When You Sit Right Down in the Middle of Yourself

“Wow, she looks amazing. I hope I look that good some day.”

I see the imperfections; they see the Mama.

“Don’t be silly, Mom. You already look that amazing.”

I love my girls. They are good for my ego (most of the time). But we do live in a tricky world where figuring out this whole self-image thing gets pretty complicated really fast and can be devastatingly destructive. I know it is an issue both males and females battle (my husband doesn’t go to the gym just because he likes to wake up early and smell other people’s sweat), but as a female raising females, the female battle is the one I am more familiar with and the one I have been trying to figure out how to talk about.

When I was younger, I did the whole mall modeling thing. I even had an agent. I exercised in my bedroom in the mornings and before bed, doing sit ups and leg lifts then measuring myself. I always knew my size. I also always knew every single flaw with my appearance. Eyebrows were waxed and plucked, skin was inspected for any blemishes, and I would spend hours pacing back and forth in front of a full length mirror. Then I’d go to school and hear someone say, “Sure Emma’s pretty, but then she opens her mouth.” Bam! And if people heard I was modeling, the comments were, “Seriously? Her?” Yeah. Their skepticism really rammed home my knowledge of my short comings (including my shortness . . . I’m only 5’8”).

Now as the size 2 mom people love to bash in blogs and songs, I wish I could say things are better, but people still love to be snarky. It is up to me to ignore the “skinny bitch” comments I hear from random strangers when I am shopping (wish I could say I was joking) and in songs (can’t love “All About That Bass” if it is calling me a bitch because I am not overweight). It is up to me to hold my head high and not feel responsible for people obsessing about their thighs just because mine don’t touch. Honestly, I don’t look at or measure other people’s thighs and didn’t know “thigh gap” was something to talk about until people started making such a fuss about it on facebook. I only think about my thigh gap when I drop my phone while I’m on the toilet. I cannot let other people’s visions of themselves define my vision of myself.

That is what I try to teach my daughters. They already get bombarded with pressure to look certain ways. Don’t believe me? Let your second grader shave her head. Count how many people tell her she is no longer a girl or no longer pretty or that she is weird, wrong, etc. Let your first grader wear shoes from the boys’ department. Less extreme action, but she’ll get similar comments. The pressure to look one way and fit a generic mold of “this is what little girls are” is intense and destructive. Not every person fits the same mold and trying to force them to breaks them. As parents, my husband and I decided our goal was to help our girls express themselves and be true to themselves - even if that means coming home from school and shaving their heads in the bathroom then rocking a Star Wars t-shirt and one of my blazers in the pediatrician's office. Looking fierce, Tuna!

My girls and I (and my husband, too!) watch America’s Next Top Model or Star Trek as our evening tv. These two shows were chosen intentionally because they help us teach our daughters to be "fierce" and embrace their differences (and remind us to do the same in our own lives!).  Their dad and I can say over and over, “you are beautiful as is,” but it doesn’t have the same impact as hearing a super model or star ship captain with perfect hair tell them that being true to themselves makes them strong and gorgeous.

Here are some of our favorite lessons the girls can take away from those shows to help them battle the pressures to “look perfect” all the time:

• ·         Confidence is Beautiful – The judges on ANTM say this all the time. They send girls home for not being confident. They tell girls that beauty comes from within and that they must BELIEVE they are beautiful.
  
• ·         Compassion is Powerful – This lesson the girls see on both shows. One of their favorite episodes of Star Trek is “Plato’s Stepchildren” because it shows Cpt Kirk and the other crew members showing compassion to a man, Alexander, who had only experienced bullying and abuse before he met them because he didn’t look the same as the other people. Alexander’s transformation is a result of that compassion and helps to defeat the bullies. The compassion was stronger than the hatred showered on him. We talk to the girls not only about the need for them to act as Kirk did to others, but also act that way to themselves. They must show themselves the same compassion.
  
• ·         Diversity is Necessary – This is a Star Trek lesson that is evident just by looking at the make-up of the bridge. The crew comes from all over. Each character brings different strengths to the table, and Captain Kirk relies on all of them to help him.
  
