A “crisis of confidence” she called it, my 21-year-old friend who wrote from college. This tall, strong, beautiful gazelle of a young woman was going through a crisis of confidence.
Unlike so many girls her own age who obsessed that their thighs were too big or breasts too small, she’d never seen her body as flawed. An exceptional athlete from early on, she knew her body’s brilliance and had always been grateful for the things it had allowed her to do. Suddenly, she was feeling very big, unattractive, less than.
“Any advice?” she asks.
Oh yeah, sure, I think. I’m a perfect one for advice. Just today, my daughter points out that in the space of a couple of hours, I have walked into her room three times to use the full length mirror, and every time, I have made a disparaging remark about the way I look. “Oh,” I say, feeling like a shamed kid. “Really, I did that?”
I think back. How long has this been going on? When did it start? If I were to compute the time I have spent fretting about my appearance, how many minutes, hours, days, weeks, yikes – even years would it come to? How many cumulative moments of my precious life have I wasted on it …..on the too fat, too short, too thick, too thin, too round, too flat, too little, too big?
A lot. Decade after decade, beginning at what – twelve? That’s a lot of time. And I know better. I know that “I am not my body.” I know that what is real and true, lasting and good has nothing to do with appearances. But it can be tricky in a culture that’s all about what it looks like – in spite of constant reminders to the contrary, the Marilyn Monroes, the Bernie Madoffs.
“I want to be young,” a 65-year-old friend tells me the other day. “Well, good luck with that,” I say. “A losing battle for sure, but you do get to decide how much time you want to devote to the fight,” I tell her. The aging process conspires against us. Or just maybe, it brilliantly forces us to finally shift our focus to what counts. With so little time left, do I want to spend another second lamenting my fallen ass? I think not.
Once, upon seeing a 98-year-old woman sporting jet black hair, I asked the same friend at what age she thought you could stop the dying and the frosting, the coloring, the covering. “When do you say, enough?” I wondered. Ever the fighter, she turned and emphatically replied, “Never.” I immediately flashed on several stunning friends of mine with beautiful silver hair.
Never. Really? Isn’t there a time when we must finally embrace it all – the crow’s feet and the cellulite, the sagging this, the mottled that – if for no other reason than to get on with the important stuff of life? The alternative seems quite absurd. Are we to leave instructions in the living will, “Do not resuscitate, just cover the gray”?
As for my young friend, I tell her that I have been plagued by these “crises of confidence” for far too long. These days, I know that the sooner I can quash the voice that says the wrinkles make me less than divine, the faster I can get on with life, into the moment where all the fun is. How else will I see the beauty all around me, not to mention inside me?
“I don’t do it 100% of the time,” I tell her, “but I’m determined to get there. I’m a late bloomer,” I say, “but as anyone who has ever really looked at a flower knows, better late than never.”
Sixties Chick 
May 23, 2009 at 3:52 am |
I think it is a personal matter for each person to see where they are comfortable…do you care if you are overweight? Do you care how you look? If you do, most likely you are always working on this, not in a self absorbed way, but because you care about your health…you would like to have a long life. I think everyone should care about their health, their body, their future.
May 23, 2009 at 12:43 pm |
Hi M/M,
Too bad you’re not a man…we all think we look perfect…