Ditch the Myth of Perfection, Please

I wrote the other day about two of the most amazing women I know being close to their due dates: one down, one to go!  Oh what I would have given to be in London today!  My sister-in-law and brother welcomed a sweet baby girl in to the world during the night last night, all the way across the pond.  Those of us who know and love them, of course, are beyond thrilled!  I can’t wait to meet her and see this wonderful new family +1.

The second woman I mentioned, she’s ready and waiting until her body tells her the time is right and labor gets rolling.  As her doula, I’m in that phase of wondering through the course of each day if it will be now…or now….or now….and thinking through the various logistical trappings of a dash-out-the-door job.  And you know what?  It’s a challenge.  If there was a way to remove the trickiness around back-up for my two little kids, my job, commitments, etc, I’d be a full time practicing doula instead of taking clients so infrequently as I do now.  It’s a really special job, an honor really, to get to support women through labor.  What the female body is capable of performing just never ceases to amaze me and I feel uniquely lucky to be able to take it all in as I support new moms in their journeys.

Speaking of the journey, we know what a heroic feat it is to deliver a baby, right?  Right.  I feel like the more I learn and see babies coming in to the world, the more awed I am.  As you’ll hear over and over in the topics WAI covers, pregnancy and childbirth are quite possibly the most strenuous thing that the body can endure.  Then again, that shouldn’t be a huge surprise since creating a new person is kind of a big deal!

I was in line today in the market, beaming as I thought about news of my sweet little niece and excited about the next little one who’s on deck, and was looking at magazine covers in the checkout line.  Suddenly I thought, “who are these women?” I really don’t know a single real woman who looks as utterly flawless as the women on the covers of magazines.  I know the images have been touched up but still I began to sort of passively compare myself and others around me to them.  As I looked at the woman checking me out, the women in front and behind me in line, I started to think about our society’s craving for media that perpetuates this myth of perfection.  How do we protect ourselves from the unrealistic promise of perfection that bombards us in imagery everywhere we go?  How can we take an honest look at ourselves and the women around us in a way that protects the reality of who we are and allows us to practice acceptance of that?

I decided to look in to this and got lost in the topic this afternoon.  It’s pretty fascinating.  The more I read, the more I realized that it’s not surprising that physical attractiveness has become supremely important to us.  Studies show that the “bias for beauty,” the fact that attractive people have advantages in our society, functions in nearly all social situations, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, etc, and has for as long as we can trace.  Studies in the US and the UK indicate that attractive children are more popular to both peers and teachers.  Attractive candidates have better chances of being hired for jobs and attain higher incomes.  The media has changed our version of reality, in a sense, by showing their version of “beautiful people” everywhere – TV, billboards, ads on busses, taxis, in magazines.  We even see beautiful people on product packaging and retail signage. Exceptionally good looks have become real, normal, and achievable to us.

The reality, though, is that the benchmark of beauty has become increasingly harder to attain, particularly for women.  According to the Social Issues Resource Center, all research to date on body image indicates that women are significantly more critical of their appearance than men are.  When looking in the mirror, 8 out of 10 women are dissatisfied with what they see, due in large part to the fact that the standards of feminine beauty are increasingly higher and more inflexible with the rise of mass media, social media and advances in technology.  The “ideal” face and figure are beyond reality for the vast majority of us:

“...women are trying to achieve the impossible: standards of female beauty have in fact become progressively more unrealistic during the 20th century…The current media ideal for women is achievable by less than 5% of the female population – and that’s just in terms of weight and size.  If you want the ideal shape face etc., it’s probably more like 1%.” – Kate Fox, social anthropologist

It turns out that the 80% of us women who are dissatisfied with our looks are chiefly concerned with the size and shape of our hips, waists and thighs.  So I started thinking about these areas and how we punish ourselves for their imperfections.  It strikes me as really, I don’t know – sad? disturbing? unfortunate? – that the areas we are most unhappy with are also the areas primarily involved in transforming during pregnancy.  How is it that although women feel higher levels self-esteem related to physical appearance during pregnancy (many studies indicate that pregnant women have a more positive body image than non-pregnant women) that when we’re done with pregnancy, we slip right back into this self-loathing view of our body’s shape?  This is the same body, mind you, that we all agreed deserves huge praise for creating, growing, and delivering our babies.  Didn’t we just acknowledge that this is a heroic, amazing feat?  How do we lose sight of that the moment we deliver our babies?

We can think about this and hope for improvement but we can’t expect a total game-changing shift in women’s views of themselves overnight.  Like it or not, whether an indicator of strength, fertility or something else, women have always been judged based on appearance so it rings true that no marked evolutionary change will occur in women’s self-esteem in just a couple of generations, according to evolutionary psychologists.  So fine.  We won’t wake up, look in the mirror tomorrow, and see utter perfection.  But what will we do?  We have to start somewhere and I hope that we start by acknowledging the whole of our body and what it can do.  For example, you’re a mother.  You created life with that amazing body of yours.  Do you see the beauty in that?  Can you allow yourself to love the whole you a bit more?  See the whole package and assign value, personal value, to your thoughts and efforts and achievements and hopes and strengths.  Boost your own self-esteem by acknowledging or reaffirming that you are more than your body and your shape.  And when considering your body, consider it’s successes: does it get you where you need to go? what are your personal “wins” whether a marathon or a grocery run?  do you exercise and enjoy other activities?  is it the vehicle for your sexual being, what allows you to experience pleasure and connection with someone you love? what can you appreciate that happens from the inside out whether it’s calming breath, love, laughter, or anything else?

More than anything, mama, please think on it for a moment today.  Please acknowledge that there’s a whole entire you that’s a whole lot more than your body.  Start somewhere and work toward praising all of you, the real you, please.