I HATE my . . .

Did you hear the echo of women everywhere responding with the speed of light?

Fat legs, flabby stomach, beaky nose, round eyes, thin lips, bulgy cheeks, flat breasts and on and on.

Last night I was indulging in trashy television, which I allow myself to do when my daughter isn’t home to witness it. I flipped to Dr. 90210, the reality show on E where plastic surgery patients explain what they hate about themselves and how they intend to fix it through plastic surgery.

What’s interesting to me is that most of these women are perfectly fine. There is nothing grotesque or ugly about their noses or their breasts, but they simply can not feel good about themselves until they fix their perceived flaw.

Sometimes there are really valid reasons for them to seek the surgery. Such as the 20-something girl who courageously opted to have a double mastectomy (removal of all breast tissue). She had it when she was only 18-years-old because her mother, grandmother, aunts and even some male relatives had died from breast cancer. For her, it was the only way she could look at her life and see a future that didn’t include a battle with breast cancer. Tragically, her surgeon botched the job and she was attempting another surgery to correct the fact that he stitched her two breasts together and made them two different sizes.

Diametrically opposed was Tabitha Stevens, former porn-star, who is a self-proclaimed addict to plastic surgery. You know when you touch-up some paint in a room and all the sudden you notice that really, the whole room needs painting because fixing the flaw had the effect of drawing out other flaws? Obviously, she’s an extreme case where she has had virtually every part of her body restructured and her issues are way deeper than cosmetic.

I am not opposed to women seeking surgery if that’s what they want. It’s risky though, the surgeon on last night’s Dr. 90210 said half (50%) of his surgeries are fixing the mistakes made by other surgeons. That’s an alarming statistic. Has anyone seen Meg Ryan with her new lips? This is a woman whose career is built on her cute little pixie face and her darling girl-next-door smile and she got her lips done to look sultry (at least that’s what appears to be her intent). It is not a good thing. I can’t look at her without thinking, You should demand a refund! Not that her previously pretty lips would be restored with a refund.

My real concern is the collective low self-esteem women are suffering from. Standing in front of the mirror and picking apart every perceived flaw has leaked into the collective conscience of our entire gender. It’s even leaking onto men and boys. The other day I heard a teenage boy say he had gone to the doctor for his check-up and they had congratulated him on gaining 10 pounds, as if that were a good thing, he said. The basic understanding for kids today is that it’s not a good thing to gain 10 pounds, even if they are growing in height. This kid will surely gain 50 more pounds before he completes adolescence and it really should be a good thing.

My concern with plastic surgery is that once you get it – what if you’re still stuck with your low self-esteem? I have one friend who got a boob job and she doesn’t regret it. It’s a nice job and it makes her feel good to have great boobs. Yet years afterward she still felt unattractive, though she’s stunningly beautiful and fit.

I don’t believe this is the fault of men. I believe the responsibility for women’s low self-worth rests solely with women. I’ve talked to men and really they just like breasts – big or small, whatever. They don’t even really care if they are lopsided. In my experience men, in general, are open to women looking different or carrying extra weight. They don’t really give our bodies the critical examination we do. They don’t expect us to be perfect and I don’t think they understand our need to be perfect. Think back on your experiences with significant others who have seen you naked – you may have felt fat or ugly, but it wasn’t because he said you were. (And if he did, then you should find a more accepting significant other.) It’s likely that he tried to make sure you knew that he thought you were hot.

Think back to the last time you were with a group of women. Or pay attention the next time you hang out with chicks. It’s just a massive complaint-fest. Do you have the friend who works out religiously and still won’t be seen in a swim suit because her body isn’t perfect? Do you have the friend who hates her curly hair or straight hair? Do you have the friend who can’t stand her thighs? Do you have the friend who constantly complains about her nose?

Of course you do. We all have those friends or those family members. And we look at their perceived flaw and think, really there’s nothing particularly wrong with your nose. They are looking at you and your perceived flaw in the same light.

I think the constant complaining is the source, or at least a major source, of our collective low self-esteem. When I am in a room full of women I listen to all the complaining and it tends to get more and more extreme – like a one-up-man-ship of who has the biggest flaw.

Oh you think you’re breasts are bad, mine have to be rolled into the bra after breastfeeding four kids!

At least you can fit into a size 6; I’m having trouble squeezing into the extra, extra large girdle!

There is no way I am wearing a swimsuit, I want to save everyone the embarrassment of having to look away!

