Wabi-Sabi

My husband, Mr. Man, was recently having dinner with an old friend and the friend’s new wife, someone Mr. Man had never met before. According to Mr. Man, the dinner was a bit trying, as the wife seemed distant and bored, contributing little. Whether she was shy or merely dull, Mr. Man couldn’t say.

At some point during the course of the evening, Mr. Man shared that Queenie and I are vegan, at which point the wife suddenly perked up, her eyes wide, as she said wistfully: “They must be so skinny.” After being momentarily dumbfounded, Mr. Man pointed out that Queenie is only 11 and looks like a healthy 11-year-old. As for me, he said that no, in fact I am not skinny, nor would he want me to be, at which point the wife’s gaze promptly unfocused and she checked back out of the conversation.

When he relayed this experience to me, I was momentarily dumbfounded, too. I think it’s probably safe to assume that the wife has some kind of “issues” around body image or food, etc. However, since I’ve never met her and likely never will, I can’t say for sure that this is the case, so there’s not much use speculating about it.

What I can say for sure is that our culture as a whole has some seriously warped views of what a healthy female body looks like and ought to look like. I’m not breaking new ground to say that the images that women and girls routinely see on screen and in print are extremely limited and come nowhere near to presenting the reality of shapes and sizes that the healthy female body actually comes in. And I’m not having a lightbulb moment when I suggest that this limited, skewed view is potentially unhealthy and damaging to those constantly bombarded by it, who end up holding this image up as an ideal that they strive to attain. Even though these thoughts aren’t particularly original, I do think they’re important. It’s vital that we shift the way our society views the female body. Since we don’t have a magic wand handy and can’t instantly make the whole world change, I’d like to suggest that we need to do this one person at a time, starting right here, right now. How, you ask? Let’s think about some specifics…

Let’s start by choosing wisely what images to ingest. While billboards and bus ads are hard to avoid, I urge you to select your media carefully. A constant diet of unreasonable images can’t help but penetrate your consciousness and do a number in there. Choose substance over flash. Celebrate accomplishment and wit and vivacity over vapid, blank photoshopped stares. Opt for the New Yorker over Marie Claire. Read an article from dailygood.org instead of one from People. Choose media health food over media junk.

Now that you’ve shifted what media you invite into your life, the next step is to be very aware of what’s still crashing the party. The limited images of women that we’re talking about are everywhere. It might be a magazine that you pick up at the doctor’s office, those aforementioned billboards and bus ads, or the latest movie you’ve gone to see with your friends. Since it’s impossible to eliminate the bombardment entirely, it’s important to see these images through a more informed, critical lens. Acknowledge what you’re seeing, whether just to yourself or to your companion. Just saying, “Wow, did you notice that all of the women in this film were the exact same shape and size?” is a good start. And rather than thinking that there’s something deficient in you or your circle of friends if you don’t all happen to look like what’s up on the screen, flip that thought around… the limitation is in the portrayal. Talk about that, too.

Once in a while, something that does look more like real life comes along, and I think it’s important to support the creative people who are brave enough to show us something different than the standard-issue female imagery. Here I can think of no better example than Lena Dunham and her ground-breaking show, Girls. While her fellow cast-mates look about how you’d expect twenty-somethings on an HBO show to look, Ms. Dunham rather famously does not. She isn’t perfectly toned. She sometimes has mussed hair or dark shadows under her eyes. In other words, she looks like someone you might bump into on the street. Hallelujah! And she has the courage to bare her perfectly imperfect body in pretty much every episode, in all its glory. Huge swaths of the public have rejoiced, clinging to these images like the self-esteem life-preservers they are for many young women. To the networks, I say: take note! We want to see real women looking like real women, wearing real clothes that sometimes ride up and need to be pulled back out, as Dunham’s character, Hannah, is wont to do.

Sadly, not everyone celebrates the presence of this refreshing character. There are quite a few vocal commentators, with nothing but negative comments about Ms. Dunham’s body, and to them I say: I am sorry for you, just like I was sorry for the woman with whom Mr. Man dined. I’m sorry that you have so internalized the messages and images you’ve lived with that you are left with no ability to appreciate anything else. I’m sorry that you’ve allowed yourself to be programmed to such an extent that you couldn’t get your mind around the premise of a recent episode of Girls in which someone who looks like the actor Patrick Wilson (an actor with a “perfect” body) would have sex with someone who looks like Ms. Dunham, as if nothing other than physical appearance could create an attraction between two people. I’m sorry for you, and I’m sorry because your acceptance of these messages hurts all of us. I implore you to break out of the prison you’ve allowed yourself to be locked into. Believe it or not, you already hold the key to that lock. Trust me, I know.

