isn't necessarily the same as others.  I see people as a whole picture.  I look at my husband and even though I could give you a short checklist of things about him that aren't what might be considered conventionally handsome, those aren't the things I see.  The things I see are the things that make him handsome to me -- his big smile, his broad shoulders, his warm brown eyes, and the one thing I can't see but I can hear it the moment he opens his mouth -- his intelligence and his sense of humor.  I'm NOT LOOKING for the other things.  I suppose its the same for him -- when he looks at me he sees the things he likes and discards the rest as unimportant.

I think I could look at anyone, even someone I don't particularly care for or someone who copes with a serious lack of conventional attractiveness and I could still see beauty in them.  Beauty and ugliness coexist in all of us, and they can't always be seen with the naked eye.  No human being who has ever lived is immune to the ugliness of that petty, selfish little voice in our heads, and no human exists who doesn't display physical and emotional moments of pure, unadulterated beauty. 

Childbirth -- not the prettiest sight imaginable.  And yet, that slime-covered, squalling purplish red infant with the pulsing cord still attached is beautiful in a way that cannot be described in words.  The physicality of the act of giving birth - blood, fluid, poop on the table, maybe an emergency cesaerean with intestines being pulled onto the table to get them out of the way!  There is ugliness but the spiritual and emotional experience of expelling life into the world was for me and for many women as beautiful as it was painful.

I postulate that we are all - every one of us - both beautiful and ugly.  The outside may lean far more one way than the other, but to deny the existence of beautfy at all is to deny that inside this flesh wrapper is tethered a being made up of nothing but spirit.  We are not our bodies.

Like Jane, I tend to find things other than physical appearance to compliment others on, regardless of how physically attractive they might be - or not.   But I'm going to politely, compassionately and lovingly disagree that we do service to another by refraining from letting a person know we find something about them beautiful.  Insincerity is in itself not at all useful, but a sincerely meant compliment is another thing entirely.  I compliment my daughter on her sense of humor and her strength, her sensitive and loving heart, her ability to write amazing stories and her fierce protectiveness of all things  furred and feathered.  I try to compliment her on these things more than her beauty, because I want her to always have those messages in her mind when she remembers what her mother thought of her, but she also knows I think she is stunningly beautiful. 

Jane of the amazing large eyes, I only know you from your photos on your blog and your book, but know that I do see beauty when I look at you.  We both have voices in our heads that spit out reminders of the things we know about ourselves that are the antithesis of "pretty."  Nonetheless, you have beauty that is not limited to the inner you.  Its there on the exterior as well.

 

 

Coming soon to Barnmaven.com:  My colonoscopy!  And yes, even THAT is beautiful!  I KID YOU NOT.

 

 

Being Girly

Sometimes I think I write too much about dealing with my kids and their issues.  This morning, for instance, could have provoked yet another thousand word essay on the joys of trying to get out of the house on time and why it never ever happens and how I'll never qualify as Mother of the Year because I keep losing my temper and my son hates me because he doesn't get TV, DS or laptop time tonight.  But...his medicine got in him.  So I assume his teacher will have a better day than my morning was.  But this isn't about that.

This post is about being a girly girl.  Or being not a girly girl.  Or about being both all at the same time, and reconciling the picture of who I am in my mind with the reality of me.

With all due respect - and apologies - to the ultra-feminine among us:  I have never felt I was one of you.  I was the girl who wanted to get the most offensive rebounds in the basketball game, not cheer the team on from the sidelines wearing a tight sweater and a skimpy skirt.  I was the girl who collected snakes and dug clams and spent most of her weekends on or around her horse and who only wore dresses if threatened with death or disinheritance. 

It wasn't that I didn't want to be pretty.  I did want to be pretty, oh so very much.  But I knew that I wasn't.   I knew, deep inside of me, that I was never going to earn peer acceptance for being cute or petite or having a feminine voice or a sweet laugh.  I could only be good at certain things, and those weren't necessarily the things that purchase a pass into the world of beautiful girls.  And I liked the things I was good at, even if they weren't considered truly feminine pursuits. 

