All Mamas Are Beautiful

Millie writes:

I was chatting with my friend Elizabeth Marie yesterday. She is a full-time poet and the mother of a sixteen-year-old girl, which I think is an ideal combination; each job provides material for the other. I've never met her in person, but in photos Elizabeth Marie is gorgeous: enormous laughing brown eyes, flowing silver hair, fine features, porcelain skin and a body that somehow manages to look delicate and strong at the same time.

If Elizabeth Marie heard me call her “beautiful,” though, she would correct me. She's sure she's fat, and sagging, and wrinkled. Well, so she may be, compared to her teenage self (though when she was a teenager she thought she was skinny, odd and goofy-looking). However, both the Mother and the Poet recognize this “I'm so ugly” trap for what it is: a way to poison the next generation of women. “One of the things I need to do for my daughter,” she writes, “is learn to love my changing body.”

Let's gloss for the moment over the fact that we will do for our daughters what we will not do for ourselves – that's a post in itself! - and think about the role we play in forming our daughters' self-images.

When your baby becomes conscious of his surroundings, you are the first thing he senses. You are your baby's introduction to femininity, to nurturing and to the face of love; in short, to beauty. A small child thinks his mother is the most beautiful woman in the world. What changes his mind? Not society; not his own increasingly sophisticated perceptions.

His MOTHER changes his mind.

Children are acutely aware from a very young age of their parents' physical and verbal cues. If a beautiful, perfect mother sighs whenever she looks in a mirror, or constantly talks about how much she hates her thighs or her double chin, her child is soaking up this information as eagerly as he does her explanation of why the sky is blue. Small kids learn how the world works by watching their parents, and so if Mom is constantly broadcasting “my boobs are too small and my ass is too big,” what do her kids learn? They learn that they were mistaken, as they so often are, and Mom isn't beautiful – she's ugly.

Then they begin to mature.

The boys shy away from cheerful, generous curvy girls and chase after girls who agonize over their weight to the point of anorexia, because that's the definition they've learned for “beauty.”

The girls, who've heard the meant-as-a-compliment “you look just like your Mama!” all their lives, look in the mirror and see you – your eyes, your chin(s), your body shape – looking back at them. Well, you've taught them that that's what Ugly looks like. YOU know she's the most beautiful thing to ever grace a high school dance floor, but the lesson she's learned is that Pretty has bigger boobs and a smaller ass. If you think you're ugly, and she looks like you, what else could she think?

If you haven't resolved your body issues by the time your children are born, then fake it until they move out. Don't ever let them hear you criticize your appearance – or your voice, or your intelligence, or whatever it is you criticize. Children, especially same-sex children, identify with their parents. They learn how to BE from watching you. Concentrate instead on your glossy hair or your long eyelashes. Let them hear that you're grateful for your great sense of balance or your strong arms. Talk about what a pretty color your eyes are (“just like yours!”) and how much you like to dance. Don't even think about your chin(s) or your boobs or your ass until you're 65 and the kids have moved out of the house. Then you can agonize about them all you like, if you still want to.

Live your life so that your daughter knows that a woman like you - which is what she is - is beautiful.

Live your life so that your son knows that women like you – the first woman he ever loved – are beautiful.

If you can't be beautiful for yourself, do it for them. You have to start someplace.

Joy and Sassy – you are both so beautiful, inside and out, that it hurts my heart.

I guess that means I must be, too.

* * *

Elizabeth Marie's blog is called “An Incomplete Guide to an Ordinary Life.” In addition to being beautiful, she's a genius. Go give her a read - tell her Millie sent you!

On Beauty

Millie writes:

Like anyone who was ever a little girl, I want to be beautiful.

My mom (who always tried to be kind when my dad wasn't looking) once comforted me when I was a child by telling me that I was one of those people who don't look right in photographs – that I didn't look the same if I wasn't moving. My first boyfriend told my best friend while we were dating, “I love her body, but I can't stand her face.” (Can you believe my friend didn't pass that little tidbit on until after I broke up with the boyfriend?)

If having non-standard features wasn't enough, I'm also a fat woman. (It makes Lance flinch when I say that, like he's watching me stab myself, but to me “fat” is just an adjective. “Zaftig” and “fluffy” and “big” mean “fat.” Why not just say it?) To most people, being fat is the very worst fate they can imagine. Public ridicule of fat people is still okay; I'm embarrassed to recall that once I got into an argument with a bunch of Craigslist trolls about whether or not a fat woman (who might, after all, be their favorite teacher or their mother or their boss) could conceivably have any value to society. The unanimous consensus was that if they didn't want to bang her, she might as well be dead. So much for society.

(By the way, my cholesterol is probably lower than yours and my arthritis is inherited from my 98-pound mother.)

I wasn't fat until I hit my 20s. I was raised in the Projects and went to ghetto schools, and since I developed early I got called fat so often that I absorbed that belief with my multiplication tables. When I did get fat it felt pretty natural, to tell you the truth. What was the big deal?

Anyway, never having added “beauty” to my mental resume, I concentrated on other things. I am smart, and funny, and extremely nurturing (which doesn't always go with “smart” and “funny”). I'm bouncy and enthusiastic and organized and skilled in a wide range of areas. These things have given me an air of confidence that tends to confound people who can't believe I'm putting myself out there. I mean, why would an ugly fat woman WANT to shop for negligees, have a baby, swim laps, speak in public or dance? It confuses people that I'm not in a corner covered in shame.

The foregoing is not a cry for sympathy. It's a statement of fact, as if you were writing, “My eyes are brown” or “my hair is short” or “I am tone-deaf.” Most of the time I don't even think about it, because goofy-looking and overweight are not things that matter much to me.

They do matter sometimes, though. I love clothes, and like most other women I long for fluffy red cashmere sweaters in the fall and gauzy white peasant blouses in the summer. I get polyester double-knit tunics in colors from the planet Krypton no matter what the season, because designers don't make beautiful clothes in my size. Anything over size 12 apparently falls into the “slipcover” category. It matters, too, when I go somewhere in my official capacity as Someone's Mother or Someone's Wife. I would really love to be beautiful then. My people love me as I am, but I'm always so sorry to embarrass them by not being a Cosmo Woman.

There are a few things I like about myself. I love my eyes. I like my boobs (even though they're a lot lower down than they used to be). I think my hair is a pretty color and I am excited about the silver streaks that are coming into it. I put on makeup every day of my life – foundation, eyeliner, shadow, mascara, blusher, lipstick, gloss) because that's what my mother did so that's how women DO. I like being clean and well-groomed; beyond that I just don't usually think about it very much. I think about things like writing and gardening and chickens and my family and sex.

Lance thinks I'm beautiful. I don't understand why, but he really, sincerely thinks so. Partly I think it's because when he looks at me he sees the 19-year-old with waist-length gold hair who could wear a 2-piece swimsuit. Partly I think it's because we're both extremely sensual and he sees me through the eyes of how I make him feel and how I express the way I feel.

Sometimes, though . . . sometimes I catch sight of myself in a mirror or a window and I can see it. Sometimes I'll be wearing a dress that makes me look – just for a moment - curvy and delicious instead of like the Michelin Tire Man. Sometimes I'll catch a glimpse of myself laughing and see how someone who eats life by the handfuls could be more attractive than someone who is forever reining themselves in. Sometimes I'll walk into a room and watch my husband's eyes narrow and his lips turn up at the corners when he sees me.

Sometimes, I'm beautiful. It could be that we all are.