And, Now, the Rest of the Story

So, I liked my last post. It was all very correct -

“age well, be wise, grow character.”

But sometimes, I wonder how honest it was. I mean, I know that I want to be that person, the one who whole-heartedly agrees with Julie Roberts when she says, about wrinkles,

"They're the story of our lives, 

and it shouldn't be a story about your drive to the doctor's office."

Yes. Agreed.

But aren’t we all, in the deep dark reaches of our souls where we don’t let the sunshine in, just a little jealous of those women who do drive to the doctor’s office?

Yeah… not jealous… angry.

I feel an underlying anger that I can’t be normal and fabulous all at the same time. I see those fabulous/surgically-altered women and part of me is pissed. Really, really pissed. I feel like they sold out. They gave into the pressures of society and sold out. Like, being a woman is so hard that we don’t need members of our sex reaching into the “not fair” box?

Maybe, I just want them to be more normal. I feel like they are ruining it for the rest of us. Like steroids on the baseball field, we should be able to “suspend” a woman for using unfair tactics. They set the bar so high that the rest of us should just crawl into a hole, somewhere. I want to stomp my feet, jump up and down and throw a fit: either we all get plastic surgery or none of us do. I vote for none. We should all be good enough just the way we are.

See, the truth is that I am NOT really so angry at the women who get surgery to be "fabulous."

I do get why they do it. I really do. I get it.

It's that I AM so angry at a society that makes them feel like they have to, at a society that defines "fabulous" in such  narrow terms. I am angry at the pressure that we all feel, that we have to work so damn hard to escape from that pressure and that we constantly have to work to strengthen our own feelings of self-worth because, if we don't, our society will rip us apart.

Ask a hundred women what they’d want to change about themselves and you’ll get, maybe not a hundred different answers, but definitely answers, they’d all have something that they’d want to improve -  hips, butt, boobs, hair, teeth, something. Mainly, because we are constantly being shown this standard of perfection that is not attainable. Even the very models themselves aren’t good enough, most of the time the pictures have been AIRBRUSHED or PHOTOSHOPPED - I once watched a fashion show thing where they were Photoshopping underneath the eyes of a FIFTEEN year old because they were too WRINKLY!

EEEEEEE-GADS!!!!

Lose weight, lose weight, lose weight. 

Wait! Keep the boobs!

Is it any wonder we’re all miserable?

Nothing that we are is ever good enough.

I am a very small woman
- thankfully, I have a husband who says he likes that -
but I want cleavage.

There, I said it.

And, I wonder where on earth I got the idea that a woman is a woman based on her cleavage. Well, don’t we all know the answer to that? The media -  which is what informs, and therefore shapes, our society is the answer to that.

( I knew, even as a little girl, that Wonder Woman’s true power was not in her magic bracelets or her invisible plane, it was in her Insta-Boobs.  I tried that maneuver a dozen times as a little girl- I’d twirl my little gangly body around in a circle and never, not once, did I sprout those Wonder Woman Insta-Boobs.  Something was definitely not right on my planet, I’ll tell you that much!)

“You need to buy a bra for your car 

because you sure don’t need one,” 

was one of many statements made to me in high school and I've never really gotten over the feeling that I’m somehow not good enough because of it. After several boyfriends, two husbands, and breastfeeding my kids, I’m still worried that my boobs, and therefore my self, aren't good enough. Obviously, someone found me attractive enough to have three kids with. It's not that I am not attractive, it's that I am not necessarily marketable. My personal "Brand" would need to be totally overhauled by a PR guy, no doubt.  (Oh, how I hate the idea that a human being should be MARKETABLE. Marketable??? I am a round, three-dimensional, complicated, interesting human being. Not some one-dimensional, flat, predicable, boring something that you can USE for your ends!)

Marketable. Yep, it all comes down to money. They want to sell us stuff (make-up, wrinkle cream, diet plans, magazines full of information, new clothes, etcetera AND etcetera) and they need for us to feel desperate to have it so that we'll fork over our money TO THEM to receive the promise that we'll all become a little more like the unattainable standard of perfection that THEY have fed us. Since it's unattainable, we'll never reach it and therefore we'll always need to buy their products. Good for them, huh?