I sailed along through high school and college mostly feeling like Marmaduke trapped in a china shop.  Eventually, finally, I started figuring out that I had assets that went beyond being able to beat the average guy in an arm wrestling match, and more importantly, learned to enjoy making the most of them.  I would guess its taken me about twenty years altogether to become more at ease with the woman inside me who wants to look pretty.  I finally had to understand that pretty and smart don't have to be mutually exclusive.  I finally get it, that I can change the oil in my car by myself and that doesn't disaqualify me from putting on a pretty dress and some makeup and a dab of perfume on my wrists and being attractive in a more conventional way. 

I've learned that there is NOTHING WRONG with wanting to look attractive.  And the most interesting thing about it all is that I reached a point in my life where I don't do it for anyone but myself.  I don't get dressed up to impress a man, I get dressed up because I want to.  And I dress down because I want to.  Dressing down doesn't make me a dirty mom.  Its just one aspect of who I am.

And to clarify, "attractive" to me doesn't mean looking like Angelina Jolie or Grace Kelly or any of those skanky Jersey Girls on television.  It means looking like me, all dressed up.  Beautiful is the way you see yourself, beautiful is the way love sees you.  Likewise, ugly comes from inside too.  Ugly is the way some people act, not the way they look. 

I don't worry what people will think of me in the grocery store if I've been on my horse and I'm covered in dust and hair and I'm wearing my boots and I have hat head.  Go right ahead and stare at me disapprovingly if you must, I don't notice it and even if I did you lack the power to make me feel bad.  The flip side of that coin is that when I make the effort to dress up and look pretty, I don't need you to approve of me for me to know I look good.  That comes from me, not you.

One physical trait that I've always not liked about myself are my fingernails.  The women in my family of origin have very sturdy, very strong hands.  Functional hands. But - terrible nail beds.  Short, wide nail beds, not the nice long oval ones I so admire.  The nails grow out splayed and split and not so very nicely.  I am also not good about caring for my hands.  I never wear rubber gloves when I'm cleaning house or doing dishes.  So I have these short fingernails and they're always getting broken and cracked.  They're ridged, my cuticles are an embarassment.

I have mostly accepted that these are the hands I have, but I don't necessarily have to like them.  And it does feel strange when I go and pay for a pedicure and come out of the shop with lovely toes and newly de-calloused feet in sharp contrast to the mangy cuticles and chopped off nails on my hands.

I have talked myself into and out of artificial nails for years.  I had them briefly in my twenties.  I even bought nail polish the exact shade of my red Nissan Pathfinder.  But they didn't last, I split one painfully due to my clumsiness, I was terrible about getting fills done.  And then with my current lifestyle, horses and dogs and cleaning stalls and all...it didn't seem like something I could - or should - do.

Except I have this one index finger where the nail is splitting.  And it won't stop.  Its been split for over two months now, and as it grows, it just keeps splitting.  I've tried polish, I've tried special plastic "bandaids" just for fingernails, I've tried acrylic nail polish.  I've tried nail treatments.  In the end, I just keep cutting it back farther and farther and no matter how far down to the quick I get it, it still splits and the edges of the split catch on things like my saddle pad or my shoelace and it splits farther and more painfully every time.

So I gave it some thought.  Artificial nails don't have to be long nails.  They can be as long or as short as I want them to be.  Even if the nail technician thinks they should be longer, it doesn't really matter.  I'm the customer, I get to ask for what I want.  And yes, artificial nails are harder than hell on your real nails.  But my real nails are complete crap anyway, so honestly, does it really matter if they get thin and brittle and crack?  They do that anyway!  Artificial nails require maintenance.  I'm notoriously bad at taking care of myself.  So now I have a compelling excuse to go take some time for myself and spend it on something that looks nice.  Artificial nails look fake.  Yes, but even fake looking nails look a thousand percent better than the ones God graced me with.

Wow, I had an argument with myself and I WON. 

Lookie here:

Girly hands. 

I can still beat you at arm wrestling, though. 

NaBloPoNoMoHuhWha and thoughts on the "obesity problem"

I'm just not going to kill myself writing some piece of crap blog post just so I can say I posted every day. 

I thought about it.  I thought about trying to pass of some piece of brain dead drivel as a "blog post" and simply opted out.  That's not the way I like to do things.

