"I want my daughters to become women who remember me modeling impossible beauty. Modeling beauty in the face of a mean world, a scary world, a world where we don't know what to make of ourselves.
"Look at me, girls!" I say to them. "Look at how beautiful I am. I feel really beautiful, today."
Thank you to the woman who wrote this. I may reread it everyday for a long time--the whole article. Click over and read it. Please. Go, read, now.
that's super duper sweet. thx.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I am appallingly vain. But there is a seed of self love in it, one worth exploring a little. Especially given the relationship between beauty and the selfhood. And the overpowering need to actualize some sort of selfhood that comes in middle age after years of suppression and silence and meanness.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I ever left my daughter for more than an hour was when she was nine months old. A girlfriend took her for the whole day and my family sent me to a Russian beauty parlor for a "day of beauty". It was awesome. The Russian lady who did my facial reprimanded me for not taking better care of my skin. "So many blackheads" she said. "You must take care of your skin. For your daughter. For your husband. For yourself". I thought it was interesting she said my daughter first. I'll tell you what though, I have taken better care of my skin ever since.
I have some conflicting intellectual objections to all this. I don't need to nurture my vanity, for sure. And the Beauty Ideal really isn't what I want to perpetuate. But the Beauty Ideal is only for very young women and fake women. This gets at what is real, I think. Our real beauty, the kind that matters. When we claim our own beauty for our daughters I think we're teaching them to see through to what is real.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, I tried this yesterday. Dear Girl was nearby brushing her hair and said, "I wish my hair weren't so curly because when I brush it, it just gets poofy." I was standing there in dirty farm clothes with hair FOUR days past greasy. I said, "Sit down. I'm going to tell you something. I am beautiful. I mean it. I am really very beautiful. When I was a child I was pretty. As a young woman I was gorgeous. And I am still very beautiful. You are pretty now. When you are a young woman you will be gorgeous too." Then Dear Boy wandered in. I looked at the haircut I'd just given him and said, "Well look at that, I'm talented too. That's a great haircut." There was silence in the room. Dear Girl said, "What does all this have to do with my hair being curly?" I said, "Nothing. Except what I'm saying is more important than your hair being curly." And you know what? She looked really kind of deeply at peace and pleased in a soul soothed way after that. Which made me bottomlessly happy.
I spent the rest of the day thinking about what happened there with me proclaiming my beauty to my kids. It put me in mind of my Grandmother---she had a morbid dread of appearing vain. So we have only pictures of her holding her hand up to ward of the camera. But she was beautiful and telling my daughter about my beauty, as I stood there modeling all my smelly anti-beauty ways normal for me in my middle age, I saw through it all. Looking at it from this perspective, our flaws highlight true beauty rather than detracting. When Grandmother flung every compliment and camera away with "BAH" and a humbug, she sort of highlighted her flaws. Why was she doing that? Oh, because she's fat? Because she's wrinkled...okay? Turned around, hearing from a middle aged sagging pudgy woman who insists she is beautiful, one is forced to look for her reasons---and then see them! Voila, invisible women suddenly appear before our eyes.
What better can we offer our daughters as they run the mean gauntlet? As they tirelessly agonize over their "flaws." I've been modeling "Just Don't Care" for a while now and it doesn't help anyone feel that much more secure or confident. It helps a little...but still...
There are a lot of people like me, because we're all the same. We're all blood and electricity. We're lonely under the gaze of god. We're all wet with dew and swallowing hard against DO THIS, CONSUME, SHUT UP and BE AFRAID to die.
ReplyDeleteAll of you women with lines on your brow, with cracks between your fingers… it's been a long winter. All of you, you are beautiful and so am I.
(that's the part I'd re-read.) I think self-care is the common thread here. To love my spiritual self, and the home that holds that soul, actively, attentively. Beauty is health, beauty is love, beauty is appreciation and light. It's the bounce in the step because of the joy in the heart. It's the confidence in the eye because of the approval offered within, to the self. I am beautiful because I am real.
I also have noticed this--people I love become very beautiful. An ordinary face when first acquainted becomes one I can hardly take my eyes from.
ReplyDeleteCecelia, as my grandma reaches the end of her life, I don't even think beauty includes health. Her poor little heart is all worn out, and yet she's as kind and uplifting as ever to all of us, her eyes as bright blue as ever, her encouragement as constant as its ever been. I think possibly it's true that love is all there is.
Thanks for talking about things that matter Katherine. love, Val
Oh hey, Thanks Val! I feel such peace from you so often here, that I wondered to myself in the shower this AM what you would say if you weighed in. I even considered asking you to. I got my wish! Thank you.
ReplyDelete