She came into my bathroom and asked me the same question the next day, and almost every day after that. I asked her all the important questions, whether something had happened at school, or if anyone had been mean to her. I wondered if there was something I had missed. I spoke to her teacher, studied the shows she was watching on the Disney Channel, texted with her friends’ moms, and even took her to lunch to talk about how she felt about herself, and asked if there was anything she wanted to tell me. There wasn’t.
“Does this look okay, Mom?” It just kept happening.
Gigi is stunning, and I know I’m supposed to say that because I’m her mom, but seriously, she’s gorgeous. She has long dark hair, big brown eyes, and a dimple in her right cheek. I love every single inch of her, and in my eyes, she is perfect.
Not long after this, Andy got us tickets to see my favorite band, Hall & Oates. I should be embarrassed telling you that, but I’m not. I have a very real crush on Daryl Hall.
It was an outdoor concert, and I was feeling a bit frustrated with my summer outfit choices, the pile of discarded sundresses growing ever higher as I yanked one after the other off the hanger. I’d put it on, stare at myself in disgust, and then stomp into the bedroom in front of Andy.
“Does this look okay?” I asked again, sweaty and annoyed.
Ah, see? You see what I just said right there? Putting on an outfit and parading in front of Andy for approval had become so second nature I didn’t even realize it was happening. And I didn’t even want his approval. Andy has a terrible sense of fashion. If what he wore were up to him, he’d be wearing basketball jerseys with white T-shirts under them and gym shorts to dinner. I think I was just looking for him to be more excited about my body than I was feeling at that moment.
If I walked in and his eyes lit up and he told me I was stunning, maybe his enthusiasm about my outfit could carry me through the night knowing that I looked okay to everyone else, even if I didn’t think so.
“Does this look okay, Mom?”
Yeah, Gigi learned that from me.
It’s hard, as parents, to see ourselves as the potential villains in our kids’ lives, especially since we spend so much time protecting them. We see our personal body insecurities and self-hate as affecting only us, when in reality, they play out like daylong soap operas in front of impressionable audiences. Kids aren’t born with a narrative for how to treat themselves. We supply that, and we do it not only directly, but indirectly, in how we treat ourselves.
In this episode of How to Be a Woman, Brittany asks her husband three times if she looks fat in her jeans and berates herself in the bathroom mirror before spending the next twenty minutes looking for God in front of an open refrigerator. Tune in next week when she cries in the dressing room at Target and then mumbles under her breath that the woman in front of her on line looks slutty in those shorts.
Gigi was asking if her outfit looked okay because by watching me, she thought that was what women did. Women put things on and then ask other people if they look good. Our children learn to be adults from us, and sometimes our teaching methods just plain suck.
It’s pretty pointless to try to talk Gigi into loving her body, when according to her own mother, the adult version is worthless and disgusting. So there’s step one. You want to teach your daughter how not to hate her body? Stop hating yours out loud.
Obviously the goal is for you to learn to love yourself entirely, but that is a long journey that can’t be taken at the expense of your child. So right now, just shut up and pretend you like yourself. Save the diet talk, food shaming, and extreme body hate for an adult you can have constructive conversations with. Your daughter is not that adult.
Teach her how to enjoy dressing her body. This was an incredibly hard skill to learn as an adult. I spent most of my youth obsessing over everything I couldn’t fit into; I never learned how to dress the body I had.
I hated to shop. When I was a kid, it was a lot of my mom shoving me into dressing rooms with armfuls of clothes she picked out for me and asking, “Well, does it fit?”
When I wish she had asked:
“Does this sweatshirt feel good on your skin?”
“Can you dance in these overalls?”
“Can you tell the obnoxious boy who sits behind you in math to shut up in this dress?”
“Do you like this skirt enough to have it featured in the slide show about your life that we show before your presidential inauguration?”
Gigi and I spend a lot of time shopping; in fact, it’s our favorite activity. Fashion is a big part of my job, and I’ve always made sure to include her in the process of selecting clothes, putting together outfits, and creating the guides I share with my readers. There are a lot of scary things in this world; a bathing suit or a pair of jeans shouldn’t be one of them. I don’t ever want my daughter to dread dressing herself, or feel like her options are limited by the shape of her body.
Remind her that everyone has flaws. I remember when Charlie Hunnam was cast, temporarily, as Christian in Fifty Shades of Grey, and not being a Sons of Anarchy watcher, I had to google him. Every picture that came up showed this oiled and shirtless god of a man. He had messy blond hair, a scruffy beard, lots of muscles, and even that V thing that guys sometimes have near their groin that makes you pregnant when you look at it directly.
While he is obviously a very attractive man, I look at him and realize I can’t relate to him at all. He doesn’t even look like someone who’d be friends with me.
I always take comfort in watching eighties movies. They are like wool blankets I can wrap around me when I want to feel happy and included. I like watching them because the people who starred in them feel relatable.
Teeth weren’t bleached white—heck, they weren’t even straight, the bottom row all jumbled together and overlapping. Noses were big and disproportionate. And the boobs were either tiny, pointy, or like two heavy melons straining the bands of the actresses’ bras. I look at those women and think that if I told them my nipples pointed down, they’d say, “Oh, girl, me too!”
