January 2011

Tired of the Media Telling me I’m Ugly

by MomGrind

sarah jessica parker veins
Sarah Jessica Parker has veiny hands!

I have prominent arm veins.

I never realized I should feel bad about it until the media told me I should.

It’s become a fun game – paparazzi are photographing female celebrities’ hands and feet up close to capture their veiny appearance, and the media is publishing those images with much glee.

You can’t win, really. If you gain weight, they make fun of you for “packing on the pounds.” If you stay slim and work out, they make fun of you for being “scary thin” or “veiny.” Whatever we do, whatever we look like, apparently we should feel deeply ashamed about our appearance.

You can tell me that the media only does this to celebrities and that celebrities deserve this type of treatment, but I’m not buying that. I disagree that anyone deserves this kind of treatment, and I disagree with the assumption that scrutinizing and documenting celebrities’ imperfections does not make us non-celebrity-women feel worse about our own bodies.

If you think that realizing that celebrities are imperfect will make you feel better about yourself, think again. When you’re exposed to headlines that keep dissecting women, showing their imperfect body parts, you will start dissecting yourself too, carefully scrutinizing yourself in the mirror, looking for imperfections, and feeling ashamed and self-conscious when you inevitably find them.

When I look at this photo of myself, taken a couple of years ago in Barcelona, all I can see is arm veins. And after being exposed to thousands of media messages telling me that I should feel ashamed, I indeed feel ashamed. Deeply so. Even though I eat well, exercise but not excessively, and am at a healthy weight for my height. So in my case it’s likely genetic – my late grandfather had prominent veins, and my mother has them too.

Park Guell

But I still feel ashamed and self-conscious. (And please don’t tell me it’s not so bad. This is not the point of this post, plus this is a forgiving picture actually.)

Think the women-hating messages spewed by the media on a daily basis do not affect you? Think again. From my own personal experience, they do.

Loved this comment: “If you are overweight you are ugly, if you are underweight you are ugly, if you are too short you are ugly, if you are too tall you are ugly. If your hair is too dark you are ugly, if your hair is too light, you are ugly. So who does that leave in this world that is attractive? No one? I have veiny hands, am over weight and have brown eyes. And I am attractive!” – Emsxiety

No Poo? No Thanks. Or: How I Went 10 Days Without Shampooing

by MomGrind

no pooIt’s a growing trend: women who won’t use traditional shampoo to clean their hair, opting instead for various “no-poo” or “low-poo” options (yes, the names of these alternative products are unfortunate indeed).

The idea behind the “no poo” movement is that traditional shampoos may strip your hair from natural oils and leave it dry and brittle. Instead of using what is essentially soap to clean your hair (even if the soap is specifically formulated for hair), you should use gentler, more natural ingredients.

As a friend recently told me, “When I shampoo, I strip my hair from its natural oils. Instead of being soft and shiny, it becomes dry. I then have to use hair products, including a conditioner, masks and oils to bring it back into life. But these products weigh on my hair and force me to shampoo daily, stripping my hair even more. It’s a vicious cycle.”

This particular friend has ditched regular shampoo almost a year ago, and has never looked back. She reports that her hair is softer and smoother than ever, and she relies less on heat styling and on hair products.

My own hair is thick and frizzy. I can’t stand the way it looks in its natural state and rely on a flat iron to make it smooth and eliminate frizz. So I decided to give the no-poo (can’t say this with a straight face) trend a try. I recently went 10 days without shampooing. I washed my hair in lukewarm water every other day, gently massaging my scalp with a baking soda solution (recommended by my friend), and waited for the magic to happen.

Alas, it didn’t happen for me. After the first week, my hair felt greasy and my scalp started itching. I hated the way it felt, but kept going for a few more days, because my friend had insisted that I just needed to wean my hair off shampoo. She said that if I stuck with the new routine long enough, my hair would achieve its “happy place” and I would never ever need shampoo again!

I couldn’t do it. On the tenth day, feeling intense guilt and remorse, I quietly hopped into the shower, shampooed TWICE, conditioned my hair, and heat styled it. At the end of the familiar ritual, I smiled. My hair felt clean, smooth and fragrant, and the stubborn itch on my scalp had disappeared.