After I spent the day finishing up repainting my dining room and doing a few minor bits of housework (and inadvertently going "WHOOF" every time  I tried to sit down and my thighs reminded me about all the posting in my dressage lesson) I went and I got a haircut and I came home and I sat down and drank a glass of wine and I completely lost the will to move or talk or even think.  I was that kind of tired where your body just wants to curl up in bed and maybe you'll be able to sleep and maybe you won't but every second you insist on staying past horizontal your skin and your eyes and your hair and your feet all scream at you to just crawl between the covers already because you're DONE.

And so I did.

---------

So this stupid sprained ankle has me struggling with feelings of guilt every time I put something in my mouth.  If I'm not running I shouldn't be eating says my shameful self.  Riding your horse and painting your living room don't exactly qualify as "sitting around," interjects my healthy self. 

Those two continue at war, and I continue to watch the battle being waged across magazines and news stories and blogs, the battle over whether being overweight is dangerous or healthy.  I commented on a recent blog post at Jessica Gottlieb's blog wherein Jessica took exception with a photo of a beautiful, albeit very curvy young woman.  Many commenters agreed with her contention that this woman was obese and therefore completely unhealthy.  I disagreed.

Looking at someone's picture tells you virtually nothing about their level of health or fitness.   There are plenty of active people who are also overweight, just as there are a great deal of thin people who are sedentary. 

There was a great interview with author and PhD Linda Bacon in the recent issue of MORE.  Bacon is a physiologist and the author of Health at Every Size.

In the interview, Bacon  contends that the term "obesity epidemic" is misleading.  While it is true that as a whole people in our society are heavier than they have been (at least in the years since we started tracking factors like weight), it is not an "epidemic" by any means, nor is there evidence that being heavier actually poses deadly risk.

She points out that while there is indeed a link between being overweight and developing Type II diabetes, its not a proven fact that being overweight actually causes the diabetes.  Scientifically it is well-known that being insulin resistant causes a person to gain weight.  It is more likely that the insulin resistance, which can have genetic and environmental factors, causes the diabetes and the state of being overweight.  Even so, those leading the charge in the anti-fat movement love to tell everyone how being overweight is causing everyone to become diabetic.    Similary there are associations between other illnesses and weight, but because there is an association between the two doesn't necessarly prove that one causes the other.

Bacon posits that the most dangerous and unhealthy condition is not that of being obese, but that of being sedentary.  In study after study, people who are overweight but active are healthier and live longer.   A 2008 Harvard study found that overweight women who exercised at least 4 days a week have a significantly lower risk of heart disease than people who don't exercise (regardless of weight).    Bacon also refers to studies that show that obese people with cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, hypertension and type 2 diabetes actually live longer than thin people with the same conditions. 

Dieting doesn't work.  People who restrict their calories and lose a lot of weight gain it back when they start eating normally again.  It is only a very small percentage of dieters who actually succeed, and the negative emotional effect of failing at weight loss is causing people to feel disproportionately unhappy.  And for what reason?  Because they don't look like someone else thinks they should?  That's no reason to feel bad. 

I'm not advocating being unhealthy, not by any means.  I see no redeeming value in loading yourself up with junk food and spending all of your time sitting on the couch watching TV or in front of the computer playing games.   But nowhere is it proven that all overweight people are sitting on the sofa twenty-four-seven gorging themselves on potato chips.

What I AM saying is that the shaming of fat people needs to stop.  Nothing is gained by insisting that fat people are unhealthy.  Trying to get people to feel bad about themselves accomplishes nothing except to make the finger-pointers look like judgemental so-and-sos.    I've never been a small person.  I'm tall, for one, and genetically built on the...er..."sturdy" side.  I've been heavy, I've been thin, but at any size, I've felt my very best when I've been physically active.  I can stack two tons of hay, I can cut my own wood, build a chicken coop from scratch and I can carry a 90 pound dog into the vet's office.  I can make a 1500 pound animal back the hell off by simply looking at him and lifting my hand.  I am powerful.  I can polish my toes and put makeup on my face and wear a killer dress and look fabulous.  I am beautiful.  I can do all of this despite the fact that you probably can't count my ribs and I'm inching past the "halfway" mark in my 40's. 

I refuse to feel bad about myself because I don't fit a magazine definition of what beauty is supposed to look like. 

