For what I'm worth...

Ah self esteem…

On fragile wings of gossamer toward the light
Love, youth, and beauty gave us fair flight.
From a quiver of words, his aim is true
Doubt intrudes, his dark shadow blue
Down we fall towards the sea of sorrow
Hope leaves us cold until the morrow.
-Dawn the Sad

What a load of crap. Forgive my language, but it’s true. All the flowery speech in the world can’t help when we fall victim to the worst kind of fiend – self-doubt. Oh, what an evil character this creature is. He dwells in shadows and waits for the perfect opportunity to strike. Do you know how he finds us? He listens and waits for the right words, then as if magic, he appears.

“Is that what you decided to wear?” Poof! You can’t dress.
“You’ve looked better, you know.” Poof! You look like shit.
“I wouldn’t have chosen that particular color.” Poof! You don’t know how to dress yourself.
“Didn’t you wear any makeup today?” Poof! You look old.

We are supposed to be able to build up an immunity to such cheap shots, but as I have learned (over and over and over again), you are never really immune to nasty words and self-doubt.

Ego is such a fragile creature, that when we do meet those who appear to have it in spades, we label them vain and continue on our dour but merry way. We act as though it is virtue to feel down about ourselves: our physical appearance, our accomplishments, our lives. Bullshit. The virtue is being able to accept a compliment, or being able to feel good about yourself no matter what anyone else says to you or about you or around you.

This weekend, I suffered a wound to my own esteem, and I find that I am still trying to recover from it. I have been trying to figure out why. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I ignore comments meant to put me down? Why am I hung up on what someone else thinks of me? I have never really been one to let outsiders dictate who I believe I am or what I believe I am capable of. Why now, does one comment throw me into a tail spin and send me crashing down from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows?

Does the fact that the words came from my mother’s lips have anything to do with it?

Partially, but first, I think I need to see what else caused me to be susceptible to a single comment in an otherwise good week.

Let’s start with the media.

“Oh, of course. Another feminist rant about media and negative stereotypes of women,” you’re thinking. Well, yes and no. Yes, I will rant about the media, but no... I don’t think that a group of magazine photos, no matter how provocative, can truly shape our idea of self-worth. Bear with me.

The media (movies, magazines, and television) make their money selling ideals of youth and beauty. Super-skinny women with amazing bone structure, taller than most men, who wear a size 0 - size 2-4 if they are on the *larger* side - pose with their pouty lips in shadows for high fashion magazines. Hollywood women are valued for their beauty to the point that if one of them takes off the makeup for a role, her “versatility” is praised. Tabloids profit from showing celebs in the raw: no air-brush, no stylist, no makeup and hair, just people out on the town. We as consumers eat these things up. “Look at the beautiful people,” we say. “They look just like us.”
Well, duh. Isn’t it amazing how people all look like people when the glam factor is turned off?

So why do we buy this media-fed idea of beauty? Do we really want to look like the model on the cover of Cosmo? The average American woman is a 5’5” and a size 14. I am slightly shorter and heavier than average. Shouldn’t I want to see women who look like me in the magazine? Wouldn’t that boost my ego?

Maybe. The media is pushing its current standard for perfection. This idea is fluid and changes over time. Have you ever seen a painting by Peter Paul Rubens? The women portrayed in his art would be scoffed at today. They would be going to Weight Watchers meetings, hiding their bodies under mounds of fabric. However, to Rubens and his contemporaries, these women portrayed the very ideal of feminine beauty. What about the Venus di Milo? Her athletic form might find its way onto the cover of Shape, but she will never grace the cover of a high fashion rag like Cosmo. She is too meaty, too short, and too shaped. The women who are “beautiful” by the media’s standards today would have themselves been chastised in another society for being too thin, wasted, alien, too tall, now the shoe is on the other foot.

This must have formed a sub-conscious foundation in my mind. Mabye my value system has been skewed by these images without my knowledge. Maybe I am weaker willed than I had thought. Maybe I have bought into these physical ideals and maybe, just maybe I berate myself for not being the tall skinny version of perfection that is paraded about on glossy pages or red carpets.

Or then again maybe not. I don’t really read many fashion magazines. As for red carpets, I love watching pretty gowns and sparkly jewels. (I’m a girl, so sue me…) I don’t really judge myself based on what these other women look like. So what is it?