It’s unhealthy! It’s funny, but I think the cost of saying bad things about your self is feelingbad about yourself. Who has time for that?

I truly believe we can change our collective low self-esteem by not indulging in self-criticism to get laughs. This really came home for me when my five-year-old daughter, Ainsley, started calling her perfectly-normal thighs fat. I realized when I started trying to lose weight after baby #2 and getting dangerously close to the dreaded 200 lbs mark that I had let my mouth run wild with self-loathing. I didn’t really feel all that terrible about my body until I started yammering on about how much pure fat I was losing by going to the gym. The more laughs I got from my hilarious descriptions about losing an inch of fat from my neck the more extreme my self-criticism became.

Obviously my incentive to stop this behavior was the fact that it was leaking into my daughter’s own body image. But, I think the same principle applies to our collective self-loathing.

I made a rule in our house that we don’t criticize our bodies. If we say something unkind about ourselves we have to write something good about ourselves and put it in a little box. It really wasn’t that difficult to stop the habit. I started trying to say something nice about myself, even where other women can hear me, where I run the risk of appearing stuck-up or conceited. The actual feelings about my self are becoming more positive as a result.

When another woman makes a self-loathing comment about herself I either simply don’t respond or I’ll say something like, I don’t have time to hate myself these days. It puts them off guard, but it stops the I’m uglier than you are war.

I’ll go first and say some nice things about myself.

I’m down to a size 12, and I don’t mean an Old Navy stretch 12, hurray for me! I’m feeling so curvy and voluptuous and healthy!

My hair transformed from straight to curly after my pregnancies. Hey, I spent the entire ‘80s trying to perm my hair to look just like this!

See how that’s different than what I would’ve said before:

I’m still a freaking huge size 12!

No one told me that my hair was going to get so freaking kinky and frizzy after I had kids.

Over the next month make an effort to try to change what you say about your body and I guarantee you will feel a lot better about it. I mean, really there are very few unfortunate people who are actually ugly and chances are you’re not one of them. If enough of us change the way we feel about ourselves it will inevitably leak into our collective conciousness.

Post from: Blisstree

I Hate My . . .

Guess what? We’re not things. We’re people. We think, we feel, we nurture the young and care for the sick. We are women and to allow the entire marketing industry to turn us into things has to stop somehow. Why do you think men think it’s okay to use us up? Because they see the same images that turn us into too large or too small or really pretty or not pretty enough objects. You don’t have to respect an object.

If you’re a woman who feels too fat or thinks she has too big a nose, ask yourself why. Is it because you really are or because you’re told a million times a day that a size 10 isn’t pretty? Is it because every billboard, magazine or television show talks about the size and the shape of your breasts? And then we offer our perfectly normal valuable selves to Dr. Frankenstein to reconstruct on Dr. 90210?

Has it occurred to anyone else that just maybe who we are isn’t the problem, it’s the message we allow them to sell us that is the problem? I think it’s time we stop buying it.

More on this at Queen of Violets and So Sioux Me.

Post from: Blisstree

Onslaught

My reflection is how I identify with my self.

It’s mysterious to me how I could look in the mirror every day, putting on make up, fixing my hair, or brushing my teeth and then be totally shocked when I saw a photo of myself. I was fat and didn’t see it. The power of denial about my weight issue confounded me for quite some time. I would see what I expected to see in the mirror, a memory of me, disregarding the number on my pants telling me there was an ever increasing problem.

Since losing 20-25 pounds I’m shocked at how much of that was on my face and neck.

When I look in the mirror it’s like finding my self again, a part of my inner identity that was hidden under a layer of puffiness.

I really missed me.

Post from: Blisstree

Face Me

The message is that you should eat fat free yogurt so that you don’t look like this fat woman.

I think this woman is hot. I think she’s sexy. I’m a huge advocate of Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty method of making me feel okay about myself. I’m very against advertising that motivates people to buy products because they feel bad about themselves. 

Advertising like this is anti-woman. Don’t expect me to eat your product if the message of your advertising is that I’m not allowed to be sexy if I EAT at all.

Post from: Blisstree

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

I usually don’t consider myself at all vain. I think I’m attractive and I have a positive self esteem about my looks. I’m one of the few women I know who would not choose plastic surgery because I don’t particularly hate anything about myself. My boobs have held up nicely, I don’t have terrible stretch marks, I’m just fine with how I look and I think that’s a super healthy attitude. But, this melasma is REALLY getting to me.