At 5’9”, I used to be a “perfect” size, the size of runway models, somewhere between a zero and a 2. I reached and maintained that size at great expense to my physical, psychological and spiritual well-being. Thankfully, that was a long, long time ago. Now, I am far from that size, and I am a whole lot healthier and happier. I have lots of squishy parts in the places they like to form, namely the belly, upper arms and neck. They are Queenie’s absolute favorite patches and she has dubbed them “beep” (neck beep, arm beep, etc.). She loves to squeeze and pat them. They are a joyous marvel to her. Once, about 7 years ago, as she was gently squeezing my neck, she asked, “Mama, how did this beep get so plump and ripe?” To her, it is perfection, like a just-picked peach on a summer day.

I could easily look in the mirror and hone in on these plump patches as areas that need work. I could fret about them and feel bad about them. But I don’t. I see these body parts as wonderful reminders of motherhood and womanhood and reality. I like what I see in the mirror, not because it measures up to any conventional standard of beauty, but because it is me. Right this second, that’s what I look like, and I don’t want to waste this second thinking about what my life would be like if my stomach were more taut or my neck longer or any other such silly distraction.

I wish for you the gift of seeing yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you as deeply and unconditionally as Queenie loves me. And guess what, you don’t need to be the mother of a kid who worships fat cells to get there. The person whose eyes I’m talking about is YOU. I wish you the gift of looking in the mirror and loving what you see. Do you see crinkles next to your eyes when you smile kindly? Do you see hands that lovingly tend a garden? Do you see breasts that nursed your baby? Whatever the particulars, you see YOU, in all of your perfectly imperfect glory. You should be able to rattle off a long list of fabulous things that your body is doing for you in this life. If that list doesn’t pop readily to mind at first, write it down to remind you, and think about this list often. If you really do this, REALLY appreciate yourself, you’ll be able to shed the programmed voices of negativity in your head. You will carry forward into the world a confidence and self-acceptance and peace that will radiate out to others. It will reach our daughters and set a positive example of how to be a woman in this world. It will counterbalance the narrow images the media generally provides. This is big stuff.

For me, I’m going to keep celebrating the brave ones who put themselves out there. I’m going to celebrate the perfectly imperfect. I’m not going to critique women based on their size, even silently to myself. And I’m going to keep on processing all of this stuff with Queenie, so that she keeps thinking and believing and knowing that the ideal for a human, not just a woman, is to be strong, healthy, confident and happy, no matter what size.

And lest you think that normal-sized women only get the Patrick Wilsons of the world in the fantasy-land of television, here’s what Patrick Wilson’s actual wife, Dagmara Dominczyk, tweeted in response to all of the hoopla surrounding the Girls episode:

“Funny, his wife is a size 10, muffin top & all & he does her just fine. Least that’s what I hear rule #1 – never say never.”

Rock the power of self-acceptance and see what comes your way!

Not So Happy Meals

I detest kids’ menus.  There, I said it.  I can’t stand them.  I’m also completely baffled by them.  Why do they exist?  At first glance, you might think this is a trivial topic, but I disagree.  I think it points to a fundamental flaw in this country’s way of viewing its youngest citizens.

Why is there a notion in this country that kids should eat anything other than what the adults in their lives are eating?  Where did this idea come from?  With the possible exception of super spicy chile peppers, I can’t think why we wouldn’t just assume that our kids would sample whatever’s on our plates.  I can speak from experience on this, as Queenie has always eaten what I eat other than when she was nursing.  She started with breast milk, and then we began adding the usual suspects:  simple, one-ingredient purees.  But she always had a natural curiosity about what was on our plates, so I let her have it, whether it was chunks of steamed broccoli, pieces of fruit, beans, whatever.  Most of it ended up on her face or the floor, but some of it ended up in her mouth and helped inform her blossoming palate.  She loved hummus, kiwi, sweet potatoes, avocado… all sorts of fun and tasty things.  Ten years later, she’s a very adventurous eater with a healthy appetite.  She eats salads.  She eats fresh fruit and veggies.  She eats sprouts.  She eats cuisine from all over the world.  She knows that sugary foods make her feel lousy (but she occasionally opts to have them anyway).  I happen to eat a relatively healthy, whole foods-laden vegan diet, so that’s what she eats.  If I ate steak and scalloped potatoes, I would expect that she’d be eating steak and scalloped potatoes.  Is Queenie some kind of mutant?  I don’t think so.  I think she’s a product of her early experiences.  She was exposed to lots of different kinds of tasty, healthy foods from an early age, and that’s (not surprisingly) what she knows and loves.