Don't let them fool you into it, either.

 

 

 

Things that are short

My nails.

My hair.

My time.

Number three naturally leads to numbers one and two.  One and Two keep three from being as short as it otherwise might.

Sometimes I look at women with long, manicured nails and I feel a stab of want.  I'd love to have hands with long, oval nail beds that naturally grown the perfect nail.  You know, the nail that looks awesome with polish on even when the nails are short.  But then I think of all the things that my hands need to do -- all the things that my hands are capable of doing -- and the envy washes out with the tide. 

I try to imagine what my life would be without the ability to saddle my horse, build things, play my guitar, roughouse with my dogs, bathe my kids, and I can't. 

I run my fingers through my short hair, growing out a bit now and unruly in its desire to curl up and around my ears and go the wrong way on the right side of my forehead.  I can grow it long if I want.  Sometimes I do want long hair.  And other days I look at it short and I think that it looks perfect just the way it is.  I remember how long it took to dry it and try and tame its nonconformist spirit.  I think of the other things I like to do with my time -- not the least of which being sleep. 

My hair is short.  My nails are short.  And because they are short, other things can be a little bit longer. 

Time with my children.

Time with my horse.

Time with my dogs.

Maybe I don't look as feminine as I could.  Maybe I don't look quite as polished.  I'm perfectly OK with that. 

Short suits me just fine.

Do what it takes?

The Interwebs are abuzz over Catherine Hakim's new book Erotic Capital.  Hakim, a British sociologist,  is best known for authoring books and articles centered around women in the workplace and gender equality.  A self-described feminist, Hakim has made a career of attempting to understand and iterate the social, political and economic impact woman have in the workplace and how pressures of conformity and patriarchal values create challenges for women.

Given her background, many feminists are perplexed by the assertion she makes in her latest book, that a woman's best bet in the workplace is to leverage her sexuality in order to even the odds.

Yep, that's right.  A feminist telling us to use our looks to get ahead. 

Not only that, Hakim asserts that women who don't take the time to maximize their sex appeal via diet, makeup, wardrobe and options like Botox are being are simply lazy and counter-productive.

To be fair, I haven't read the book yet.  Its sitting in my Kindle account, waiting for my droid to have a 3G signal to download it.  However, the salient points Hakim makes via her interview with The Daily Beast, are worth discussion and don't require the finer points of the book to be open to debate.

"Anyone, even quite an ugly person, can be attractive if they just have the right kind of hairstyle, clothes, and present themselves to the best effect...This isn't a frivolous spending of money.  It has real benefits."

In and of itself, nothing about this statement is truly offensive.  I remember attending a seminar geared toward women in business back in the late 1980's where we were advised to pay attention to how the senior executives in our company dressed.  If we wanted to succeed, an easy way to demonstrate our "acceptability" was to dress the same way.  If the men wore suits and ties, women should wear suits and low heels.  If everyone wore solid colors - black, blue, etc - so should you.  If the environment was casual, be the best-casually-dressed worker in the office.   I don't think its such a stretch to encourage people to look their best at work, it demonstrates a level of attention and ambition that assures higher-ups that you are someone who's not just marking time at your job, you're in the game. 

Social research doesn't lie; people make assumptions about other people all of the time based simply on how they look.  It stands to reason that a competent employee who dresses like a slob is going to be less favored than an equally competent employee who dresses well, all else being equal. 

Hakim asserts that "Everybody should use all the assets they've got, and this is one asset that women have often been told is inappropriate to use.   I think women need to stop having a chip on their shoulder, or feel uncomfortable investing in erotic capital.  Attractiveness and beauty has real value."   She claims that things such as Exercise, tanning, coloring your hair and even plastic surgery are necessary evils for career success.   She identifies social skills as another invaluable asset.

Its disconcerting to have someone with Hakim's considerable research behind them to bluntly advise us that we must look better in order to compete.  But is it true?

