The hardest part about raising a daughter has been watching my
mouth. I swear a lot. I use the F-word A LOT. I also take almost any
opening I get to say something negative about my body.
"Oh these chicken breasts are huge!" I bet they could at least button their shirt.
As
women, I think we all do this. As a woman who isn't a size 8 much less
a size 2, I do this constantly. I work in an all-woman environment and
at least once a week we find ourselves in some sort of "My body is
worse" pissing match. So when I read Rosie's post my heart broke and I teared up at its brutal honesty:
One
of the things that I often talk about is the need for us to modify our
own language– what we project about ourselves– and the language of
others. That instead of saying “I hate my cellulite” when someone else
says she hates her nose in order to be in companionship with that
person, we should say, “I can’t imagine why you would hate your nose,
and you have a smile that lights up the world” (or whatever else might
be the case)...After my talk at Amherst College, I met some roommates
who told me about the Self Deprecation Jar they had in their suite.
Anyone who says anything bad about him or herself has to deposit some
cash in the jar. When it all adds up to a quality loaf of bread, they
hit the bakery. I just loved it.
And so did I. Go ahead, click on the link to read the entire post, it's totally worth it.
I've
assumed that we'd end up with a swear jar at some point at home, but a
self deprecation jar? I never would have thought that up. But now it's
out there. About six months ago my daughter asked her daddy if her legs
were fat. She was just past her 4th birthday. Fat? *sigh* Thankfully it
was a one-time occurrence, but it still lingers in the air.
The Gods created my daughter in my image and this is a blessing and a curse.
It
is a curse because I really don't like my body. I treat it poorly. I
don't take care of it the way I know I should. I scold it, poke it, and
jiggle the flab. Yet I have read memoir after memoir essay about women
growing up with mom's who diet and hated their bodies. Some of the
women wrote about how others who comment that they were a "little
Susan" at the same time they saw their mother's weighing chicken
breasts to ensure a "correct dinner." I don't want that to be what my
daughter remembers of me when she's grown and I'm dead.
It is a
blessing because each morning I wake her up and see how freaking
beautiful she is. I see how much she looks just like me when I was her
age and it scares me. Some days I think something triggered the ugly
gene...maybe around the same time I got curly hair aka puberty. But
most of the time, I have to swallow my self-hate and realize that if
she is this gosh darn beautiful (and it's been verified by many an
outsider) then there must be some of that in me too.
And here I thought I needed a therapist, when all I needed was my daughter.
This post was cross-posted at Viva La Feminista, Veronica's personal blog. You can also find her at WIMN's Voices, Chicago Moms Blog and Work it, Mom!
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