I am so excited for our book club!  (If your just checking in, go to my gabbingwithgrace Book Club page for details, the October schedule & guidelines).  So far about 12 of us are going to unsqueeeeeeeeze ourselves.  Are you ready???

To join in, go get Unsqueezed: Springing Free from Skinny Jeans, Nose Jobs, Highlights and Stilettos, by Margot Starbuck.

After this post, we’ll be heading on over to a WordPress forum with log-in, embedded within my blog.  You’ll need to create a username & password.  That way, we can share personally without the entirety of the Internet being able to read about how we wish our boobs were smaller or bigger. (And heck, who among us wants all of the Internet knowing the deep and personal secrets I’m hoping we’ll all divulge freely).

A few pointers to help this go smoothly:

1. Confidentiality – Don’t re-post or retweet anyone else’s words without explicit permission.  Everyone who log-ins will see what one another has written.  Feel free to give yourself an alias or ‘anonymous’ user name.

2. I officially give you permission to be where you are at in your own body image journey.  If it’s screwed up, broken down, or actually in a great place —please feel free to be honest.  No one is going to judging you.  (So, no judging others)!

3. Accept people where they are at & don’t try to convince them otherwise.  Sometimes we just need to sit in our disappointments for a minute without being preached to.  We don’t need to stay there, but we need to let them sink in.

4.  Pick at least one point to be vulnerable & go crazy!

I think that’s all!

Let’s begin:

Today’s discussion: The intro & chapter 1.

The Intro

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  Our culture’s portrayal of the ideal physically beautiful woman is EVERYWHERE & it’s completely unreasonable.  Mostly, because it’s 1 single body type.  It’s the woman, who is 5 10′ & above who is naturally thin no matter what they eat…a great rack doesn’t hurt.

What does this pic say to you?  (Besides, “oooh, maybe I too should have a penchant for protruding pelvic bones?!”)

1. If you were to put yourself up against the likes of Tyra, Gisele or Angelina Jolie, how do you fare? A black woman, a Brazilian & the white woman touted over and over again to be the “sexiest woman on the planet,” makes us normal folk what?

Chopped liver.

On a scale of to 10 for me: I’m going to say 4.  Until we get this little book club to a private setting I’m hesitant to put my reasons out there.  All I know is that “4” sounds dangerously close to “5,” which means I think I’m at least 1/2 as sexy as Tyra!

The more important question is: do you try?  As for me, the answer is yes, yes & yes.  For 90% of my life, I’ve tried to do the best with what I got.  Even when I’m not trying, it’s not noble.

I don’t try because I feel so far off from the standard there is literally no point.

(You know those times right — when you can’t afford to get your hair did, when your at your absolute heaviest and all your clothes are tight and muffin-top looking.  In addition to that, spending will only make you feel worse, b/c of course you’ll be spending money on the next 2-3 sizes bigger which always feel crappy).

Especially when you should NOT be spending anyway.  And most especially because buying a bigger size does not give me the feel-good-when-I-shop drug, that I have come to be addicted to love.

On those days (weeks or months) I just give-up and go around looking like crap.  When I don’t try, I really don’t try.  Trust me, have you seen me in my cocoon times?  I can go weeks without leaving my sleep-sac.

What are the ways you have tried so hard to squeeze into a certain celebrated view of beauty that it has hurt you, hurt people you love or been otherwise bad for you?

This is quite possibly the saddest story I have ever read on women trying fit into a certain mold.  It’s about how Playboy Magazine photoshop’s women’s vajayjay’s to look a certain way.  After a year or two of this, the # of plastic surgeries to get your vajayjay to look like the photoshopped images of nude women in playboy, spiked.  When a documentary maker went in to get her vajayjay analyzed by an American plastic surgeon he said, “oh yeah, you need the works.” It’s just disgusting isn’t it?

For me, I think the ways I try to fit into the mold are hurtful to our finances, and my ever-frugal hubby.  Over the years, I have spent way too much on clothes and shoes and handbags and accessories.  And there was a good year or two I was tanning year round because I hate being so light skinned as a biracial woman.  My definition of beauty is a caramel-colored biracial woman a la Halle Berry or Alicia Keys.  I’ve yet to see the consequences of my sacrifice to fit that beauty mold, but I am praying that one day I will not experience skin cancer from my dangerous choice to fake bake.

2. It’s interesting how women of different ethnic & racial backgrounds both perceive and live out different values for beauty even though we are all in the same rat race to fit the world’s mold of beauty.  Do you find yourself doing this in ways pertaining to your race, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds?  How so?

As a kid, I hated that I was so light-skinned.  In Detroit, every one would say to me, “dang you light-skinDED.”  Yep, we all actually used the unfortunate word “skinded,” instead of skinned.  It was an endless source of shame and frustration.  I could not magically wish myself darker, nor could I change the fact that my white mother apparently gave me too much of her, leaving not enough black from my Daddy.  I got called “yellow, ” “old yeller,” “oreo cookie,” & “zebra,” enough times for me to truly believe that light-skinned black women are not nearly as beautiful as darker ones.