I wonder if the reaction to this book would be different if the title were less threatening.  Looking good doesn't necessarily convey "erotic" appeal.  Dressing nicely and maintaining one's looks don't necessarily insinuate that a woman is exuding sex appeal.  Utilizing a word loaded with not-so-subtle visual imagery as part of her hypothesis is certainly one way to create controversy and ensure a greater number of book sales.  But then, without having read it, I have no idea whether Hakim is simply advising women to make sure they look good at work and not telling us to show off our boobs in low-cut tops and wear stiletto's to maximize the draw power of our legs and asses.  Because truly, those are completely different concepts.

I've met plenty of women in the business place that easily fall into stereotypical categories.  I've worked with women who were gorgeous and marginally competent, who slept with or sucked off whichever man was required in order to get a better salary, a better bonus or a promotion.  I've worked with women who were incredibly good at their jobs but who were challenged either by less-than-stellar looks or a timid personality or both, and heard them degraded behind their backs by coworkers and higher-ups based simply on the scale of their physical attractiveness.  I've heard people say things like "Oh yeah, she's really good at what she does, but..." 

Then there are those women - the ones who have it all.  Either blessed genetically with good looks or having earned them via a lot of time in the gym or under the scalpel, these women also have the brains and the personality to boot.  And frankly, they blow the competition out of the water.  They work hard, they get things done, and they look good doing it.  That's pretty hard to compete with. 

I can see it from both sides, honestly.  I value a person's ability over their looks, and as a manager I know that I want to hire people who will get the job done.  But as a woman in the workplace who is also interested in cultivating my own success, I often must consider how my physical appearance might benefit or harm me.  One button too low?  Does this make me look too casual?  Am I over- or under-doing the hair and makeup?  What is it I want to accomplish today and what meetings do I have where I may need to generate a better impression?

I have had the (mis?)fortune in the past of supervising stereotypical office bimbos. Women that reported to me but who were also sleeping with other managers in the company or getting massive boob jobs and distracting the entire office with their low-cut shirts, I can tell you quite honestly I'd rather have someone who is a lot more discreet in their clothing choices, regardless of the quality of their work.  Its not that I resent another women for being pretty or sexy, I don't.  We come in all shapes and sizes, and just because someone looks different from me or is younger than I am doesn't mean I'm competing with her.  However,  in my experience, a woman who openly flaunts her sexuality in the work environment becomes a distraction, breeds jealousy and resentment in her coworkers.  Even if she isn't sleeping her way up the ladder, if she's wearing micro-minis and being obviously sexual in her behavior, everyone will believe that she is.  

When you're managing people, you need teamwork from your people, and the pockets of overt hostility that such a woman engenders, unless she is staggeringly brilliant at her job, aren't worth it.  On that basis alone, I'm going to assume that Hakim isn't telling us to "whore it up" to get ahead, but that she rather means to look and act our best and that success will naturally follow.

I'm inclined to follow my natural instinct that the inclusion of the term "Erotic" in the book's title and the somewhat inflammatory nature of Hakim's comments in her Daily Beast interview are deliberate and designed to increase interest in the book itself, and that what she's actually proposing to her readers is something other than what the book's title suggests.   And if I'm wrong, and that's what she's actually suggesting, I will less-than gently opine that she's got it all wrong.  Crossing a certain line when it comes to what you wear and how you act at work will do you more harm than good.   And the more women that cross that line, the harder they make it for the rest of us to remind the corporate patriarchy that we are competent, we are personable, we are capable of success without using our lady parts to get there.

 Edited and added:  There is no question that our concepts of attractiveness are largely culturally defined.  There has always been an existing conundrum for the career woman who is also a conscious feminist:  How do I work to change cultural concepts while also surviving within them?  If I attempt to change the culture yet still conform to it, am I damaging my message?  Hakim's new book does little, if anything, to solve this dilemma.

Get out of the shallows and into the deep

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess most of you don't know who Israel Kamakawiwo'ole was.

OK, maybe you didn't know five minutes ago, but you just got done on Wikipedia and now you know who I'm talking about.

Here's a little help for you.   This, by the by, is my favorite version of Over the Rainbow.  Because you care about my musical opinions.  You're welcome.

 

Iz was a big guy.  More importantly than that, he was an amazing talent.  He started in music at a young age and found his calling early.  He was married to his childhood sweetheart and left her and a beautiful daughter behind when he died at the age of 38 in 1997 from complications due to obesity.

