The Weight of Women’s Worth

Vivacious Venus

I am wading into an extremely vulnerable subject here. This is a core wounding for most females, and my work is women’s empowerment. I am heart broken about how most Western women relate to their bodies and sense of self worth. I do not mean to disregard men’s issues with appearance and body image, they have also been reared in a culture based on separation and disconnection, but I have witnessed that there is a different field men are allowed with issues of body shape and value.

A series of events happened over the last while and a cascade of experiences and perceptions flowed into my mind about my life in this body and the other women I have known well enough to speak frankly about their relationship with their bodies.

Our bodies are our Temples, our homes, the way we bounce around in this pinball machine of life. They are how we play, experience, create, give life, make love to ourselves, others and the world at large.

If there is a perceived “difference” in your external form from the culturally dictated norms, it may cause a host of issues with connection, value and belonging. If one is albino in Africa, or in a wheel chair, or slim in a culture that values the Rubinesque women, it could cause a deep sense of separation and isolation. Our ego desperately wants to be valued, safe, and successful in order to feel good enough. Western culture at this time suggest success should look fame, beauty, wealth, and status. So if our body, our Temple, is different than the color, hair type, or proportions deemed superior and success worthy at this time , where does one find a healthy sense of self? If this year/decade/century women are to be rail thin, where do the Rubinesque women fit? Venus of Willendorf lives, even if she would be called obese at this time.

These same “differences” can also be the distinction that marks you as unique; as an artist, a visionary, the Medicine person in the tribe. But in contemporary Western Culture difference takes a lot of chutzpah and power to carry. Barbara Streisand made the nose her trademark. Lauren Hutton rocks the gap in her front teeth. Queen Latifah carries herself as the royalty that she is.

My relationship to my own body has been a long journey. Three years ago, when I was thirty-nine, I started a series of self-portraits on the land called “Earthen Body.” There were a variety of reasons I did this, but one of them was to witness my value, worth and beauty to myself, by myself. Not what the culture thought, not what men thought, not what my family thought, but how did I feel about this body I have inhabited for so many decades? I was also attempting to find a sense of connection to myself as I age.

What ended up happening over the year and half period with the Earthen Body process was a revolution within myself. I FOUND MYSELF, through the land; through adventure; through creativity; through surrender; through primal wildness; through dancing with The Spirits in ancient ways. I found my way back home. And it was in my body, nude, alone on the land with the Earth and Ancestral Spirits.

I am a different woman now, and I can still get caught up in cultural expectations of value and worth. Each time I have committed to being awake and incarnating more onto the earth-plane I have gained weight. This has happened recently. My jeans do not fit. I wear yoga pants all the time {thank god they stretch}. I have been struggling with the change in my form, judging it at times, feeling less valuable. This is so odd. It’s like a bad hair day. How can the way our hair sits affect our entire psyche? The first time this happened about 5 or 6 years ago I was going to a wedding and wanted a new dress. I went into the dressing room and started trying things on. The first dress horrified me. As I looked in the mirror, I perceive myself as looking  “fat.” I am an anomaly on this issue because I have not consistency battled my bodies size and form. Now I am not saying I was always deeply connected to my body, but I didn’t wake up hating it. But when I had this experience in the department store dressing room I got a sense of how other women feel all the time.

If we are in the middle of a cultural/energetic/spiritual revolution of reclaiming the feminine, where does women’s self hatred through their bodies come in? Where does the violent disregard and over-consumption of Mother Earth’s resources become rebalanced? How do we women carry the dignity and worth of our variant cycles, rhythms and seasons?

Dance has also been a major way for me to embody myself. I came to it in my mid- thirties and like the Earthen Body photography it has completely changed my life. I am taking Haitian dance classes now and have found that a little extra junk in my trunk is a good thing. Not all cultures have disregarded curvier women; Sir Mix A Lot made a career glorifying bodacious bottoms.

I am also forty-two, and single. There are entire books focusing on how I need to be less “picky” in choosing a man because my days of being desirable are over. If my body and looks are deteriorating I am “used goods” and no longer the choice of the litter. This is outrageous, and many women subliminally operate on this notion. Remember the statistic that it was more likely for a woman over thirty-five to be involved in an airplane crash than find a mate….wacky. What happened to our position being elevated by age? We mature women are in a different cycle than the maiden, but we can also be wiser, calmer, and for many of us more relaxed and juicier. If our greatest value still lies in our looks, what do we do when that power position is weakened?

Most women spend a huge amount of time judging their bodies. Worrying about their thighs/tummy/ass being too “fat.” This shuts women DOWN. This is a place of constantly not being enough, of being afraid to have the lights on when you make love, of fearing the foods you want to eat, of judging other women and how their temples are transforming.  A friend was talking to a group of men and women and it came to light that most of the men did not know what their butts looked like. They have not inspected, judged, and cataloged every square inch of their flesh for its {perceived} positive or negative characteristic. Think of all the time, energy and resources women are using to try to fix themselves when they could be exploring their inner worlds, having more rest from raising the children, or creating the next revolution.

I am part of this revolution, and my part is to find the places within me that shine and expand through my own challenges and gifts. I am also unpacking the messages I digested as a child about my value through money, a mate, a career with status, and a skinny “pretty” body {and persona I will add-be the nice accommodating girl…not the fierce and powerful WOMAN we fear. We ALL have The Dark Mother in us somewhere}. I write and dream and dance and laugh as I age, much more able to unplug from my younger woman’s judgments, and I still have days when I think I should have a washboard stomach. I am not willing to become a slave to these external ideas of worth, and I still have not made it out the other side of consistently holding my value beyond my package.

This week I am attending a women and girls rights of passage retreat on the land. I am thinking about what we teach our children, overtly and subliminally. How do we carry ourselves, how do we open their worlds to their beauty and brilliance for simply existing? How do we nurture their sense of worth and help them find the unique light within themselves? How do we honor the earthened beings that we are, and come back in to alignment with her beauty and wisdom? I mean this for our boys too. What is our responsibility as Elders and Wise Ones to create a saner and more sustainable world for all of them?

I will be off-line for a week, so if I do not answer your comments to these musings immediately, have patience, I am doing my joyful work…

Thank you to another woman of great dignity, Jeanne Abella, for these words of wisdom; may we all hold this vision of walking this way together.

IMAGINE A WOMAN

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is woman.

A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories.

Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.

A woman who listens to her needs and desires.

Who meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past’s influence on the present.

A woman who has walked through her past.

Who has healed the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life.

A woman who exerts, initiates and moves on her own behalf.

Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods.

A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness.

Who designs a personal spirituality to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body.

A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.

Who celebrates her body’s rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honors the body of the Goddess in her changing body.

A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom.

Who refuses to use her life-energy disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.

A woman who sits in circles of women.

Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.

Imagine yourself as this woman.

Written by Patricia Lynne Reilly, 1995