This Body

Oh, heavens, I'm guilty of it too.

You meet a woman, size her up, compare. Contrast. You are thinner than one woman, fatter than another. Taller or shorter. Bigger breasts, smaller breasts. Large nose. Wide smile. Gray hair. Thinning hair. Ample hips. Stick shape. Pear shape. Tree shape. Pick a tree, any tree. Stretch marks. Muffin tops. You get the picture.

Why are we so tuned into this? I don't remember my mom commenting on other women's bodies. She didn't compare or judge. Even in school, I don't remember having a lot of compare-and-contrast conversations with my friends. When I would occasionally bring up that I was indeed bigger than my friends, they'd say something like, "So what? You're a foot taller than we are."
That comment alone should have clued me in to something. I hated being tall, but other girls were jealous. Jealous? Seriously? I was no supermodel. I wanted to be short. Short girls were peppy, outgoing, and seemed to get all the male attention. At least, that was the case with several of my friends.

Years later, I'm proud to be tall. I wish I would have been proud back then. But that doesn't make things a whole lot easier. My waistline sometimes disappears. I have a body odor problem that I constantly have to attend to. My left ankle gets really sore before a storm because I sprained it several years ago. I've had surgery, and I have a hiatal hernia. And, oh yeah, the miscarriage thing. Why is it that women who can have nine children are somehow better than me? It might not be true, but I feel it.
I'm proud of my three boys, but not of my stretch marks. I'm grateful I have children, but not grateful that my body is being difficult. I know other women look at me and think, "She's got it so easy. She's tall." Or they think the opposite. "Her yo-yo weight problem is going to give her a heart attack." Or they sneer at me because my white-white skin will never, ever be tan.
Ladies, we have all made sacrifices that have had profound affects on our bodies. Why do we need to compare ourselves to each other in order to feel justified? Or satisfied? Or like we matter? Why can't we look each other in the eye with genuine love and concern?

I know part of the answer. Culture has screwed us up. Magazines, commercials, the very idea that we are selling beauty products to each other to make ourselves look prettier. We absolutely need these things, don't we? Isn't that what we're being told? (Sorry friends, I'm not dissing on you if you're selling that stuff. It's not that I think those things are bad.)
During the Super Bowl yesterday, my husband and I had a conversation about how commercialized it's become. It's like a holiday in the U.S. People get together with friends and family, making an entire day of the celebration. Whether your team wins or loses, or whether you're there to watch the clever commercials, you will be bombarded with just that. Commercialism at it's most unbridled.

So, what do we do about it? Pay thousands of dollars for years of therapy? Not an option for most of us. But one thing I can do is make a conscious effort to stop comparing my body to the bodies of other women. Can you imagine what would happen if we all started doing this? It's the line-upon-line concept. If we stop judging ourselves, then we will subconsciously stop judging others. If we stop judging others, we will get to know people for who they really are instead of what society labels them to be. If we get to know people for who they really are, we start to understand.

And that, my friends, could be one area where love conquers hate, and we begin to move away from self-loathing.