Body Image

I try not to think about how easily things come for my husband. He's brilliant. Talented. Handsome. He can spell any word. And then use it in a sentence. He's skilled in calculus. He has a lovely singing voice. Judging by his physique alone, you would think the man only eats organic salmon. But he doesn't. He is constantly asked if he's a marathon runner. But he isn't. He inhales high-sugar drinks, he loves steak, he thinks a bag of Skittles passes as a fruit serving, and his only form of exercise is chasing after our child. His doctor thinks he's a medical marvel. And he's frequently stopped by runners who want to know what his pace is.

Things don't come as easily for me. For one, I'm a horrible speller and I'm bad at math. I have an atrocious singing voice. And despite the fact that I eat healthy, consume very little sugar, and exercise a fair amount, no one would ever mistake me for a runner.

And as we move on in age--my husband moving faster--I see that things get even easier for him and even harder for me. His once beautiful chestnut hair is rapidly turning salty, which only makes him garner more respect. His age makes him more susceptible to raises and promotions, and I swear to god he's getting more attractive. For me, I'm struggling with the fact that motherhood conflicts with my career, pregnancy made my body do weird things, and hormones and age have made my hair a darker color that is upsetting the image I have of myself as a blonde.

Also, I pee all the f**king time.

On top of that, I'm tasked with raising a daughter. Which is all fun and games when it's pink blankets and hair bows.

But shit's getting real.

As it is, every two months my daughter is put on a scale and told where she falls in line with the population at large. Yes, I know baby boys do this also, but I think the difference is clear. She's tall and strong and stunningly beautiful. That should be the only thing the doctor writes in the chart. And while the percentiles may not emotionally affect my daughter, they worry the piss out of me. I stress that because she's in the 95th percentile in height, she will be an extremely tall adult. Perhaps shorter men will be too insecure to date her. Or she'll feel too self-conscious to wear heels. Which I guess all works out in the end because there's nothing worse than Little Man Syndrome, and high heels are truly the shits.

She has very little hair, and the hair she does have is nearly translucent, so she is almost always mistaken for a boy. So, I either have to dress her head-to-toe in pink ruffles, or constantly correct strangers who think that hair is what makes a woman.

Being a mother makes you realize the inevitability of women's inequality. The unbeatable battle of  having it all. And because genetic bingo (and a little hoping) gave me a girl, I now worry for the both of us. After all, I'm raising her in the same world that unfairly burdens women with a slew of pressures. Especially those surrounding post-baby careers and bodies.

I know my husband, as a man, has his own societal pressures. Well, from what I can gather, roughly two: 1) don't cry at sappy movies and 2) be a good provider. He doesn't have to struggle with equal pay, the glass ceiling, respect at work, biological clocks, foot pain from too-high heels or monthly bloat. And he especially doesn't have to worry with the three most annoying female problems: weight, breasts and hair.

Weight
The most effective diet I've ever done was Post-Partum Depression. It literally zaps your appetite! And your will to live! But it leads to substantial weight loss. I lost all the baby weight and six additional pounds three weeks after giving birth. I was constantly told how amazing I looked. And yet I had never felt worse.

The spectrum swings from one side--where Stacy and Clinton tell you that the solution to all your problems is a good-fitting structured jacket--to the other side where you need to stop eating dairy, meat, sugar, wheat, fruit, alcohol and Twizzlers. And join a gym.

Each diet comes with a doctor's backing. And you trust him because he's wearing a lab coat in the picture on the back. He says his plan is simple. No need to overcomplicate things. Just cut out table sugar. That's it. And this makes sense when you read it. Maybe because the four patients who wrote testimonials make you a believer. Just cut out sugar. But at the very end of the book, somewhere in the appendix, he says--oh by the way--also cut out fruit, root vegetables, dairy, and Novocaine.

Another says sugar isn't the problem at all. Wheat is. Wheat raises blood sugar far faster and steeper  because wheat has been genetically modified to an unrecognizable state, and most modern humans can't digest it. So cut out wheat--that's all!--and you're on your way to health. And, oh by the way, don't eat fruit, root vegetables or multivitamins. And no sugar.

Some diets say processed food that comes in packages is causing obesity. But NutriSystem says, "Buy our processed food that comes in packages to help your weight loss." Most all diets recommend eating lots of almonds, but Weight Watchers counts a handful of nuts as half your daily points.

Some plans suggest that dairy is the devil. Others say whole-grain pasta is the answer. And Kirstie Alley dances around in there somewhere, confusing everyone.

If you listen to them all, this leaves your choices to kale, broccoli, flax seed, cheese and lots and lots and lots of meat. So long as it isn't red meat (steak, hambugers) or cooked in lard (bacon) or containing too many hormones (chicken) or processed with wheat (deli turkey).

Unless, of course, you are trying the vegan diet, then so help you God.


Take away: potatoes cause cancer. And ugliness. And Dr. Atkins hates humans as much as he hates animals.



Just buy a structured jacket.



Breasts
I would argue that most women hate their breasts. Or at least one of their breasts. Or they feel only lukewarm about both of them. They might love them when they are strapped into a good-fitting underwire, but they don't like them when, say, bending over in the shower to shave. Women have to have good breasts. They need them to attract a mate, get out of speeding tickets and to nourish their babies. In fact, we are talked into using our breasts to feed our babies by promising it will help us lose the baby weight.

We see a beautiful model and we assume and accept that she's had lipo, Botox, a tummy tuck and is sporting implants: butt and breasts. We assume it because that's how we can rationalize her beauty. And we accept it because we somehow know that the societal standard of beauty is simply unobtainable without synthetics. But we can't accept that Lance Armstrong injects himself with god-knows-what in order to be the kind of athlete we greedily want. Sure, sure, beauty is nearly impossible to achieve without a surgeon, but robot-like stamina and leg muscles (in a middle-aged man) are. We ask our bodies to be too goddamn much. Skinny, perky, powerful, athletic, strong, sexy, motherly and healthy. And yet we can't fathom why someone would dope on steroids to achieve fame, or why a new mother with sagging breasts would feel badly about herself. Cause I gotta tell you, if I could get my schedule to open up I'd be at a surgeon's office with black marker lines all over my body just waiting for the anesthesia. And I'll take some steroids while I'm at it, if it helps me perform motherly duties at a more victorious pace than all other mothers.

Hair 

It was extremely heartbreaking to my husband when he learned that most female celebrities wear fake hair. He still loves Alicia Keys to the moon and back, but he grieved when I told him that her 8 foot long ponytail of perfect, shiny ringlets was a hair piece. Now he is skeptical of every beautiful woman on TV. 

My work here is done.

So yes, I've got my days when I think that if I were just four inches taller or my breasts were 2 inches higher, life would be perfect. Or that a little weight loss, or clearer skin, or a smaller ass would fix everything. But most days I feel beautiful because I see myself reflected in my daughter's perfect, round, cheerful face.

I've got to make sure she knows this. That the slight sag in the boobs and pudge in the belly are nothing compared to the beauty she's brought into my life. And make sure she never sees me beat up on myself, or try crazy diets or project my insecurities onto her. Because perhaps the single best thing I can do for my daughter is to be proud of who I am and how I look. And constantly remind her to value smarts and wit above cup and jean size.

But that doesn't eliminate the external pressures on this tiny, future woman I'm raising. Though I rest assured that my daughter is already grasping the right concepts. At 16 months old she's got 9 month shirts that still fit and 2T pants that are already too tight. Which means at this young age she's learning an important lesson as a modern woman:

A number on a tag is never the way to measure a lady.