The stars of eighties films aren’t unattainable. They look like the girls I go to P.F. Chang’s with when I find a babysitter or the guy whose eyes I knowingly meet when I’m looking for someone to commiserate with because the loser in front of us at McDonald’s can’t decide what he wants to order.
Would-be Christian Grey, Charlie Hunnam, was thirty-three years old when he was cast as Christian Grey. The same age as Steve Martin when he made The Jerk. I don’t know anyone who looks like Charlie Hunnam. I know five guys who look like Steve Martin. Also, The Jerk is a classic. Fifty Shades is decidedly not.
Showing Gigi nothing but flawless celebrities not only sets the bar of self-esteem at insurmountable, it’s also incredibly boring. I want to show her why scars, back fat, and lisps can be not only beautiful, but cool.
When I was thirteen I used to pray for my perfectly straight teeth to bend like Jewel’s, because how could something with that much character not be extraordinary?
Teach her how to deal with self-hate. As much as I want to hide all my body hate moments and failures from Gigi, doing that will only handicap her when she faces them on her own. Teaching your daughter how to better handle those moments when she feels weak or worthless or unpretty will lessen the chance of them consuming her.
I make no secret about being a tourist in the land of loving my body. I do not fully understand the rituals or customs; I just try to fake the language enough that I am able to find a bathroom when I need one.
So when I get lost or frustrated, I try not to totally shelter my daughter. In fact, her presence keeps me safe, warning me to be gentler to myself in front of her. The same way Andy takes my phone away from me when I am drinking red wine because I’ll only start drunk-texting all my contacts various Adele lyrics, Gigi keeps me respectable.
So she sees my down days, but more important, she sees that the sadness is only temporary. She sees me pick myself up and move forward
, because these days, my body hate has a very short memory.
Show her how to be a better woman to other women. For the love of God, stop the cycle.
I believe women are born with an innate set of checks and balances. Like the government, only instead of ending wars or dictatorship, our system only works if it preserves a consistent level of self-esteem. When we see a woman who is heavier than us, or less conventionally attractive, feeling better about herself than we do, our checks and balances system is triggered, and we work to discredit and destroy her.
“If I feel like shit, everyone must feel like shit!”
We make passive-aggressive remarks about this woman, we plant seeds of doubt, and we settle into the safety net provided by the Internet to gossip in anonymity.
“What is with young girls today dressing like sluts?”
“This is why I only have guy friends, women are too dramatic.”
“I just ran a 5k, cleaned the house, bathed all nine of my kids, and meal-prepped for the week. What’s your excuse?”
Fat-shaming, mom-shaming, slut-shaming . . . look at all the types of shame we have! Men have none. We hide these attacks behind “no offense,” “not to be mean but,” and “sorry not sorry,” but that only proves we’re malicious. We are the perfect war machines, and the government should really just hand the entire military over to us women to shame Kim Jong-un into stepping down by talking about his bad eyebrows and the fact that he looks like a gerbil with a high fade.
We need to teach our daughters that their right to be treated respectfully is directly tied to the rights of the person they are shaming. To okay it for one okays it for all.
Dear Gigi,
Every year with you is my new favorite year. Even though soon I know the bubble that you and I hide inside will pop, and you’ll have to relearn everything I’ve taught you in front of a much different and less forgiving audience.
When they tell you that you aren’t enough, question their math. You come from a long family of women who are “too much.” We are “too much” in personality, “too much” in quirks, and “too much” in thighs. But you will never be not enough.
When your jeans don’t fit, buy a bigger pair. Larger jeans are worth the dinners with your best friends, the gelato during a semester in Italy, sleeping in on Sundays if you are tired, and a movie night on the couch with someone you love.
When they tell you that you are not like other girls, do not thank them. Tell them that you are exactly like other girls; the ones who cry, and sing, and scream. Do not ever let them pit you against other girls.
Never apologize for your body. Ever.
And lastly, I fully expect that one day you’ll stop believing me when I tell you you’re beautiful. You’ll plug your ears, and point to the world around you, and take every one of its harsh words over mine. My only hope is that it takes you thirty less years to realize I was right and they were wrong than it took me to figure out the truth for myself.
Mom
P.S. Promise me, Gigi, you will never fill that gap between your front teeth.
CHAPTER 13
I’m Not Sorry
Sometimes I feel like I was supposed to have been born an Olsen. Like the fourth one, the fat one who was super excited about her sisters’ successes but had no interest in Hollywood and instead stayed home to raise chickens in her backyard. I say this because the boho gene is strong in me. I blame my Taurus roots pulling me toward all things flowy, earthy, and easy.
Plus, the loose fit of bohemian dresses and tops opens the door for me to shop in places that I might not otherwise fit into, which is how I found myself inside a store known for cheap and trendy women’s clothing in stupidly small sizes. Eyeing their width, I grabbed a few flowy tops and headed to the fitting room, where the attendant smiled and took the hangers from my hand.
“Now, one of these is a crop top,” she said, sifting through my selections and hanging them on the door of my stall.
