Four more inches of the white stuff today. The sun never shines. It is not dark, just white. Sky is white and the ground is white. Good thing the dog is black.
I am stuck with and on this grooming thing. Why can't I convince myself to make an effort if I am fat? Has to be about self love somehow. I have been learning about following my thinking lately, so here goes with this topic.
1. I associate dressing up with being thin. As in when I was younger and thinner and used to dress up to go out. When I dress up now I am reminded of how fat I have let myself get. Then I hate my weak willed self, and my fatter body.
2. Also when I get dressed up I think, "What's the point? You are not trolling for a man or dressing up to impress one so why bother. Keep in mind I have the most wonderful husband on the face of my earth. Why don't I want to dress up for him? ( A whole 'nother topic.)
3. Dress up clothes are usually more form fitting. I do not want to fit my form right now.
4. I do not feel feminine when I am fatter. Why???????????
5. I feel like it is a travesty to doll up a fat body. Like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. If you are fat enough NO ONE is going to notice if you have on eye makeup. ALL they notice is your girth. I want the girth to fade into the back ground. That's it!!!!!
I want to be invisible when I am fat. Or when I feel fat. Poor grooming says,"Ignore me, I'm unimportant." Good grooming says, "Notice me, I'm important." I think I learned early to be invisible so as to avoid being taunted about my weight. I may be way tougher in my middle age.
Wow that was easy. There may be something to this follow your thinking to the end stuff. I am a worthwhile person fat or thin. I want to be noticed, and at 190 it is darn hard to be invisible anyway. Since I am so obviously there, why not be the best "there" I can be? I will be judged about my weight. I can't control other people's thinking. So pretending to be invisible will not and can not spare me other's criticism. It just makes me feel fat and dumpy.
Poor self esteem. My self esteem comes and goes with the pounds. I hate that. I can't make a good connection with poor self esteem and poor grooming. If I am depressed it becomes too much work, but I don't directly avoid lipstick because I hate myself.
My overt femininity is threatening to me. I don't think I have ever said that aloud. I was a small blond girl child that men had sex with. If I had looked less girly maybe they would have left me alone. That's it! Fat covers up the curves. Makes me boxy shaped. If I look like a man I am safe. No wonder I don't feel feminine if I am fat. I have used fat for years to escape from being female and I associate good grooming with being feminine. If I want to escape from my female body out of fear no wonder getting"dolled up' is such a struggle.
I also don't feel I have the right to be feminine. I was raised by women who associated all things feminine with the upper classes. If you are poor and have to do hard physical labor, lipstick and and earrings and nice nails are not an option. Is hard to slaughter chickens and hoe beets and scrub and plow and have twelve children and be feminine. In my family poor farm women were valued for their ability to breed and work like hired men. Hired men don't get to be pretty.
And then there is the whole religious deal. My mother once told me I was headed straight for hell because I put on some light pink lip gloss. I still feel vaguely sinful when applying lipstick. I was taught that a nice girl was clean and neat, and that's all. Decorative was verboten.
Gad, the more I write the more I realize how blessed I am to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. No wonder I have trouble with the whole feminine thing. But, the lack of blusher stops here. I am determined to make an effort.
I am pooped. This introspection is hard work. Will write more on this later.
Locate your earrings ladies. Love Bea
3 comments:
Hallo Bea, I am going through the exact same stuff. You seem to word everything exactly the way they are with me. Except of course I was never cute and blond. I guess low self-esteem is real, except I hate the word, first there is the low self-esteem, and then more low self-esteem because of the perceived low self-esteem.
BUT strangely enough with all the blogs I have read under your pen, the thought of you being low on self-esteem has never occurred to me. You are much too alive for anything with "low" in it. Aren't people who have low self-esteems supposed to be needy, depressed and moping around all the time. And here you are cleaning every day, sorting things out every day, caring about other people, including dogs. Maybe it is not low self-esteem but as simple as frustration in finding that with which to fulfill yourself completely, i.e. writing the book, or finding an answer to something.
But yes, if you could go out and get some nice things to wear "dolly up", and put on make up and allow yourself to enjoy massages even when you feel less than perfect, possibly you will loose weight as that seems to be the reverse act in play. I.e. usually we loose weight first and then do all the nice things to ourselves, so if we do the nice things to ourselves first, then the weight has to come off as nice things do go hand in hand with not wanting to mess things up with overeating. On the other hand, the nice things need to come spontaneously, not overly pre-meditated as maybe it will turn into a "diet" and then there will be spontaneous rebellion. I think the self-fulfillment thingie has to be on top of the list.
ar
Wow, lots of good thinking going on here, Bea. I can relate to not wanting to look like a girl because the bad stuff won't happen to me if I don't look the way I did when it happened before. Those wounds, that self-preservation, goes deep and we've lived with it for a long, long time.
You said: "Poor grooming says,"Ignore me, I'm unimportant." Good grooming says, "Notice me, I'm important."
That sort of stopped me in my tracks because I think it's also about the self-esteem bits. Not that "I'm unimportant" as much as "I'm not worth anything". Maybe they are just different ways of saying the same thing.
I just know that when I'm feeling happy with myself, even at 260, I dress with more care. There's a question in my daily inventory that asks, "what made you feel feminine today?" and sometimes all I can say is Clean Hair and Pretty Earrings. But they matter and I hold on to at least doing those, no matter how lousy I feel about myself.
Somehow it's easier to see ourselves as mattering if we dress as though we already do.
I agree with Anne! Sometimes we just have to go with behaving "as if" what we desire, already in fact, is. Even the Bible tells us that as a man thinks, so he is! Often thought precedes action. So why not the inverse? Why can't we get our thought processes into line through our actions? Nice food for thought -- thanks again!
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