• ·         No One is Always Perfect Looking – ANTM is great for teaching this lesson. Every girl has something she doesn’t like about herself, including Tyra Banks. Plus, by watching old seasons and comparing them to new ones, the girls also see how the trends change. If a girl from season 20 made herself look and dress exactly like a girl from season one, she would be outdated and wrong. There is no point beating ourselves up to fit the idea of perfection of the moment because the moment changes. Also, the fact that the judges don’t always agree drives home the message that this idea of perfection is a myth. Perfection is an idea that varies from person to person, minute to minute. We should not change who we are or sacrifice ourselves to a false idea.
  
• ·         Be True to YOU – Both shows teach this well. Captain Kirk and Tyra Banks in their own very different ways encourage the people around them to be strong by being true to themselves. When the girls do that, they can be more confident, embrace diversity, show compassion to themselves and others, ignore other people’s definitions of perfection, and – most importantly – be happy.
  

As Ani Di Franco, my other go-to for shareable wisdom for my girls, so nicely says, “when you sit right down in the middle of yourself, you’re gonna want to have a comfortable chair.”

Why I am ok with my daughter shaving her head.

"Star Trek is awesome, and I am awesome, so I love Star Trek."

We just got through two birthdays - first William Shatner's then Leonard Nimoy's.  For my four year old daughter, these were days of celebration.  She dressed up, baked brownies, and carried around her Cpt Kirk and Spock dolls as honored kings for a day.


I encouraged the celebrations for two reasons.  First, I believe life has enough serious stuff naturally built into it, so we should take every opportunity to focus on the positive, happy stuff.  Second, I love the messages in Star Trek and think my daughter will grow up to be a better person because of it.  I know some people think Star Trek is just a geeky sci fi show, or that it is boring compared to Star Wars because it isn't all fighting and special effects.  The boring factor is kinda what I like, though.  Instead of numbing the brain with explosion after explosion and building a story around visual effects and computer generated enemies, the show focuses on telling a story, examining philosophy and psychology and dreaming of a future with less conflict instead of more.  I want my daughters to be thinkers and dreamers, and Star Trek encourages that.   Cpt. Kirk and Mr. Spock fly through space in the future, a future my daughter longs for.  She looks forward to some day doing more, exploring more.  They have cool gadgets, so she starts talking about how she will make some and talks about what they are used for and compares them to technology around her.  We have discussions about how people make decisions by comparing Spock's cold logic to Dr McCoy's heated gut decisions.  What other show encourages a four year old to examine decision making that way?

One of the coolest lessons of Star Trek, I think, is the multicultural side of it.  Lots of different kinds of people and aliens are all living together, sometimes struggling with cultural differences, but working hard at sharing the universe.  They are always emphasizing peace and the need for peace and that peace is the end goal.  Peace and understanding - what better goals are there for a little girl?  Chekov, who the girls say talks funny even though he has the same accent as their father, lives with Scotty who has another accent and is friends with the Iowa boy Kirk who is best friends with the Vulcan Spock who sometimes clashes with but in the end is friends with the southerner McCoy.  Then there is the strong portrayal of women (even if they rarely wear pants). In the original series, Uhura and Nurse Chapel were the lead females.  They worked alongside the guys.  They didn't deny being feminine, but they also didn't deny being strong and intelligent.  Pretty good role models, I think.  Except for Chekov being extremely and hilariously Russian, the other characters were people first and ethnicities second.  That is how I want my girls to view the world.  In the show Trek Nation, Nichelle Nichols explained it perfectly when she told the story of meeting Dr Martin Luther King, Jr:



Simon Pegg, the actor who played Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the most recent Star Trek movie, further explained the additional benefits of being geek very clearly:

So I hope my girls grow up to be geeks, and I will continue to encourage them to explore strange new worlds and civilizations, to dream of a peaceful future, to seek ways to understand other cultures instead of fear them, and to be true to themselves without forcing their beliefs on others (the struggle of Kirk in many episodes and Picard's struggle with the prime directive as well).