How We See Ourselves: Wisdom from Our Daughters
My daughter is a fashion design major and furniture design minor at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Georgia. The following is a text exchange between us during her sophomore year — her sitting in one of her fashion classes and me walking down the street in New York City. **Note: this school is outstanding. Her experiences and professors are creative, thought-provoking and we could not be happier with this institution.
E: Guess what
ME: What
E: Beauty standards were created by men to put down women and hold them hostage
E: Therefore literally every woman is beautiful because beauty is relative and if no one listens to the standards men set up for women then everybody would love themselves
E: 8/10 women hate their bodies, that’s a lot of girlies
ME: Wow. That’s big.
ME: Is that in class?
E: Yes!!!!!
E: It was such a good class
E: My whole perception of myself and beauty has changed
E: Being skinny was literally created by men in the 20s because women were starting to gain independence so they needed to restrict them
E: It all adds up
Our conversation went on for a bit longer. I asked her if this new knowledge has changed her perspective of fashion. She said it hasn’t, but it will shift how she presents her designs, values and ideals.
For my then 19-year-old daughter to have a realization of how deep body image and shame issues run for women, how long this has been happening, the long generational threads this pulls, and to make the connection to the way she feels about her own body brought me to tears walking down the street in New York as I passed countless fashion brands marketing to her. To me. And not to mention the countless “girlies” I passed walking down the street.
Even if you don’t totally agree with the bold statement that “beauty standards were created by men to put women down and hold them hostage,” you most likely feel some ping of truth in that idea, somewhere deep inside.
This is NOT to blame or bash men, she wasn’t coming from that place either, but to shed light on a system that we are all complicit in propagating.
And to question how some of the most powerful industries on the planet (fashion, diet, fitness…) market to, manipulate and control the minds of girls and women for profit.
What really touched me about our conversation was how she internalized this information.
She was liberated from a version of beauty she realized she didn’t create.
Just because a woman isn’t a 5’9” size 2, with glowing dewy 20-year-old skin, doesn’t mean she isn’t beautiful. And if we all believed this, deeply, we would all love ourselves.
This also broke my heart a little, because she didn’t grow up in a house where we talked about being skinny, I never complained about how I looked in front of her, and yet...the cultural messaging of what beauty is and isn’t had attached itself to her and made her feel like she didn’t measure up to the “ideal” standard of beauty.
She saw through a new lens how strongly the way we look impacts how we feel about ourselves.
Even if you are a woman who doesn't currently have body shame or image issues, I would place a large bet that if your body changed in some way you didn’t like, you wouldn’t be happy about it. And every year that goes by, we keep shifting more and more.
I am in this place right now. My early 50s body has put on several pounds. My patterns didn’t change that much. It wasn’t because of quarantine. There are definitely hormonal shifts that are playing some role. Menopausal weight gain is real...at least for me. And this has been something I’ve had to look at. My own correlation between how I look and how I feel about myself. I’ve been diving down every rabbit hole and reading all the books about women, weight, and hormones in order to FIX this.
The desire to conform to what a tight 30-year-old looks like is strong. There are some patterns I will address from a health perspective to feel as healthy as I can. Nutrition, exercise, stress…all the things.
AND. If nothing changes. If nothing “works,” and I don’t “lose the weight” or “get back to where I’m comfortable,” how will I feel then? Am I concerned with what will people think? Intellectually the answer is no, I don’t really care what other people think. But does that truth actually live in my body? Or is there something else at play…something much deeper?
Are we surprised how incredibly successful the diet, fitness and fashion industries are?
What is your relationship to your body and how do you feel about yourself? How strong is the way you look tied to how you feel about yourself? Or even your business?
Is this a relationship that you had a part in establishing or have you bought into the cultural narrative like so many? How do YOU feel about YOU, regardless of what the meat suit looks like or how you are being sold to?
Now look, I love clothes, jewelry, shoes, makeup, and great hair and that’s not going to change anytime soon. I also actually love nutrition, holistic health, exercise, and being active. I love the human body. I also love mindfulness, meditation, running, hiking, lifting weights, dance and yoga. Looking good from a mindfully healthy place does make you feel good.
But NONE of those things are WHO I AM. Who WE are.
We are much bigger than any of that.
I encourage you to stop today, and everyday, and at least once...give yourself a long loving gaze in a mirror. If you can be nude, so much the better. (Here is a theme song for this exercise.)
Love on yourself. Be grateful for the gorgeous vessel you get to ride around life in...no matter what it looks like. Every human body is magical.
Sure -- eat well, exercise, buy those fabulous boots...but because YOU WANT to. Not for anyone else.
Because literally every woman is beautiful, at every single age, and if we stop buying into the standards we didn’t set up for ourselves,
Everybody would love themselves.
And that’s a lot of girlies.
