Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

Most of us grew up hearing the classic fairy tales: Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White. While most boys listened and then went off to play with their cars and action figures, the majority of us girls dreamed of being princesses and happily ever afters. Not once did it ever occur to us that Cinderella had eleven toes on her tiny feet; that Rapunzel got hair extensions to make her ladder of lovely locks; that Sleeping Beauty was actually snoozing at a private hospital in Switzerland getting cosmetic surgery to "preserve" her looks until her prince came along. And I never in a million years thought that Snow White, when coming across the Magic Mirror, would ask, "Do I look fat?".

These scenarios sound ridiculous, right? But these are the very things that we as individuals, and as a society, are searing into our children's maleable, little psyches. Right about now you're probably saying, "I would never tell my kids something like that". But take a look at the shows and movies you're watching while they play nearby. Skim through the magazines you leave laying around for tiny eyes to peruse. Listen to the criticism you heap on yourself when you don't think they're listening. And they're always listening, especially when you think they aren't. Now, maybe you can see what I mean.

I mentioned recently that I like to read fashion magazines( I said stop snickering!). Now, I could lie to you and say that I "just read them for the articles", but I won't. Truthfully, I read them for the whole package: the clothes, the makeup, the shoes, the current events, advice, health articles; all of it. The one thing I DON'T read them for is to see the skeletal remains of women encased in haute couture that they call "models". The very act of writing about them gives me shivers. What are they considered "models" of? The feminine form at it's best? Are you kidding me? These girl's look as if they were to stumble on the runway, that they would shatter into a million pieces! And it's not just "models" in magazines. The celebrities on TV and in movies look like stick figures, too. The mature Oscar winner right down to the young ingénue. Not only that, but younger and younger women are getting cosmetic surgery. Botox, implants; a lift here, a tuck there. When did we decide that looking half starved and in a constant state of surprise was the epitome of beauty?

Up until the early part of the twentieth century, the ideal female form was considered to be shapely, curvacious, soft. Artists like Cezanne, Degas, Klimt, and Renoir are just some examples of those who took up their brushes to proclaim that very idea. Not in any of their paintings would you be able to count a woman's ribs or think that she had her nose done. What they saw was so beautiful that they felt compelled to immortalize it on canvas.

Now, we immortalize things digitally and photoshop or airbrush away what is considered undesireable. We tell our little girls how pretty they are and then go out and buy them dolls with tons of makeup and minimal clothing and show them what pretty is "supposed" to look like, effectively negating any praise we've just given them. Where does it end? When will we decide that it's better to pass down a healthy respect for ourselves and the way we look, instead of our neuroses about an unachievable, and ultimately damaging, standard set by a silent consensus.

Who is to blame?

I am.

You are.

Everytime one of us looks in a mirror and sees what isn't there, instead of the amazing things that are, we put another nail in our own glass coffin. Everytime we look for approval between the pages of a glossy magazine; everytime we envy that celebrity who is starving herself and working out manically just to keep her job; everytime we search for self-worth through the eyes of a nation of surgically altered, over-beautified lemmings, we help to dig our own idealized graves. And we teach our girl's to do the same.
So what do we do to stop this vicious cycle?

Well, for starters, we need to stop letting the media tell us who we are and what we should look like.
Don't let them tell you that a size 8 is plus size.
Don't let them make you think that since you're preternaturally thin, you need to have a rack full of C-cups.
Don't let them tell you that your nose needs to look like a button, that your lips need to look like a swarm of bees attacked them, or that your eyebrows need to be up in your hairline.
Stop allowing them to manipulate what our standards of beauty should be.

If you have a gap in your teeth, smile all the wider.
If you have a big nose, know that sculptors revered women like you.
If you have wrinkles, know that every one of them tells a story of joy or sorrow.
If you have a flat chest, throw your shoulders back and stand proud.
If you've got curves, show the world that they are dangerous and sexy.

It's said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. No one beholding you is perfect. Doesn't it stand to reason, then, that beauty isn't perfect?
Embrace your imperfection.

And the next time you walk past a mirror, magic or otherwise, tell it to go crack itself.
You already know who's the fairest one here.

Snowflakes

In our society, you are told as a young child that you are unique. You are an individual. There is no one like you. You are a snowflake. A tiny, crystalline figure with a pretty, perfect pattern floating in your very own patch of sky. And I bet that for a while you actually believed that. I know I did. For a very long time I thought of myself as mysterious, an enigma. No one could really know all about me. I was intriguing. Unique.

A snowflake.

Then I was given a book called The Way They Learn by Cynthia Ulrich Tobias. It was given as an effort to help me better understand my kids and "the way they learn". Now, let me just take a second to tell you how much I absolutely loathe reading child rearing and self-help books. I'd rather get my advice from a real, live person that I know has experienced what I'm going through, rather than read about it. Even if it is based on some group study by a guy who has a PhD in the given area. I prefer personalized attention. I am, afterall, unique. So, needless to say when I received the book, I had my hesitations about it. But since the giver of the book held it in high regard (and I knew she would ask me what I thought about it), I decided to at least try and skim through it. What I found inside was both illuminating and slightly disconcerting.