It was both a statement and a question, and perhaps even a warning. But I just nodded and followed her into the dressing room. To be honest, I hadn’t known it was a crop top, those aren’t typically things I gravitate toward on account of being a little self-conscious about my weirdly deep belly button, and having no idea where someone my size or my age would even wear a crop top.
The crop top was cute, a black billowy tank top that sat just below the underwire of my bra cup. It felt easy and cool, a nice antidote to the summer heat. I had no idea what I’d pair it with off the top of my head, but it was only a few dollars, and I figured I could make it work.
Checking out, I was smiling as the man carefully folded up each item and placed it in the tiny paper bag. When he got to the black crop top he looked up and said, “So you know this is a crop top?” The same way I imagine a clerk at a fireworks store would warn someone buying M80s, “You know these explode when you light them, right?”
I did know that it was a crop top. I’d been reminded twice since I’ve walked into the store. I am not sure if those reminders were meant to dissuade me from buying an article of clothing for my body that has nothing to do with them, but in that moment, those reminders empowered me.
I wore that crop top to a concert with my husband. He stood behind me with his hands on my bare stomach, pulling me into him every few minutes to kiss the back of my head.
I wore that crop top to school pickup. Where the parents around me could have easily looked at me and decided I was no woman to be around their kids. Instead they high-fived me in the parking lot and complimented my PTA ideas.
I wore that crop top to the Today show, where I spoke with Kathie Lee and Elvis Duran about body image and its effects on women. I was the biggest person on that stage, and on my way up the steps to the studio the zipper on my skirt had broken open, and I still owned that look.
I wore that crop top and I was Cher. I was Scary Spice. I was Clarissa Explaining It All.
I started wearing that crop top out of spite, and then I bought five more because wearing them made me feel like a woman in a way not much plus-size clothing does. The crop tops reminded me that I was tired of hiding my body and pretending it was different from everyone else’s.
I don’t know a single person whose tummy doesn’t fold in half when they sit down, and just because you can see mine in that crop top doesn’t make it more true for me than it is for you. I won’t hide my stomach to keep up some illusion that only thin bodies are beautiful. I am done wearing clothes to make other people feel comfortable at the expense of my womanhood.
We have entire generations of young girls who have no idea what their bodies are supposed to look like, because we only show them one kind, and hide the rest. We should be showing them that stomachs can roll, and stretch marks mean growth, that back fat happens to all women, and that belly buttons can sit high or low, in or out, shallow or as deep as Narnia.
This crop top normalized my body, not only to the world, but to me.
“Just so you know, this is a crop top,” the tops said.
Well, I fucking hope so.
MY BODY IS NOT BRAVE
“You are so brave to wear that bikini, I could never do it.”
I have the type of body that makes people call me brave when I wear a bathing suit. And the thing is, I think they think they’re being nice when they say it, but if you really sit and think about it, it’s pretty offensive.
It doesn’t take an act of bravery for me to go swimming with everyone else. It takes an act of bravery to run into a burning building, or fly a fighter jet, or escape a war-torn country.
I’m just swimming in a pool, which is a pretty average activity. I’m probably not even swimming, but, rather, standing in a shallow area holding a drink, so really, I’m not even moving. Now, if that pool was full of water moccasins and I was rescuing a baby from the middle of it? Then yes, totally brave. Otherwise, just normal human stuff.
But one thing I don’t want to do is discredit the huge mental feat it take
s to wear a bathing suit, because that is very real for many women. When you hate your body, normal human activities become terrifying obstacles, especially when you see Internet memes making fun of overweight people, or magazines tearing apart perfectly toned celebrities.
Suddenly the most fearless thing you can do is put on a bathing suit, leave the house, and get into the water. Simply participating in life becomes an act of defiance under those circumstances.
Every November, Andy and I drive from northern Ohio to Florida to visit Andy’s parents. I always remember road trips being tons of fun when I was a kid, but I’ve come to realize that that was because back then we didn’t have to wear seat belts. My parents would take all the backseats out of our Dodge Caravan and my brother and I would build a giant fort in the middle of the van with all of our toys and pillows. It was like traveling in a ball pit. Now that everyone has to be in car seats and strapped in, their happiness hinging on Wi-Fi strength, road trips are boring and I hate them.
Andy’s parents live in a rather infamous retirement community in central Florida. My kids enjoy the grandparent time and riding around the community in golf carts. I enjoy the 4 P.M. happy hour and being winked at by handsome old men in cargo shorts and white socks pulled up to their knees.
My kids love to swim, which is such a foreign concept to me. Even as a child, I dreaded wearing a bathing suit, and always looked for excuses to avoid putting one on during vacations or hotel stays. By contrast, my children can sniff out a neglected pool at even the seediest of roadside motels, and beg to take a dip at least once before bed.
Of the tens of pools available to residents at my in-laws’ retirement community, only a handful are open to guests, especially guests with small children, which leads me to believe one thing: the pools we are welcome to use are definitely full of pee. There is nothing relaxing about being relegated to the family pool. Balls are being thrown across the length of the water, kids weighted down by swollen diapers are wading near the steps, and along the edge of the pool, moms holding iced coffees are chatting together while remaining focused on their broods.
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