At the moment, there are 6 lovely young women sleeping upstairs. 2 are my children, 4 are guests from Uganda.
The other day, I happened to walk by the living room to see our 13 year old guest smiling broadly into the mirror and dancing. It struck me how purely joyful she was. I am never so happy with my reflection. I was hyper-critical of my reflection at age 13. My 6 year old can be still seen dancing in front of mirrors, but I don't remember seeing my 12 year old doing so for quite awhile now.
An ethnography, Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman by M. Shostak, that I read for a class a few years ago came back to my consciousness. (To say "!Kung" you cluck your tongue and then it's phonetic - my professor dropped the tongue cluck after the first 2 times for ease of lecturing). It documents one of the last hunter-gatherer societies on earth, in its last true hunter-gatherer times (they ended up adapting a more agrarian lifestyle). It focuses on the title character, who is a woman very different from most women one would meet in our society. First of all, she is proud and beautiful and acts like it.
We wouldn't know what to do with her.
I remembered the book because of a scene when the anthropologist saw a 13 year old !Kung girl catch her reflection in a side mirror of a jeep and dance and smile delightedly in it. Shostak was used to Nisa's sef-confidence, but something about an adolescent's natural and gut reaction to seeing her reflection being one of happiness and pride struck Shostak as it did myself when I witnessed it.
Courtney brought up a great point in the book discussion of Their Eyes Were Watching God; beautiful women in our society are beat down. Women are not encouraged to live like they are beautiful.
Ugandan girls, from what I can tell, are much more encouraged to do so. At what age do we start tamping down our girls' satisfaction with the way they look? From what I can tell, Ugandans are not nearly as obsessed with looks as Americans either.
We spend billions of dollars on clothing, cosmetics, hair products, diets, gym memberships, surgeries, and therapy. We are told to try to look beautiful. And as Courtney pointed out, if you actually somehow are - look out. You'll be treated like Janie.
What if we acted like we are all beautiful? What if we lived like we know there is beauty in all of us, and celebrated and supported that in one another? Across all ages, races, socio-economic classes, abilities, etc.?
Our 13 year old girls would be able to look into the mirror and dance and smile.
I know it's Monday - but let's conduct an experiment: Try to smile when you see your reflection, and when you see beauty in other women.
I'll smile when I see beauty in other women, which comes in so many forms, not just the features I see. Smiling at myself is always so hard!! I really think I love myself, but when I look in the mirror, I don't see what I love. I see the wrinkles, the frizz, the freckles, the pimples. Maybe I'll look in the mirror and imagine what others see in me... like when I look at other beautiful women and smile.
ReplyDeleteOh, why are we so critical?
I hope, when my girl is 13, she sees only beauty. She is beautiful and most always makes me smile. Not just when I see her features, but her inner beauty too. I lost that somewhere along the way, why is that? How did it happen? Why is it so hard to really get back?
Okay.. I think I am too gorgeous for anyone's good. I wish my stretch marks would go away but other than that, my mirrors find me smiling, my cameras find me to photograph and my children ask me why I have to be so fancy everyday. Because, I my darlings, am an adornment for the world to wear. God made me that way. I wish all women felt the same as I do on unbloated, good skin days. hahaha :)
ReplyDelete