(negative) message received
Four-eyes!
Unibrow!
Itty-bitty-titties!
Girl moustache!
My mom told me to ignore them. The insults revealed more about the other kids’ insecurities than anything they could say about me, she asserted. The weight in my stomach would lighten as she hugged me and ran her fingers through my hair. I would nod, resolving myself to ignore the mean kids next time. Later, I would pose in front of the full-length mirror hanging on the back of my door, the edges lined with stickers and cut-outs of air-brushed faces of Celine Dion and Beyoncé. In the center of it all, I squinted without my glasses, trying to make out how I looked with socks stuffed in my training bra. I vowed to wear long-sleeves and pants the rest of the summer and to learn how to pluck my eyebrows. The plight of a dark-haired girl is to persistently find ways to conceal hair. While my brother could not wait to sprout hairs on his chest and chin, I was shaving, bleaching, and waxing by the time I was ten. Even as I plotted my beauty routine, I planned to muster the courage to scoff and walk away the next time I heard an insult, but I had to do everything in my power to make sure the insult never came in the first place.
Playground taunts may go away as we age, but the negative messages we receive do not. We are surrounded by images of what society determines is the ideal. We scroll through images of toned bodies and smooth skin, tidy kitchens, and coordinating pillows on expensive sectionals. Is it any wonder I talk to myself so rudely? When I peel my eyes away, I am met with a different reality. The stretch marks on my thighs glare at me as I click off my phone, and the pile of laundry next to me on the couch taunts me: If you weren’t so lazy, you could have a thigh gap like that model, and your living room could look like the one you just took a screenshot of.
Does anyone stand up from their scrolling session and go for a run? Begin baking? Learn calligraphy? Personally, I sink lower into the couch and list all the ways I am inferior to everyone else before turning on the TV in hopes of getting my mind off how terrible my life is. I know I drown myself in negative self-talk, and I am adept at berating myself for it, naturally, but when I step away from it and ask myself where it comes from, I can’t really blame myself for doing it. Living in the culture we do makes positive self-talk a near impossibility. Right after scrolling past a picture of Joanna Gaine’s exquisite Autumn tablescape, a meme screams at me from a mommy blog to be kind to myself. Without telling me how to do that, the advice just comes across as a lecture; here is yet another thing I cannot seem do right. It is going to take more than a command in a pretty font to get me to speak kindly to myself.
Some would prescribe a tech detox. If it is purely social media that spurs my instinct to judge myself and others, then taking it away could do away with my negative self-talk. This sounds like a sacrifice I would be willing to make. Even if I did eliminate all screens from my life, I know I would be jealous of the Tesla rolling up beside me at the gas station or suffer from
a major case of FOMO when my neighbor tells me they are going to Hawaii for two weeks. Besides, humans have existed for centuries without social media at their fingertips, and no one would argue that our ancestors lived in a world devoid of social angst.
With or without technology we are at the mercy of a society bent on achieving an ideal. The ideal is dictated by forces greater than any one of us, so we all part from it in our own way. When the messages get too loud and threaten to glue me to the couch, I think of that model. That tan, chiseled, goddess of a human being may peek at my life and feel a pang of jealousy. Look at that woman whose thighs do not part; she has a doting husband and two cute kids. Oh! What I wouldn’t give to eat a cookie for breakfast like her.
To live under the influence of society’s ideal, to persist in pushing back on it is a fundamental part of living. It is something we all experience, even the models with the thigh gap. Focusing on this commonality reminds me I am not alone, not inferior, and oddly enough it lifts me off the couch and onto folding laundry. Maybe even calligraphy. To all the little girls with socks in their bras: focus on what you have, even if it is too much hair, and when you invariably discover it is different from others, remind yourself of all the things you have that no one else does. Afterall, being unique is the one thing we all have in common.
Angela is a former educator, now a full-time mom, raising a daughter and son with her husband in the Pacific Northwest. While she has always enjoyed writing, after being diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer at the age of 33 it has become something of a lifeline. Since then, she has not put her pen down, finding she has much to share about the realities of being diagnosed young. The heavy subject-matter has not stifled her sense of humor, however. In fact, she has delighted in employing heavy sarcasm to cope with living during a global pandemic. Her nonfiction writing has been published in Wildfire Magazine, Open Minds Quarterly, and Press Pause.