Today, I came across the story of 3 young women who were out to dinner at a local restaurant in Stockton, California called Chilly D's. When the three women received their check, you can imagine the horror they felt when they saw at the top of the bil that they had been labeled as the "fat girls".
I can imagine there was a lot of humiliation coupled with a whole lot of anger and banged up pride. I'm not sure if I would have attacked someone or ran away and cried. This made me think, how can we stop people from labeling women?
As a mother of little girls, and one who has battled with poor self-image and eating disorders since puberty, I am trying to raise my daughters to be healthy and self-confident. I've changed my ways and it's been one of the hardest things that I have ever had to overcome. It's hard to change the way you see yourself, especially when you have seen yourself through funhouse mirrors for most of your adult life. I would love nothing more than for my girls to look in the mirror and love what they see; to be comfortable in their own skin. I want them to not give a crap about what the scale says and even less about the number sewn inside their pants. I want them to be confident in whom they are but it's easier said than done.
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No matter what I tell my girls at home, eventually they will have to go into general population and when that happens, I have to hope and pray that my years of telling them daily that they are good enough, that they are better than enough, that they are the best them that has ever walked the earth is enough to silence the voices of the media and of the superficial beauty obsessed society that we live in. The world that my daughters, your daughters and their daughters will have to learn to navigate with strength, unwavering determination and confidence is a critical one.
Our society accepts unrealistic standards. The average woman compares herself to waif thin models built like 10-year-old boys. We compare ourselves to Hollywood celebrities that have not only had the benefit of personal trainers and nutritionists but nannies, chefs and cosmetic surgeons. It's unrealistic and it's dangerous.
I am a Latina woman who has curves. My girls may be blonde with blue eyes but they are Latina and they will probably have my curves. I want them to feel beautiful in their body, not hunched over trying to hide and cover every square inch of their curves because some magazine is telling them that to be beautiful they need to be straight and flat. It's genetics. No matter how thin I have ever gotten, I still had curves. I'm a woman, I am supposed to have curves.
We teach our girls to go forth in the world and be whatever they want to be, excel at whatever they set their mind to, rule the world but beware, no matter how big your brains are or how wonderful your temperament and disposition are, you will always be judged on the size of your ass. Photoshopped women surround us, in a time when a teen having cosmetic surgery is the norm. I don't want that for my girls. Changing who we are, what we look like, to please others will not serve to make anyone happy in the end.
How are we supposed to raise little girls to be confident in whom they are on the inside and to believe that what's on the inside that counts more, when we still label women like property? We let people call us these names, and we even call one another, fat girl, skinny girl, pretty girl, ugly girl and hot girl. It's 2012 and we still objectify women.
My daughters are more than the size of their jeans. I am more than the size of my ass and you are more than the sum total of all of your imperfections. We are all different and beautiful in our own ways. We cannot stand back and allow ourselves to be held to these ridiculous standards any longer. We need to change what society deems most important. Beauty is more than a physical trait; it goes deeper than that.
I want my daughters to live in a world where people are not judged by their size or their shape but on their merits and their heart. If only we lived in a world where people's outsides matched their insides directly.
I want my girls to look in the mirror and smile and be happy with what they see because they know that they are strong, intelligent and beautiful on the inside, as well as, on the outside.
Image via The TRUTH about Motherhood