Oh, how I HATE THAT.

I should be judged ALL THE TIME on who I am, not what I look like… and I’m not. 

Neither are you. 

Sucks, huh?

Here I am, stuck inside this body, a body that was dictated to me, in large part, by genetics. The real me is not what I look like but it is a lot of what I feel that I’m judged on. There is a frustration involved in that I feel like people make judgments about my worth that are not tied in any way to me, as a real person.

(And, shocked when the very thing that guys picked on me about so mercilessly as a teenager is now the thing that causes some women to be antagonistic toward me. Every time a total stranger comes up to me and snarls, “You are so skinny!” I am just shocked. Or, my personal favorite, sometimes spouted by people who are suppose to be my friends, “I HATE you for being so skinny.” Really? )

I was hoping that 40 would be the place that I reached where the answer to this was given to me. I was hoping that 40 would be the place where I realized my INTERNAL POWER and really quit caring what those shallow, egotistical/insecure, dumb people who’d judge me based on what I look like, thought.

And, I find that, it’s not.

I mean, those voices are much quieter than they ever have been before. In fact, I feel much sexier now than I ever have in my life...

(partly because I've realized that "sexy" is an attitude much more than it is a shape, partly because my husband is an amazing, SMART man who really does think I'm sexy as hell and partly because I am finally reaching deep down into my own soil of self-worth and finding that I can feed myself, thank you very much. I don't need to feed off anyone else's ideas of what makes me acceptable or not, anymore.)

...but I was hoping that 40 would be the time when I could shut them up for good.

Here’s hoping for 50.

Actually, my husband has an interesting theory. He thinks that we've all been duped. All of us - men and women - fall into peer pressure, admit it or not. He holds the opinion that men’s tastes are as varied as women’s bodies. He really does prefer smaller women. And, he says that admitting that is a little like saying that you don’t like football (he’s a big Ohio State fan.)

“What red-blooded American male,” 

he asks, is going to admit, 

'Hey, I don’t like football and I don’t like big boobs.”  

And, they won't admit it, not because it isn't true, but because even men have been force-fed this same steady diet of bullshit - that if they don't want a certain thing then they, themselves, are not acceptable. (Chill out, I know  a lot of men DO like big boobs. Look me in the eyes <giggle> and hear what I'm saying, don't get sidetracked by the boobs. )

And, it's not just the big boobs, I've heard from men who really like heavy-set women...or skinny women or tall women or short women or women with glasses, etc. (I've even heard of this elusive fellow who gets turned on by "chicks with brains." Oh, momma! There's a REAL man. heehee heehee)

Remember, "Baby Got Back," from waaaay back in the day?  Besides being a funny rap song ("...red beans and rice didn't miss her...")  it was the first time that I'd ever heard a guy say,

 "Forget what I'm supposed to like, this is what I DO like."

Thank you, Sir Mix-a-Lot.

So, then, if we really are okay the way that we are because there really is somebody for everybody - what in the big giant world is the fuss about?  Maybe, we should all just be who we are- surgery or not, diet or not, cleavage or not- and trust that someone will find us beautiful.

To hell with society's expectations.

Here’s hoping for 45 - with a guy like my hubby, my insecurities don’t stand a chance. Maybe, even 40 ½... maybe, on a good day, it’s really 39!

Thanks, K-Man, for reminding me that:

 Being 40 a woman is powerful.

 Being 40 a woman is beautiful.

40 is just a number.

And, that the stinkin' greedy media lies.


"Pretty"
by Katie Makkai

Click on link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wJl37N9C0
(-no matter what blogger tells me, this is still the easiest way to post a video to my blog. And, if you're easily offended you might want to skip this, she drops the f-bomb. What am I saying?  If you were easily offended you probably wouldn't still be reading my blog... but nonetheless, you've been warned.)