(Typical Queenie lunch.)

A recent article in the New York Times seems to support my thesis:  http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/why-french-parents-are-superior-in-one-way/ .  The article talks about how French kids eat the same things as their parents and is worth reading. They all sit down to meals together and eat the same stuff.  These French kids were raised with some of the same assumptions that informed Queenie’s early eating experiences, namely, the idea that kids can and will eat what their adult counterparts eat.  They can handle it.

So why the separate treatment in this country?  It seems that Americans have managed to create a self-fulfilling prophecy in this case.  By assuming that their kids won’t eat anything but… (fill in the blank:  white food, Cheetos, Twinkies, paste, whatever), and then serving them only said limited food, they’ve ensured that that is, in fact, all their kids will eat. I can feel some of you bristling at the suggestion that this is a problem created by someone other than the kid, but I’m standing by my position.  Where did they get their first taste of white food, Cheetos or paste?  Parents are the gate-keepers of those innocent little palates for at least the first few years.  If your kid will only eat Twinkies, it’s time to look your enabling self in the mirror and think about it.  Sorry if this sounds harsh, but I think we’re way past time for some tough love.  How did your kid get here?  Is this in her best interest?  Unfortunately, by the time the kids are adolescents, these habits are quite entrenched and additional factors are also present having to do with things other than food, such as power and control.  It definitely gets complicated.  But it didn’t have to.  And it’s never too late to do something about it.  Just own the fact that things have gotten off track, you’ve learned a thing or two and it’s time for the WHOLE FAMILY to eat better.  Together.

And if there’s going to be a separate menu in this country, why does it have to suck?  For people eating a Standard American Diet (the acronym for which is SAD, by the way), I could actually support the idea of a kids menu containing healthier options.  While the parents ate burgers and fries, the kids could order healthy soups and salads and fruit.  But it doesn’t work that way.  The kids menus are, if anything, less healthy than the regular ones.  The standard kids’ menu items tend to be chicken nuggets, mac & cheese, fries, pizza, and pasta with either meat sauce or just butter, for those who won’t even eat a tomato in a liquefied state.  How can this make sense?  How can we think that growing bodies and minds and spirits should be fueled with processed crap?  It doesn’t and we shouldn’t.

(Actual tomatoes.)

It’s sad and it’s cause for concern.  This is serious.  We’re seeing the unhealthiest generation of young people in this country’s history.  You know the statistics… skyrocketing obesity rates.  Adult-onset diabetes striking kids.  All created by lifestyle choices and all avoidable.

Parents, the buck stops with us.  Kids learn from what we say and even more from what we do.  If we’re eating junk, they’re going to eat junk.  And if we’re managing to eat reasonably healthy foods but think they should eat something else, something inferior, they will eat that something else.  And here, I think, lies the most interesting and important question in this whole scenario.  Why view children as something else?  They’re not adults but they are people, not toys or pets or chattel.  They deserve to be fed and spoken to and respected and loved and listened to and enjoyed as the unique, fabulous individuals that they are, not relegated to the lesser status of kids’ menu-eating, talked-down-to, inferior beings that seems to be pervading our culture right now.

Food for thought.

Bees, Part 2

A few people contacted me about my first blog post with a common refrain, which went something along the lines of:  “but you’re an animal lover, so it’s easy for you to show compassion toward invading bees.  Not everyone can do that.”  While I am an unabashed friend of the animals, in light of these comments I thought I should share an event in my background that I wasn’t going to mention.  Here it is: 

When I was a little girl of about 5 or 6, my family was vacationing one summer with relatives up in the Oregon countryside.  It was a beautiful day, and I was happily running around bare-footed in the gardens.  At one point, I trampled across the nest of some kind of ground-dwelling stinging creature (hornet?  yellow jacket?) and they attacked my foot with a vengeance.  It was shockingly painful and quite frightening as they chased me around while I screamed.  My foot swelled to the size of a grapefruit and my whole body felt inflamed and disoriented.  It was awful.

From that moment, I had a deep fear of any and all bees, including honey bees.  When any kind of bee came anywhere near me, I’d panic, running around, flapping my hands and making small shrieking noises.  It was embarrassing but I couldn’t stop myself.

Until I did.  After 30 years of bee-related terror, I made peace with them.  I still have a healthy respect for the yellow jacket variety, but I absolutely love honey bees and am happy to see them, very much enjoying their company.  They have become a very significant animal in my life – a positive force.

I made that shift almost 10 years ago.  I’m not going to go into how I went from there to here.  The point of this post isn’t to delve into my process, as it may not be yours.  I just want you to know that you CAN make that leap.  You CAN release the terror or anger or whatever it is that clinches your insides up.  You CAN throw your arms wide open to all that is around us.  You can.  And there’s always an opportunity to do so.  My current opportunity:  opening my heart to the neighbors that killed the bees.  Now there’s some hard work. 