But here's the thing:  I don't want to talk about Iz's weight, or anyone's weight.  Or maybe I do, but in a larger context that has more to do with Who and not What.  Because if you look at videos and footage of Iz and the only thing that strikes you about him is his size?  You are missing so much.

One of the things that has struck me watching this video is the images of the people of Hawai'i.  Their love for Iz is unmistakable; he was a beloved son to all of them. They would have loved him if he weighed 150 pounds because it was his talent and his heart that they loved.  And when you look at people in his videos, you see a people who are a hell of a lot less focused on what they look like than on how much they are enjoying their lives.

I don't have any scientific evidence that people in America a hundred years ago focused less on what someone looked like when choosing a life partner.  I also don't have any scientific evidence that people in countries that aren't bombarded by Hollywood and the glamour media the way we are don't focus as much on looks when forging relationships.  But I'm going to crawl out on a limb here and suppose that both of these statements are true.

Have you ever met someone whose list of requirements for a spouse looked something like this:

1.  Must be physically attractive

2.  Must make lots of money

Short list, although at least it has requirements beyond "must not live in mom's basement."

Thing is, if that's your list of must-have's, you are missing so much.  Partnering with someone means so much more than ensuring your financial stability, and frankly, in today's world, even people who used to have lots of money are suddenly finding the beach house in the Hamptons in foreclosure and their spiffy stockbroker job gone down the toilet.  And looks?  They don't last.  Not without lots of help from botox, scalpel and silicone.

Now let's be honest, my relationship scoreboard is somewhat on the checkered side, and yes, I'm divorced, and yes, I'm codependent.  I've also come a long way in my search for self-actualization and a while back had the A-HA moment where I understood -- I DON'T NEED A MAN.   I need to love myself.  I need to do things that fill my soul.   And holy mother of all that is good on this earth, it freed me from so much.

When I finally reached a point where I thought wouldn't it be nice to have someone to hang out with (NOT be addicted to, NOT marry, NOT obsess over and NOT rely on for my self worth), I opened myself to the possibility that was out there.  And I dated a little bit, and then I dated SG, and here we are.  And my list?  Isn't so much a list, but maybe something like a manifesto.

Pick the guy who will hold your hair while you throw up (through your nose, no less), wipe off your face and still kiss you goodnight (after you brushed your teeth, of course).  Pick the guy who thinks you are beautiful no matter what you wear and tells you so often.  Pick the guy who is so smart that his brain is his sexiest organ.  Pick the guy who makes you laugh, often.  Equally as important:  pick the guy who laughs at YOUR jokes.  Pick the guy who GETS you.  Pick the guy who shares your values, who is your equal, who will work hard for both of you, who likes to spend time with you more than he likes spending time with his friends but who isn't afraid to let you know when he needs his own time. Pick the guy who shares the chores with you not only because he knows its fair but because he likes to see you smile when you come home to a clean kitchen. Pick the guy who is confident and who understands the importance of caring for himself as much as caring for the relationship.  Pick the guy who, if necessary, understands basic wiring and can fix your bathroom fan.  Pick the guy who is willing to put up with all imaginable kinds of chaos in the form of children and animals because he is so into you that its worth it to him. 

Don't look at his car.  Don't look at his salary.  And, if I may suggest gently?  Don't look at his looks.  Because if he is all of the above?  Every time you look at him through the eyes of love you will realize that he is exactly the kind of handsome you waited all your life to find.  Maybe you just didn't know it.

We - Americans, Westerners, whatever - focus far too much on the things that will not matter fifty years from now when everything starts sagging and our children start bringing home their children and their children's children for us to love.  Money cannot buy you someone who will love you even when your chin occasionally sprouts long white hairs overnight.  He might drive a Ferrari and have windblown California Surfer Guy hair, but will he bring you the hot pad and a pain reliever when Aunt Flo's sister Carmine Cramps knocks you on your ass?  Will he look you up and down and give you an appreciative "Hmmm" when you walk out of your bathroom dressed for work EVERY morning?

When we constrict our expectations to the point that they are only able to be met by the best-looking and wealthiest among us, we limit our own ability to experience real love in the way that it is meant to be understood.

Open yourself to the possibility.  You may be surprised at what you find.

Rock your suit?