This book knew me.

It said that people perceive things in two dominant ways: concrete and abstract. Concrete was what could be immediately perceived through the five senses; it was tangible; the key phrase being "It is what it is". Abstract used intuition, intellect, imagination; looking beyond what is; the key phrase being "It's not always what it seems". That abstract thing sounded kind of like me. Next it spoke of how we use the information we perceive as either sequential ("follow the steps") or random ("just get it done"). Then it listed the four possible combinations of these learning styles. When I read the description of the Abstract Random learner, I had to pause. It was describing me. Nine out of every ten descriptions of an AR fit me to a "T". (Where does that phrase come from, anyway?) The book went on to tell how people remember things ( I'm primarily auditory) and how they understand information (analytic or global- I'm global and prefer to get the gist of things and paraphrase).

I finished reading the book and although now well informed, I felt a bit deflated. If I'm so unique, how could this book so easily throw me into one of four categories? Well, I decided to file that information in my mind. I was still a snowflake, there just happened to be some slightly similar snowflakes in my patch of sky now.

Then I found out about the Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman.

As I listened to the counselor describe how everyone experienced love by either: physical touch, quality time (those two are me, by the way. Apparently I'm "bilingual"), words of affirmation, acts of service or gifts, I had that sinking feeling again that my snowflake was again being blown towards another large group and my individuality was quickly disappearing. But, yet again, I did learn something about myself and going through everyone I know and figuring out their "language" was kind of fun. So, once more I saved the information and filed it away in the back of my mind.

A time then came where I was a little lost and couldn't figure out what I was really good for. An identity crisis. ( Being around kids 24/7 and becoming known only as _____'s mom will do that to you sometimes.) Sure I could slaughter at Trivial Pursuit, talk about why Aang is sad that he's the last airbender and read a 400 page book in a day, but how could any of that be used as a contribution to society?
Cue another friend with yet another book, Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tim Roth. THIS book had you take a test online and then told you what your top five strengths were. The website even went so far as to give you an action plan and show you what occupations people who shared your strengths tended to excel at.

This book was the last straw.

After taking the 30 minute test online, it showed that my top five strengths were: Input (a craving to know more and file and archive interesting information- evident in my insatiable reading and my habit of filing things away in my head), Empathy ( sensing the feelings of others by imagining myself in their place or situation), Intellection (an appreciation for introspection and intellectual discussions), Ideation (my fascination with ideas and finding connections between things), and Individualization (being intrigued by the unique qualities of each person). It was amazing to learn that things I took for granted and thought of as just quirks in my nature, were actually strengths; qualities that others looked for and admired. I felt good. I held my head a little higher.

Then I was struck by the fact that I had once again been put into a group. A category. My pristine snowflake was just part of a huge, dirty snowdrift by the side of the road.

DANG IT!!

After wallowing in those thoughts for a while, I came to a realization.

An epiphany, if you will.

I didn't really care about being mysterious, anymore. I'd rather understand why I do things a certain way; why I crave certain kinds of attention rather than others. I would rather know that my thinking isn't scattered, it's just how I interpret information; that memorizing my social security number by making up a song for it isn't weird, it's auditory. Who wants to be an emigma when you can empathize with another person and try to understand what they're going through?

My individuality wasn't erased by the fact that I could be categorized. It helped to enhance it. It emphasized how different I was by connecting all the things that I learned about myself. That I'm still learning about myself.

I am a snowflake.

A global-abstract-random-auditory-touching-quality time-empathetic-individualizing-input-ideation-intellectual snowflake.

I think I'm okay with that.

Pink Ladies

I read an article last week in one of my fashion mags (stop snickering!) about a group of women in India known as the Gulabi(pink) gang, after the bright pink saris they wear as their uniform. They are a group of vigilantes started by a 47 year old mother of five, whose friend was being beaten by her alcoholic husband. When they sought help from the local police, they were told that nothing would be done. So the woman gathered dozens of neighboring women and taught them to fight back. Armed with traditional fighting sticks, these women, part of the "untouchable" caste, have beaten up accused rapists, corrupt officials, and abandoning husbands. Now numbering in the hundreds, these women don't need to resort to violence anymore to get their point across. Just the sight of their bright pink saris and the knowledge that they are coming is enough.
Reading this article made me want to go out and buy a pink sari myself. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that vigilantism is the answer to everyone's problems, but I think that solidarity is definitely a step in the right direction. Violence among women is a huge epidemic in all across the globe. The strange thing is though, that women outnumber men the world over.
But there is strength in numbers. Armies throughout history have made sure to look their fiercest and make a good showing of their size to allow the mere sight of them to strike fear into their enemies. So maybe if we just learned to stand together when we see someone, man or woman, being beaten down, like those women in India, the sheer sight of us would be enough to make anyone think twice before they ever tried to hurt someone again.
Of course, carrying a big stick might help, too.