 For those of you who don’t know pregnancy mask or melasma is extra pigmentation on the face that occurs in about 20 percent of women during pregnancy. Although it is much worse when exposed to the sun. One dermatologist wrote an article about sun damage being the actual cause and pregnancy making it worse. Either way I’ve got it.

I confess to frequent sun worship as a teen and young adult, but I never had this. After my daughter the pregnancy mask went away, just as the doctors said it would, after a few months. But, now my son is 14-months-old and I’m still a freaking leopard face.

There is no cure. That’s what kills me. I can try oodles and oodles of creams and potions that all cost a ton of money and probably won’t work. I can try laser treatment that will likely not be consistent across the face and may, in fact, cause scarring. So, some spots and some scarring – how is that better?

Foundation, cover-ups and concealers, I’ve tried bunches of them but they only make it worse. They don’t cover the dark spots, but make the light spots look like I’m gobbing on the wrong color of foundation.

Even with all these facts I’m begging anyone out there to tell me about some miracle cure. I’ve read about this chemical Hydroquinone, but it’s photosensitive, which means you can not be in the sun at all or you’ll turn into a beet. Then, I’ll be a spotted beet. It’s summer and I’m fun mommy so I can’t avoid the sun altogether.

Post from: Blisstree

Can A Leopard Change Her Spots

I guess they have prerecorded two weeks of The View, which is a little odd as I watch Rosie and Elisabeth celebrate Elisabeth’s 30th birthday.

I’m disappointed Rosie left. I don’t really know what to think about it. I checked out the Q&A on Rosie.com and she’s basically saying she felt that the producers created the blow up for ratings. They were so ready for it that they did that “split screen” thing while they argued.  Also that she felt betrayed friendshipwise by Elisabeth.

She was just so angry I guess she quit. Then some of her less mature friends vandalized some pictures of Elisabeth in the studio. Uh, what is this freaking Junior High School and we’ve let the mean girls run rampant?

 (Bizarro side note: I’m watching the DVR of this morning’s show and Rosie just told Elisabeth that she and her little family get to spend an entire week free at her Miami home for a vacation. Hope she already took that week! Cause I don’t think that’s happening at this point.)

I will say this – I like Rosie, I’m disappointed she didn’t sign on for another year and I’m disappointed she quit after the argument. I think she was wrong to call Elisabeth a coward and imply she was too stupid to hold two thoughts at once. But, I think she got angry, because she’s super-passionate about the war) and unfortunately it was on national television. I can totally see myself doing that (passionately losing it) and then waking up in horror the next morning wishing I could pretend it never happened.

I don’t dislike Elisabeth. I disagree with her completely on most issues, but then I live in the Bible Belt of East Texas, so I’m used to being surrounded by Elisabeths. I’ve found they are generally very nice and good people and if you avoid talking about these issues you can be quite good friends with them. But, you know it’s a talk show, they are hired to talk about the issues and Barbara Walters had always envisioned a show where very different women with different views would discuss the issues. Mission Accomplished.

But, Elisabeth constantly annoys the crap out of me. For one thing does she have to look so much like Barbi? Don’t take this as jealousy, maybe a little bit – who wouldn’t want to have all the physical blessings Elisabeth has? 

But, she says really bull#$%& stuff, like on Monday’s show where she said she throws sand in Tim’s eyes when she stands up at the beach so he won’t see her body. I find it really very irritating when thin, fit women say stuff like that. She has a perfect body and I frankly believe she is aware of the perfection of her body. It should not be a hobby to complain about your perfect body. I mean, thin little Elisabeth sitting between Joy and Rosie complaining about being seen in a swimsuit.  It’s insulting.

Shut up stick.

That’s what I would never say, but think about saying to thin beautiful women who complain about their appearance. Can’t pretty girls have a freaking self esteem? How are we chubby women ever supposed to feel good about our own bodies if the perfect, thin healthy women can’t manage to appreciate it and feel good about it?

This is why young girls are getting so screwed up with the eating disorders and self-hatred. They see thin, perfect Elisabeth dissatisfied with perfection. The View should institute a Self-Loathing Sin Bank, like the one I have at home. My daughter and I have to pay a fine if we criticize ourselves. Elisabeth should have to pay $100 every time she says something about how unattractive or insecure about her body she is. (This rule should not apply to Joy however, because she has legitimate issues and her self-criticism is for comedic value and we can all relate to it, as she does not look like Barbi.)

Anyway, Cheers Rosie. I, for one, hope to see you on the air somewhere.

Post from: Blisstree

Rosie Quit, Elisabeth Stays