Apparently it is Swimsuit Confidence Week.  Glad I missed the bus on that one.  Its not that I’m afraid to show you what I look like in a swimsuit…I just don’t want to.  OK, well, maybe I am a little bit afraid. 

I’m not as afraid as I was five years ago, or 15 years ago.  But I’m far more conscious of what I look like in a swimsuit than I was when I was 11 years old and I didn’t even realize that a swimsuit was supposed to do anything other than cover up the private bits so you could swim mostly unencumbered but not naked.  All I cared about then was the act of swimming.  I wasn’t self-conscious, I wasn’t even self aware.  Of course, I didn’t have cellulite, either.  So there’s that.

I think I have a subconcious desire to return to the days where I wasn’t so body-conscious.  When I didn’t even know what arm fat was, much less care if I had it.  When I wasn’t concerned about how nice my bewbs looked – mostly because I didn’t have any, to speak of.   At least not compared to now.

On an entirely intellectual level I find this Swimsuit Confidence to be somewhat of a dichotomy. I am not trashing the event, not in the least.   Women can always use more cheerleading to accept themselves and go ahead and live their lives in public, regardless of their shape or size.  I’m all for that, and I like seeing women shed their fears (or at least keep them at bay with buggy whip and three-legged stool) and show other women that its perfectly OK to have a normal body and be seen in a bathing costume in public.  I like that. 

What gets to me are the catalogs and the magazine articles and layouts and the jargon that crops up around the clothing they are flogging.  The swimsuits and bras and jeans and all of it.

Maybe more than Swimsuit Confidence what we need is Stop Telling Us We Look Bad.

I want to see more positive language around clothing and less of a focus on attaining the “perfect look.”  Read any woman’s magazine article about buying the perfect pair of jeans or finding the most flattering swimsuit, and every word of that article directs you to minimize your flaws. Your FLAWS. The catalogs and the photo shoots and the everything, they’re telling you that its OK to wear a swimsuit even though you’re not perfect.  So in other words, they’re telling you to feel okay about yourself WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY TELLING YOU YOU’RE NOT OK. 

That’s total bullshit.

Treating women as if their sole goal in choosing a swimsuit or a pair of jeans or a dress should be to make their butt look smaller or their boobs look bigger (or more lifted) or their waist look tinier or cover up their cellulite suggests that if we have any of these flaws, then we are not ok.  These are marks of who we are and how we are made, trophies of the children we bore or the scars we earned.  They are NOT badges of shame to be covered up, masked, and minimized.

I, for one, would like to see a magazine layout stop talking about our fucking FLAWS for a damn minute and start talking about our positives.  I think women should dress in what feels comfortable and good to them, not buy something someone else tells them to because it makes their ass look more “socially acceptable.”  Show me a woman who wears something because she feels good in it, and I’ll show you a woman who looks beautiful not because she successfully hid her “imperfections”, but because she knows she is beautiful exactly the way she is.

You have a responsibility to yourself to learn to treat yourself with love.  Don’t withhold love from yourself, don’t put a measurement on what makes you beautiful.  Don’t say “I’ll love myself more when I lose ten pounds” or “I’ll love myself more when this wrinkle cream finally starts working" or "I'd love myself more if I didn't have these scars and this cellulite."

Love yourself exactly the way you are now.  You are beautiful.  You deserve nurturing.  You are entitled to good things.  You are entitled to be happy, to exist just the way you are RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND.  NOTHING about you needs to be changed for you to be beautiful and loved and love-able.

The more you love yourself, the better care you will take of the precious body you were given.   And the less you will worry about what you look like in a swimsuit. 

Swimsuits are for swimming in. 

The price of contentedness

Sometimes you can be too happy.

Sometimes you can forget that there are things you must still pay attention to, no matter how much you might be settling into the warm, snuggly feeling of liking someone.  And when your focus strays, you must eventually deal with the consequences.

The eyebrows that you normally maintain with meticulous focus -- they might very well have started a concerted effort to join in the middle.  And spread out to other parts of your face.

The new pair of jeans you got that were already starting to feel a little loose in the hips, the button and the buttonhole might resist your wish to meet easily.