What about the double standard? Male versus female? Do you remember the movie “About Schmidt”? There is a very memorable scene where Jack Nicholson is in a Hot Tub and Kathy Bates decides to join him au natural. For months after that movie opened, I kept hearing about how Kathy Bates was naked. I kept hearing that she was brave from one camp and stupid from the other. People commented on her body, her shape, her weight. People were kind and ruthless with equal veracity. During the whole incident, I never heard one comment about Jack Nicholson. Kathy Bates is an older woman with the body of an older woman. There is no escaping that fact. Jack Nicholson is an older man. His body is in no better shape than Kathy Bates, however not one media personality or fashionista or celeb crazy reporter mentioned his flabby frame. (Sorry, Jack.) Why was Kathy Bates the subject of such scrutiny, and Jack Nicholson escaped it entirely? Why as women do we have to maintain “perfection” even resorting to surgical alterations in some cases, while our male counterparts do not? Women grow old and men grow distinguished. True, the gap is narrowing. I can imagine that a whole lot of Metro-Sexuals will be seeking the botox clinic at first sign of forehead creases, but on the whole, women still out-number men nearly 8 to 1 when seeking to maintain the body and face of their youth. Are we really such fragile creatures that we are willing to go under the knife to maintain youth? Do we fear age and mortality, or do we fear rejection?

Am I more susceptible to wounds of the ego because I am a woman?

I thought about that long and hard. I am an emotional being, sometimes overly so. I can (and have) take a comment and dwell on it. I examine innocent (seeming) remarks for hidden agenda or meaning. I have a hard time taking a compliment. Maybe I was so wounded this weekend because I am a woman and thus more susceptible toward cutting remarks.

Then I remembered my brother.

My brother is a sweet boy (man) who is about a year younger than I am. We grew up close, and are to this day, good friends. That is not to say that sometimes he doesn’t piss me off, because he does. I am sure that I make him mad too. That is the nature of siblings. It is a love-hate-love relationship.

The reason I mention him now is because he can help me illustrate the difference between male (his) and female (mine) perspectives on beauty and body image. Surely he as a man will have a stronger ego. Surely he will be able to objectively view himself in the mirror without all of the baggage that comes with being a woman. Surely, he can help me out. I went out to talk to him, specifically to find out how it is that I can be so wounded by mere words. I wanted him to teach me his ways.

What I learned from this conversation was that my brother is as susceptible to self doubt as I am. I never even got to ask my question. He launched into a litany of complaints about his own body image, how he was too this or too that. How he needed to loose weight or gain muscle or somehow improve himself so he didn’t feel so bad about himself. He actually was a little harder on himself than I am. So much for the idea of male vs female.

Well that didn’t exactly do what I had expected, but it did bring something to light. We were both raised by the same mother. My mother is perhaps the most self-abasing person I know. I don’t mean that in a good way. I went out with her this weekend to go shopping for shoes to go with my new wedding dress. She repeatedly apologized for not having on any makeup. (Neither did I.) And repeatedly apologized for not having done her hair (neither did I). And repeatedly pointed out her own flawed body shape as a reason why she could never wear this outfit or that shoe. (Let she who is without flab cast the first rice cake…) I didn’t really pay attention to it, because that is just how she is. She has her issues, but my mother is a kind sweet lady, most of the time.

Most of the time.

She made a comment that hurt me, regarding how I looked in my wedding dress. Immediately I went from feeling like a princess to feeling like a toad. I felt fatter, plainer, and shorter. I went from elated to deflated in .07 seconds. It was amazing how quickly I could be brought from smiles to tears. I found out later that she didn’t mean what she said, but I still feel that same doubt. I have driven my fiancé crazy by repeatedly seeking reassurance that I am pretty enough to get married. How crazy is that?

So now I understand a little more about why I am the way I am. My ego (and my brother’s) is so fragile because it was installed by a fragile woman. I don’t know if media affected her, but if I had to guess, I would say that my grandmother did the damage to Mom (after all, I do know both of them.) Does this cycle have to be self-perpetuating? Can one generation learn the signs and break out of it? If I have a daughter will I instill in her the self-same doubt and fragility? Will I teach her to love or loathe who she is and what she looks like? God, I hope not.

For the time being, I suppose it is good that I can recognize the symptoms and fight for my own self worth.

For what it’s worth.