Last weekend, I went to an awards show. I was not nominated for anything, though in previous years, I have been. I wasn’t sure if attending without a glimmer of hope that I would leave the event with a new statue and a temporary sense of self-worth would make the awards ceremony more or less fun. As it turns out, I had a very nice time. Awards are great to be nominated for when you win, but most of the time, you do not win, so you just wind up drinking too much and picking a fight with your husband to get the anger and disappointment out, like taking the dog to the dog park but for pettiness. But those are my mistakes! Let me make them so you don’t have to! Because the next morning you will not feel better. You will only feel ashamed that you were mean to your husband for no reason and he will feel mad at you with very good reason. Before the ceremony, a friend shared with me that he has also gotten drunk and argumentative with his wife at an awards show after losing. I felt seen! Until he explained that this is why he no longer drinks at them. So one can…learn? From one’s….mistakes? Hmmm.
Going to an awards show was an occasion to dress up, something I haven’t done in quite some time. Now, I’ve mentioned gaining weight since having children here so many times that I am bored of saying it, and humiliated that I feel the need to keep reminding you. Am I constantly mentioning it because I want you to know that I know so when you see me you don’t have to wonder, is she AWARE? Does she know she’s crumbling like The Colosseum before our very eyes and doing nothing to stop it? Or am I saying it because I want you to tell me, staaaahpp!!! what are you talking about?! You don’t look a day over thirteen! The answer is, I don’t know what I want! Reality is an illusion! How can you know how you want it to be different when you can never see it clearly in the first place! The point is, the number on my scale has inched upwards, but not drastically. So while I was not looking forward to formal wear of yesteryear fitting differently, I was not expecting to say, not be able to get something over my torso. But that happened. Stuff wasn’t too small to look good. It was too small to PUT ON. I was confused, startled, maybe I blacked out for a second. That elusive reality was fucking me yet again! Then I texted a close friend and fellow mom with whom I feel comfortable being vulnerable, and asked if the same thing had ever happened to her. She informed me that yes, it had, and did I know that during pregnancy your RIBS ACTUALLY EXPAND? Reader, I did not. And when I learned, I was pissed. But I wasn’t just pissed, it hurt my feelings.
There’s a general awareness floating around in the ether that pregnancy changes a woman’s body. But the degree to which it changes and the myriad ways in which it does somehow remain a mystery until they happen to you. It’s not that the information isn’t out there, but you can’t really find it unless you know to look, and once you know to look, it’s already too late. Like before you have a baby, you know if everything goes right it’s really going to hurt and you might poop in front of people in the process. That sounds bad enough. You think, these must be the horrors of pregnancy everyone talks about. But AFTER you have a baby, you’re like, wait a second, is my bladder FALLING OUT of my vagina?! YES! YES IT IS! Your rib cage expands. Your hips widen. Your hair (like your bladder) falls out. Anything that can get inflamed will get inflamed. I share this not because I want medal (I do) or because I want to scare people (you should be scared). I share this because I want people to know that it happens, when most people walk around not just not knowing it happens, but thinking it SHOULDN’T happen. That it happening is a reflection of a lack of discipline rather than an inevitability.
I’d like to argue that this is yet another way mothers get fucked. I’d like to argue that while no woman is forced to have a child (unless of course, they are by, oh I don’t know THE SUPREME COURT! The states of Arizona and Florida! etc etc), it is necessary for SOMEONE to have children to sustain the human race. And for those who decide to quite literally take one for the team, it would be nice to be able to do so clear-eyed. Most of us know there will be no support from The State. We know we will be criticized for raising our children no matter how we do it, while our male counterparts get cheered on like it’s the Super Bowl every time they walk a baby up and down an airplane aisle. And sure, we’re warned that our bodies will change after having a baby, but look up “rib expansion after pregnancy” and you will be barraged with workout plans to undo nature. WORKouts! As if the BABY you are caring for isn’t enough WORK! And no, you don’t have to do the workouts. But the consequence is believing that you’ve let your body become something it shouldn’t, when it had to become what it is. The future of our species depended on it!
But the truth is, of course mothers aren’t alone in feeling constant pressure to erase the evidence of life happening. Men, women, non-binary people, breeders and the childless are all encouraged to pay money for stuff that will freeze us in amber. There is nothing new under the sun to be said about the fetishization of youth, of thinness, nothing new to be said about the cruel capitalist trick of making us hate ourselves then offering to undo it for a small fee. I watch Blake Lively on an instagram reel and think well, gee, she looks great, and she’s had more kids than me! I hear news stories saying, guess what, aging person!? Your metabolism is not the problem! and I think, okay, so it’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. And so forth. And oddly enough, there is nothing new under the sun to be confessed about hating the way you look, either. Just this week, I listened to an NPR interview with the author of My Belly while unloading the dishwasher, and stumbled upon this installment of the newsletter The Small Bow while trying to figure out how the eff Substack works. (In case you didn’t click it, the entry is called “What it’s like to feel ugly (Part Two)” and it’s a 17 minute read. WOWOWOW reading THAT is gonna burn some calories! But also create some frown lines 😞. Unfortunately, we’re right back where we started.) To be clear, I am not mocking these earnest and painful confessionals. I am grateful, admiring, and confounded. How can we be so aware that we are being manipulated, and still feel so wounded by said manipulation? How can it feel so lonely to be feeling the same way most of the world is feeling?
My therapist and some guy from Ted Talks whose name I forget say that we repeat patterns when they give us something. Even when these patterns seem self-destructive, we are, perhaps in some SICK FUCKING WAY, benefiting from them, or we wouldn’t continue. So maybe that’s why we can identify the STRUCTURAL ROOTS of low physical self-esteem and dysmorphia, declare them a SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS, yet attempt to eradicate them by asking individuals to fix themselves. It helps me to believe that I just need to accept my body! Love my wrinkles! It helps me to believe that I can escape from under the weight of the all of society’s beauty standards through the sheer strength of will of my tiny little mind! When I alone am the problem, I alone can fix the problem. It helps me to believe that problem is fixable, or at the very least, that it doesn’t take a village to fix it. It helps give me hope that I can look better, or find peace with how I look, that I am failing rather than playing a game that is impossible to win. Is this the entire premise of The Beauty Myth? Is it the ethos behind every installment of Jessica DeFino’s newsletter? Have even I myself written about this before? There is nothing new under the sun. Except you. And except me. Except those faces and bodies we’re always hating so much. Wait WHAAAAA?
That’s kinda cool, right?