While you might not appreciate that there will be consequences to staying up til nearly midnight several days in a row, your body will remind you that indeed, there are. Usually about halfway home from work, when you might learn the hard way why there's a rumble strip on the side of the highway.

You might suddenly realize that you have a week's worth of laundry to do.  Immediately, in fact, if you'd like to have something to wear to work tomorrow.

There might be dust bunnies the size of Rhode Island lurking under the oak hutch.

 

Be warned and beware.  THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU.

 

But its worth it.

 

Acceptance, then (maybe) love

At the very least, acceptance.

How do you feel about your body?

Love it?

Hate it?

Live with it?

Our lives are saturated by the images and messages that insinuate themselves into the fabric of our being.  "Thinner," whisper the voices.  "Bigger there.  Smaller there.  Cap those teeth, whiten them, whittle down those cheeks and plump the lips."  Wrinkles and gray hair and the inevitable trail map of life -- are they marks of wisdom and beauty or blemishes to be ashamed of?

I'll never be twenty again, or even thirty.  I'll be forty-five in less than a month.  My face and my body bear the marks of everything I've done to myself, both good and bad.  The scar on my left shin where the pointy end of a piece of driftwood punctured my leg walking on the beach in the dark.  The waistline where the chaps my mom made for me in high school for horse shows, the chaps that still zip up on my thighs, won't quite buckle after two babies did a number on my hips.  The freckles, the age spots, the wrinkles. The hands that are covered in tiny scars from so many accidents with kitchen knives. The scar in my palm where I learned the hard way that the best way to get frozen peppermint ice cream out of the bottom of a carton is NOT by prying it with a butter knife.  The scar on my lip where the bad mole had to come off.  The skin between my belly button and...well, you know...that wrinkles when I bend over because it never quite regained its elasticity after being so hugely pregnant.  Breasts that nursed two babies, not quite as perky as they used to be, but they still point in the right direction.  The other stuff that was always there - the junk in my trunk and the wonderfully strong and sturdy legs I inherited from my birthmother.  Peasant legs, I call them.  My hair, not quite as thick as it was ten years ago but still thick enough, graying on the sides.  Short now, because I no longer have the desire to maintain a long hairstyle for the simple sake of vanity. 

Do I love my body?  I don't know, honestly.  Some parts of it I love.  Some parts I used to hate, but somewhere in between the years of fighting it, hating it, exercising it and getting older in it, I grew to accept it.  It is mine, with all of its beauty and all of its sags, wrinkles, dimples and bags.  I work it out to keep it healthy and strong.  I keep it really super reasonably clean. It could stand to be thinner and stronger, but I'll be happy with strong enough.  I don't need to climb mountains or run marathons, but I want to ride horses, play with my children (and my someday grandchildren), ski, swim, walk, run, stretch and do my own yardwork until the day I die.  If I treat it right, it will get me there and I'll be grateful.

Put it in a line with a million other almost forty-five year old bodies and it'll just blend right in. (Unless you sandwich me in between Cindy Craword and Claudia Schiffer, then I'm screwed).

Beauty is not a number on a scale.  Beauty is fluid, individual, constant and timeless.   For every one of you that does not think that I'm beautiful, there is another who does. 

It really does matter that you are beautiful in the who of you.  Beautiful in the how and the why.  Your physical self, in its imperfections, its glory, its strength and weakness, all of it adds up to beautiful.

My wish for every girl, for every woman, is to celebrate and acknowledge her unique beauty.  To enjoy her body in all the ways she can, in loving, in caring for others, in working hard, in play and in rest.  To treat herself in the way that we treat someone we love, by being good to herself, caring for herself.   Whether she is a professional athlete or a mall-walker, lean or curvacious, tall or short, whether her skin is brown, bronze, freckled, pale or olive, I want her to know that she is beautiful.  I want YOU to know that YOU are beautiful.

 

This year an inspired group of bloggers, mostly women, came together to join their creative forces in a really wonderful project. 12 women of all different shapes and sizes bared it all to show just how diverse and unique and beautiful women are.  The proceeds from this project will (after printing costs) will benefit the National Eating Disorders Association.

I ordered my Blogger Body Calendar today.  Go.  Check it out.  If you have a daughter or a niece or a grandchild or a partner or a woman in your life that you care about, won't you order one too?