No poo? No thanks.

My friend says I’m addicted to shampoo. I think I can live with that.

Loved this Comment: “You reminded me of a scene from The Lonely Guy, with Steve Martin. I think they were talking about hair loss. They wondered how come so many bums on the street have so much hair. They figured it was because they didn’t wash it all the time, so the hair just stayed in.” J.D. Meier, Sources of Insight.

Online Friendships Suck

by MomGrind

So, if Wesley had over 700 (seven hundred!) Facebook “friends”:

wesley bronze facebook

But he was still incredibly lonely – so lonely in fact that he took his own life:

What does that tell us about online friendships?

I used to think online friendships were valuable – I even argued here on these very pages that they were just as valuable as real-life friendships. But I have changed my mind. The story of Wesley and his suicide illustrates, as far as I’m concerned, how empty of any real value online social networking can be.

I was an online friend of Wesley. But can you really call it a “friend?” What value did I bring to Wesley? I was completely unaware of his suffering, and when he did reach out for help, I misread what he actually wanted and gave the lamest advice ever.

I expect some of you will disagree, and I would love to hear personal experiences that illustrate how valuable online friendships can be. Wait, I can actually think of one – Dot was invited to Betsy’s house for Thanksgiving – an online friendship that has turned into a very real friendship and such a beautiful act of support.

But in the vast majority of cases, I now think that online friendships are wildly overrated, and that the word “friends,” as used to describe Facebook connections, is being used way too liberally.

40 is Good, In Fact Very Good, So Why Are Women Led To Believe It’s Bad?

by MomGrind

botox ad“40 is good,” said my male friend, and my eyes lit up. I knew exactly what he meant. He was talking about how much more confident he is now that he’s in his forties. Sure, the endless energy of his twenties is gone, but so are the arrogance and the naivete. At forty plus, he is calmer, more at peace with himself. He is a lot less self-centered and knows how important friendship and kindness are. He doesn’t lack passion – his passion and drive are as strong as always – but he has more perspective, and can put things in context.

The forties and fifties are, for many, amazing decades. You’re in the middle – you still enjoy energy and health, but you also have wisdom. You get it. You know yourself, you know what you want. Your roots are deeper. You’re confident, and you’re less and less worried about what others think about you.

Freedom!

But women, at least in the media, are denied the pleasures that this age brings and are bombarded with messages that essentially turn “over forty” into some kind of a disease, a condition that one must treat. Instead of being allowed to bask in the glory of our experience, wisdom and growing self-confidence, popular media, including ads and women’s magazines, convey a very clear message: women must remain in their thirties (or better yet, in their twenties if they can possibly manage it) forever.

Admittedly, unlike men, women do face a unique challenge as they grow older – diminishing fertility means we gradually lose our sexual appeal. So, while a man can be very attractive to women even with a few wrinkles and graying hair, evolution dictates that men look at these same signs in a woman as warning signs: “Infertility alert! Move on to the next candidate.”

Having said that, people are complex. Choosing a suitable partner is about so much more than taught skin and working ovaries. I personally know several women who have met wonderful partners when they were in their forties, fifties and sixties. These women are smart, independent, confident – and sexy. None of them uses Botox and while they work hard to stay fit and healthy and take good care of themselves, they certainly don’t try to look “ten years younger” than their chronological age.

But it takes a lot of confidence – a lot of character – to resist the powerful messages by the media. The constant, unrelenting messages that tell us to freeze our face with Botox, to pull our skin taught with plastic surgery, and – of course – to never forget our hands! God forbid we go through all this trouble of disguising our real age only to allow our veiny hands to disclose it.

We are made to focus so much on what we’re losing (youth, glowing skin, perky breasts) that we sometimes forget that as we lose our youth, we gain so much in terms of the person we are, our confidence, and our knowledge of the world.

Personally, at the age of 39 (40 in June), I consider myself a much more attractive person than I was 20 years ago. I certainly have more fun and enjoy life more. As far as I’m concerned, 40 is good. Very good. I like who I am, who I am becoming, and whether Vogue Magazine likes it or not, I fully intend to enjoy this very rewarding time in my life.