Hello world!

I wasn’t sure I’d even write a blog.  It seems that there are already a zillion blogs out there, surely covering everything I might think of to write.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  What pushed me over the decision ledge was a bunch of bees and what happened to them a few doors down from me.

One recent day, a swarm of bees apparently decided to rest in one of my neighbor’s trees en route to a new hive location.  If you know anything about bees, you know that from time to time, they need to move hives, which is a major undertaking for them.  They have to figure out where to go next, which involves scouting locations and getting consensus among the bee decision-makers.  Once this occurs, the entire hive’s occupants travel en masse toward the hive-to-be.  They do this in a highly organized way designed to protect the queen.  After a lengthy journey, they land in a big swarm on a temporary resting spot, where they recuperate for a couple of days before embarking on the next leg of their journey.  They do this until they arrive at their new permanent hive spot, where they set up housekeeping.

I know this because a couple of years ago, I was in my home office with the door open when I heard a sound I couldn’t quite place.  It reminded me of a toy airplane, maybe a bunch of toy airplanes, but not quite.  A loud buzzing.  I went to the door and the sky was dark.  It took me a moment to realize that it was dark with bees.  It looked like a wild, dancing cloud.  I’ll admit to being a bit nervous at first.  I closed the door and watched through the glass.  Over the next few minutes, the cloud of bees began to thin as they started landing in the corner of one of our bougainvillea trees.  Eventually, they formed a huge, writhing ball of bees, with just a few stragglers flying here and there.

I promptly hopped on the internet to see what was going on, where I learned of the phenomenon of swarming traveling bee tribes (not the scientific term).  The articles all confirmed that they were resting, would likely do so for one to three days and would then move on.  They also promised that the bees had no interest in me – if I left them alone, they’d leave me alone.

I opened the door.  I could hear them, but it was a calmer buzzing now, a restful murmur as they settled in for their nap.  I got closer until I was just a few feet away from them, with my jaw hanging open.  They were amazing.  First, the sheer number of them and the size of the bundle they formed when piled on top of one another was stunning.  Second, the fact that this bundle never seemed to completely stop moving made it seem to be a breathing, living organism comprised of the individual bees.  I was honored that they’d chosen our cozy space as a resting spot and vowed to leave them in peace and keep them safe.  When Queenie got home from school that day, she was thrilled to meet them, too.  Each day, Queenie and I checked on them and admired them.  Then, on the third day, I started hearing that toy airplane sound again and I rushed out to the back.  They were on their way, darkening my patch of sky one last time and then fading away.

Fast-forward to a few weeks ago…  Knowing that I’m an animal lover, one of my neighbors emailed one night to ask if I happened to know anything about bees.  A big swarm had landed in another neighbor’s front tree and they were freaked out and needed advice.  I was thrilled to be able to offer assurance and promptly emailed information about this phenomenon, including helpful links with lots of details, and I went to bed happy knowing that I’d helped another little bee tribe.

The next morning, I awoke to a shock… the neighbor with the bee visitors hadn’t waited to hear if anyone had any suggestions.  They hadn’t even bothered to check the internet, where they would have learned the same things I found out.  No, instead they called an exterminator and had the swarm eliminated.  Not relocated (another possibility that existed), but killed.  And lest you think they had some kind of pressing reason to do so, no one in the neighbor family has a bee allergy.

I find this hard to fathom and incredibly sad.  First, in this specific instance, these bees were not causing any trouble.  This was in no way an act of self-defense.  The planet, very much including its human inhabitants, needs bees.  They are a vital part of the ecosystem and they are facing Colony Collapse Disorder, a serious situation to say the least.  As stewards of this planet, we humans should do everything we can to assist our fellow earthlings to thrive, including leaving bees alone.

But what propelled me to launch this blog isn’t “just” the bees in this story.  It’s the underlying motivation behind their demise:  FEAR.  Specifically, in this case, fear of the unknown.  These neighbors didn’t know what would happen, they feared the worst (what if they sting us) and they reacted from that place of fear and needlessly killed a huge number of benevolent beings.

I share this story as a cautionary tale… when you have a new, possibly disconcerting encounter with a new situation, whether it be a swarm of bees, a human or anything else, please try not to react from a place of fear.  Take the time to try to understand the situation.  Get your mind around it.  And then, try to get your heart around it, too.  Is there a way to help?  or at least to do no harm?  Every time you respond from this perspective of compassion, the world will be a better place.