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I’ve had a consistent and unfilled
New Year’s resolution for more than a decade. I don’t know the exact age when
it first found its way into one of my many journals. I believe it was somewhere
around 12. Despite varied phrasing it always comes out reading something like:
Lose weight. I truly believe that at certain points in my life I was utterly
convinced that this was my personal key to looking beautiful and therefore the
key to my happiness. Growing up I never
gave much thought to how kind I was or how intelligent. Not because these
things were unimportant or ranked below beauty, rather I felt secure in these
areas. I had a report card every few months to remind me that I was smart. I
had a myriad of yearbook tributes to tell me I was kind. Yet nothing in my life
gave me any indication that I was in fact beautiful.
For about six months when I was 15
I finally did it. I reached my New Year’s resolution. Rather than reveling in
my success and feeling satisfied and finally secure I felt unfulfilled. My
memory is a little hazy on my exact feelings but I certainly have no
recollection of ever feeling beautiful. I do clearly remember that the number
on the scale dominated my thoughts much more than I ever wanted to admit.
I have no intention of focusing on
my body image issues past or present. I merely want to explore a phenomenon in
our society: the quest for beauty. What has heretofore been mentioned is only
one small fraction of my own personal “quest” (I hope the use of such a lofty
word comes out satirical rather than reverent). It has manifested itself in
many forms over many years. At different phases of my life it has taken on
different shapes yet all utter the same deafening whisper, “You are not
enough.”
What really lies behind the quest
for beauty is a desperate need for acceptance. (I would like to take a moment
to differentiate between looking
beautiful and feeling beautiful. For
in one we see self-loathing and the other self-love. Looking beautiful, which
is the goal of the quest, is about others and more specifically their approval.
Feeling is about you.) Trailing behind beauty we often find the words
attractiveness, desirability, confidence, and even worth. Unfortunately someone
somewhere decided to pin these rather significant and unrelated qualities to a
rather useless and shallow idea. The more I live the more I am utterly
convinced that attractiveness has little to do with beauty. Moreover, I have no
doubt that worth and beauty do not even belong in the same sentence.
I don’t know who started the Great
Lie. I don’t know who first convinced another human being that his or her worth
was related to appearance. I imagine monetary gain was somehow involved in its
conception and spreading. Yet the greatest mystery of all is that we have perpetuated it. We have fed it, pampered it, and
coddled it. Worse still we have let
it turn us against each other. I cannot speak for men because I am a woman.
More and more I am convinced this is not solely a female issue, however my own
limited experience demands I speak only about what I have observed, and
participated in, among my own gender. How many times have we commented on each
other’s hairstyles, make up, fashion choices, and weight? Who cares what she
looks like? Who cares what you look like? Who cares what I look like? Why won’t
we let the Great Lie die? I think it’s because we believe it. I know I have
spent countless hours fixated on my flaws. In a pathetic attempt to make myself feel
better I have taken comfort in reminding myself that I am not the most unfortunate
looking creature on the planet. Fantastic. Nothing like a big fat helping of
comparison to make the world a better place.
Rather than uniting in the bond of
sisterhood to combat the Great Lie we, as women, have lied down and let
ourselves become submerged in a deluge of septic runoff. Let us wipe the sewage
out of our eyes. We. Are. Worth. It. The things that make humanity great are
empathy, compassion, ingenuity, humor, intelligence, vulnerability (thank you
Brene Brown), creativity, and love. Strangely and might I say beautifully none
of these attributes are remotely visible. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder; I’d like to argue
that beauty is in the soul of the
beholder.
Perhaps a shift from looking to
feeling would finally absolve us of our persecution of one another and more
significantly of ourselves. Feel good. That should be the objective. If a Star
Wars t-shirt, faded shorts, flip-flops, and a French braid make you feel worth
it, then so be it! (Yes, that is my ideal outfit) I have felt guilty my whole
life for loving graphic tees, for having love handles, and for hating how
foundation feels on my skin. Set the guilt free, cut off the expectations, bid
the comparisons farewell and perhaps we will find our compassion. Most importantly
our self-compassion. Perhaps next year on my New Year’s resolution list the first
thing that comes to mind will be something worthwhile like “be vulnerable in
relationships” or even “learn to play the harmonica”…
