Self Care (Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful)
Last night's thing was good, but the new theme for this month is beauty, which made me itchy. First we had to write down a list of things in response to "if I were more beautiful, I would..." (including, a more beautiful parent, wife, etc - not just physical appearance) which I did dutifully, but I kept thinking of Raven saying that happiness is right here and having something that will make you more beautiful won't make you happy. So I was unsurprised when we inevitably got around to reframing it to "Because I am beautiful, I am..." which was nice. I noticed recently that most of what people make as affirmations they already have, but they don't believe in it yet., so this sort of tied in with that.
Then we had to write love letters to ourselves, telling ourselves all about what we think is awesome about us, and apologizing for all the times we judged ourselves harshly. A lot of women had a really hard time with this. I didn't really. Secretly, I more or less know I'm awesome, and I've always had an incredible community of people to tell me in case I forget. I had some harsh judgments to cop to, but that was about it. My issues with beauty are sort of different.
I was a really ugly kid. Really. Ugly. I got boobs at 10 but it didn't help much - just made me an ugly kid who everyone thought was a slut because she had boobs. But somewhere around age 15 or 16, I got pretty. Not that it helped people like me anymore. I figured out pretty quickly that you have to be really super nice and self-effacing if they're going to tolerate you looking like that. Above all, never ever ever admit that you know you look good, because you shouldn't be proud of it, you should be ashamed of it. It means that if you turn men on, you owe it to them to do something about it. It means that if you piss off girls, you owe it to them to kiss their asses. So mostly I ignored it and went on as best I could, dragging my integrity on my heel like a piece of toilet paper.
When I joined in with the the wonderful Columbia community, it made me just ridiculously uncomfortable that people pointed out that I was hot, but I also got that hot didn't mean what it meant in the rest of the world, and in fact every single one of us were hot and it was just fun play to make room for us all to shine and flirt and be turned up to 11. The safety of that was so delicious.
Enter the purple catsuit. At festivals I could be me for awhile, and enjoy my body and my beauty. A big part of my love of PDF and Burning Man is that same feeling of permission to be fabulous, and the notion that we're all fabulous, and the wonderful costumage that goes with it.
But that's there. In the real world - even here - I really hate admitting that I like the way I look, even with an extra 30 pounds on me. And it occurs to me that part of why I keep this extra 30 pounds is so that I can feel less threatening to the world. I haven't been able to lose it because unconsciously I don't really want to lose it, because everybody likes the jolly chubby chick who is confident. I'm not sure people wouldn't just think I'm a bitch the other way.
My wedding pictures are another commentary on that. You're supposed to be beautiful at your wedding, so I busted my ass to get in shape for it, and agonized about making sure I'd look pretty for all time. But as soon as it was over, I let it all go. As a modern, feminist-type chick, it's so embarrassing to admit that, but there it is.
So anyway, one of the final things we did was to pass around the mirror and say "I am beautiful" into it, which we're supposed to do 3 times a day. I feel a lot of resistance to it. And I really hated doing it in front of everyone. Which means I need to do this religiously.
It's a funny thing: most of this seems sort of silly new-age lame on the surface, exactly the kind of crap that the big judge in me scoffs at and mocks. But the truth is that there's just so much that comes up around this stuff for me, and I'm really getting something out of it. And it's really reassuring to be in a group of women who are willing to let me be messed up and who are not hiding behind false perfection, but who are trying and growing. So fuck all those judgments about it. This is where I need to be. And I love this community of beautiful women! CoMo tribe, I so wish you could meet them.
Then we had to write love letters to ourselves, telling ourselves all about what we think is awesome about us, and apologizing for all the times we judged ourselves harshly. A lot of women had a really hard time with this. I didn't really. Secretly, I more or less know I'm awesome, and I've always had an incredible community of people to tell me in case I forget. I had some harsh judgments to cop to, but that was about it. My issues with beauty are sort of different.
I was a really ugly kid. Really. Ugly. I got boobs at 10 but it didn't help much - just made me an ugly kid who everyone thought was a slut because she had boobs. But somewhere around age 15 or 16, I got pretty. Not that it helped people like me anymore. I figured out pretty quickly that you have to be really super nice and self-effacing if they're going to tolerate you looking like that. Above all, never ever ever admit that you know you look good, because you shouldn't be proud of it, you should be ashamed of it. It means that if you turn men on, you owe it to them to do something about it. It means that if you piss off girls, you owe it to them to kiss their asses. So mostly I ignored it and went on as best I could, dragging my integrity on my heel like a piece of toilet paper.
When I joined in with the the wonderful Columbia community, it made me just ridiculously uncomfortable that people pointed out that I was hot, but I also got that hot didn't mean what it meant in the rest of the world, and in fact every single one of us were hot and it was just fun play to make room for us all to shine and flirt and be turned up to 11. The safety of that was so delicious.
Enter the purple catsuit. At festivals I could be me for awhile, and enjoy my body and my beauty. A big part of my love of PDF and Burning Man is that same feeling of permission to be fabulous, and the notion that we're all fabulous, and the wonderful costumage that goes with it.
But that's there. In the real world - even here - I really hate admitting that I like the way I look, even with an extra 30 pounds on me. And it occurs to me that part of why I keep this extra 30 pounds is so that I can feel less threatening to the world. I haven't been able to lose it because unconsciously I don't really want to lose it, because everybody likes the jolly chubby chick who is confident. I'm not sure people wouldn't just think I'm a bitch the other way.
My wedding pictures are another commentary on that. You're supposed to be beautiful at your wedding, so I busted my ass to get in shape for it, and agonized about making sure I'd look pretty for all time. But as soon as it was over, I let it all go. As a modern, feminist-type chick, it's so embarrassing to admit that, but there it is.
So anyway, one of the final things we did was to pass around the mirror and say "I am beautiful" into it, which we're supposed to do 3 times a day. I feel a lot of resistance to it. And I really hated doing it in front of everyone. Which means I need to do this religiously.
It's a funny thing: most of this seems sort of silly new-age lame on the surface, exactly the kind of crap that the big judge in me scoffs at and mocks. But the truth is that there's just so much that comes up around this stuff for me, and I'm really getting something out of it. And it's really reassuring to be in a group of women who are willing to let me be messed up and who are not hiding behind false perfection, but who are trying and growing. So fuck all those judgments about it. This is where I need to be. And I love this community of beautiful women! CoMo tribe, I so wish you could meet them.