But instead I got pale old me…

Don’t you think it’s really sad that I’ve not felt good about myself because I’m light-skinned and not as brown as Halle Berry?  I do.  I think it’s really pathetic.  I’m really trying to bust out of that mold, y’all.

And then I had the gall to feel bad for biracial woman like Mariah Carey because how pale they are…

Can you believe my nerve?

(Hey, I’m just leading this little book study…never said I had it all figured out)!

I’m still just trying…

Anyway, growing up in a white school it was interesting to see how my white friends hated having a bigger behind, while my black friends in Detroit celebrated it.  I learned to play the part depending on the setting.

3. What are some helpful things you’ve done to shut out the pressures and standards of our culture?  Where do you search and find truth?  What things do you avoid?  What are ways you’ve sought to hear how God thinks of you?

I love how Margot says (on pp.20), “You’re not blessed (Jesus says) because (you bear many kids, look totally sexy or pleasure a man); you are blessed when your body, your whole person, responds in obedience to God.  That, says Jesus, is what really matters.”

As Margot says, it really is mind-blowing.  It’s laughable really when you think of how directly opposite it is to what our culture tells us makes a person blessed or happy or at peace.

I realized a few years ago I had to avoid US Weekly magazine.  My Ma gave me a year subscription for a Christmas present.  It was like crack cocaine that magazine.  I got high and could only keep my high through shopping.  Once I canceled it I realized what a great home we have, that I all ready had a great wardrobe and that the desire to want stuff all. the. time. is indeed burdensome.

Chapter 1, LIES: Digital Fluff & Other Modern Temptations

1.  What do you think about the idea that we can physically altar photographs of ourselves through photoshop?  Is it always wrong?

I’m not talking about huge photoshop disasters like the emaciated mess that was the controversial Ralph Lauren ad a few months ago:

But what about other “little” things?

A zit here, a hair fluff there.  What gives?

Back when I was trying to bust my face into the modeling world I remember a particular photo shoot in which I was really pleased with the pictures.  There was one pic in particular I really liked…

…until the photographer said, “you know in order to make this picture workable we’ll have to photoshop out your back fat?  We’ll need to amp up your cleavage and adjust your nose well.  It looks a bit too Jewish if you know what I mean.”

I was all ready tanned, had 4 rows of tracks in my head, fake nails glued to my fingers, 6 pounds of make-up including 10 coats of mascara and a tummy-sucker-in-thing on my waist.

I was in too much shock to respond properly so I smiled and said, “of course.”  (Ugh, so sad right)?

(And might I add, he’d all ready told me I was 15 pounds overweight to be a working model).  At 5 6″, he said, I’d need to “get down to at least 120.”  I remember feeling so determined to lose those 15 pounds! (Never did by the way).

Now at a plump 170 pounds,  if I could weigh 135 again, I would jump for joy!

How am I supposed to be happy with my normal self, with a normal picture of myself if we have to go through all of that just to achieve a “workable” photograph?

(And truth be told, I’ve got a lot of great feedback on that pic & I -sheepishly- like it too)!

I feel much like Margot did at the end of chapter 1.  🙁

So what gives??? What gives is that the temptation to change me digitally left me feeling not good enough, and that’s not right.  God made me to look exactly the way He wanted me to and that means regardless of anyone else’s opinion, I have worth despite my back fat, my 170 pounds of fun & my Jewish looking nose.

At the end of the day, regardless of whether I -or anyone else- thinks I am beautiful is simply…irrelevant.

(I do, however, appreciate that my husband drools all over me and frequently tells me I’m the most beautiful woman he’s ever laid eyes on.  When he looks at me, I feel beautiful).

Even if your husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/boo-bear doesn’t recognize your physical beauty, YOU hold tremendous value and worth to God.  Period.

That, my sisters, I do know for sure.

I just know it’s hard to know that for yourself.

2.  So, what are you tempted to fix?

Re-cap questions for discussion

From the Intro:

1. If you were to put yourself up against the likes of Tyra, Gisele or Angelina Jolie, how do you fare? A black woman, a Brazilian & the white woman touted over and over again to be the “sexiest woman on the planet,” makes us normal folk what?

2.  The more important question is: do you try?

3.  What are the ways you have tried so hard to squeeze into a certain celebrated view of beauty that it has hurt you, hurt people you love or been otherwise bad for you?

4.  It’s interesting how women of different ethnic & racial backgrounds both perceive and live out different values for beauty even though we are all in the same rat race to fit the world’s mold of beauty.  Do you find yourself doing this in ways pertaining to your race, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds?  How so?

5.   What are some helpful things you’ve done to shut out the pressures and standards of our culture?  Where do you search and find truth?  What things do you avoid?  What are ways youv’e sought to hear how God thinks of you?

Chapter 1, LIES: Digital Fluff & Other Modern Temptations

1.  What do you think about the idea that we can physically altar photographs of ourselves through photoshop?  Is it always wrong?

2.  What are you tempted to “fix”?

Overall:

1.  What is your major take-away from the Intro & Chapter 1?

Ladies, again I’m sorry this isn’t private –it will be by next Friday I promise– but please, discuss!  Use an anonymous name & I will spit-shake promise not to reveal your identity! 😉

Here’s to our new journey towards freedom,

**(next week, read chapter 2-3)