Learning "Beauty"

When I was a little girl, I believed that my mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. I was convinced that it was true. It's easy for me to remember what that felt like - the awe and admiration I felt towards my mom - it feels like her hugs and smells like her perfume.

Even now, I know that my mother is beautiful.

The problem is that no one believes me.

Society tells us to love and respect our mothers. That young women should look up to their mothers as female role models. We should try to live up to our mothers - except in the areas where she herself falls short. And for most women, they will never live up to society's standard for beautiful. I know my mother and I certainly do not - and I learned that from my mother.

As a girl, I would watch my mom get dressed and put on her make up. I would mimic her motions in the mirror with my pretend make up. Before ballet recitals, she and my grandmother would do my hair and put make up on me; it made me feel special and loved to have their attention as they made me "pretty."

As I grew older, I learned how to make myself "pretty." My mother and I would get dressed together and do our make up and hair in her bathroom. All the while, my mother teaching me what beauty means as she would comment on my appearance. Giving advice such as:
"We both have big hips and thighs, and let me tell you, you're going to constantly have to watch what you eat and work out because all of your fat will go straight to your hips and butt and that is never attractive."
"I think you're so much prettier when you're tan. But never dye your hair blonde it would look horrible with your complexion."
"Wear more concealer to cover all of that acne."
"You'll be so pretty when you're thin."
"Wearing that much eyeliner makes you look slutty. Why are you wearing such dark lipstick?"
"If you're really comfortable showing off your legs, I guess you can wear that skirt. I know I wouldn't be comfortable."
"Are you wearing a bra? I just don't understand how you're so flat chested."
"Why are you wearing a push-up bra?"

And the list goes on. Of course, I never really thought much of her comments because I'd heard her say similar things about herself. I figured it was part of growing into a woman. My mother helped teach me insecurity and self-judgement.

While I looked up to my mother and found her beautiful, she worried over her appearance. No matter how beautiful I found her, she would never see herself the way I saw her. As a child, I did not find her fat; I found her warm and comforting and would wake up in the mornings and crawl into her bed to cuddle. I still think she is prettiest first thing in the morning with bedhead, remnants of eyeliner and mascara that refused to wash away, and in a baggy t-shirt. Of course no magazine would ever deem my mother at 9 am on a Saturday beautiful. They'd tell her to brush her hair, put on a full face of make up, and to consider hitting the gym more often. As I consumed trashy magazines and TV, I heard, what seemed to be the world, telling me that my mother was not beautiful. That I was not beautiful. As I watched my mother get ready for dates, I learned that the mom I saw on a daily basis was not beautiful enough for hetero-male attention. As I watched my mother date assholes, I heard them tell her she was pretty, but she could be prettier.

And she heard it, too.

As my mom battled with her insecurities, I battled my own. I learned how to hate my body from someone I found gorgeous. I slowly stopped seeing my mother and myself as beautiful. When I looked at my mom, I saw an overweight, aging woman. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a pudgy thirteen year old. When my mom dieted, I dieted with her. When my mom worked out, I worked out with her. It was mother-daughter bonding.

However, as an easily impressionable teenager desperate to be pretty and liked (because in my teenage brain the only way I'd ever be worth anything would be through beauty), I went farther than simply eating healthily and working out for fun and health. While my mom kept dieting and exercising safely, I went to the extreme. I stopped seeing our diet and exercise as "bonding," it became a competition. My mother became my competition. So I cut more calories, ran longer, and eventually became thin. While I started as a pudgy 8th grader that needed to learn about healthy eating and get more active, I ended as a thin, obsessive high school graduate. Before, my mom would say, "You'll be so pretty when you're thin." But when I was seventeen and went down two jean sizes in a month and a half, her previous sentiment transformed into "But you're already so thin..." Now when I talk to my mother about my eating disorder, she says that she knew something was wrong, but she never did anything. While I never push on why she never acted, I feel as if I know the answer. I think her inaction was because she saw me succeed at being "pretty." Where she had failed, I had succeeded. While she had soft curves and took up space, I had sharp edges and size 0 jeans - the 0 as empty as my stomach.

I don't blame my mother for my eating disorder. Eating disorders are far too complicated to "blame" on any single factor.

However, I do point fingers at the current standard of beauty. It taught my mother and me that we are not beautiful on our own. It taught me that my mother was not beautiful just as it taught my mother that she needed to make me beautiful. This beauty standard told me that I was not supposed to aspire to look like my mother no matter how pretty I found her.

All children find their mothers to be beautiful because mothers are beautiful - for mothers. Society tells us that our mothers are beautiful but they are not beautiful women - they are not the beauty to which we should aspire. We are taught not to love our curves, our touching thighs, wrinkles, or our bedhead. There's no high school class teaching us to see beauty in someone's laugh or passion or generosity. When I come across an article on "how to play up your best attributes" I know it's going to tell me how to draw attention to my tits or ass or if it's a more "enlightened" author it will talk about my smile or eyes. That article isn't going to tell me how to show off my great sense of humor or intelligence. Even though my mom thinks I'm funny and smart, society tells me that it really just doesn't care.

But what if our mothers were the standard for beauty? Surely then we would be less shallow about beauty. My mother is beautiful not simply based on her outside appearances but also from her comforting, her tenacity, and her spirit.

Magazines and Confused Girls

For the last few days I've been grappling with the fact that I spend a lot of time thinking about dating and sex. In fact, I write and post a lot about it on my tumblr. I've been trying to come to terms with being so focused on dating and sex on the one hand and feminist on the other.

To further explain: I fully believe that part of the patriarchal cis-tem is to socialize girls to be obsessed with dating. Mainstream women's magazines are built and sustained on this socialization. As a consumer of this socialization, I immersed myself into women's magazines from a young age.

I started at 10 with the magazine that American Girl (yes, the same company as the dolls) published aimed at preteens. Mostly, I was intrigued by the cartoon drawings and I liked having something new to read every month. As I entered puberty though, I appreciated the magazine (and the books the company also published) for its honest and unashamed look at puberty and the beginning of all those messy sexy feelings. It was great to read it in a magazine that other girls were reading. It made me feel not so alone in all of my weird body issues that were going on. (Disclaimer: I'm not saying American Girl is a wonderful organization because it most certainly has its own galaxy of fucked up-ness). Reading this magazine was more appealing to me than asking my mom for information about sex or puberty because well...

Now, my mom was a very open and communicative parent when it came to telling me about sex, getting my period, and puberty. When I was three, she was pregnant with my little brother so she decided it was time to teach me about sex...using a medical textbook. I knew about the mechanics of heterosex before I could pronounce "vagina" (I called it a "magenta" which I am still partial toward). In kindergarten, when we were learning about body parts, I demanded to know about the genitals of the genital-less diagram body we were using "Is is a boy? If it's a boy it needs a penis" (Hooray for learning cissexism). At 13, my mother taught me how to use condoms with the help of some bananas. I knew I had the support system to ask my mother questions about sex.

Actually, no. 

I could ask her questions about heterosex. Because by the time I was 14 I was fully aware of my mother's homophobia. At the age of 5, I asked my mom why my friend, Jordan, had two mommies, but I didn't. I was envious. I wanted two moms and was very disappointed in my mother for giving me a father but not a second mother. My mother's explanation was that Jordan's moms were different, that they were lesbians, and that's why Jordan didn't have a dad. Since my mom wasn't (and still isn't) a lesbian, I couldn't have two mommies; instead my mom liked boys the way she loved my dad whereas as Jordan's moms liked girls the way they love each other. I then declared that I must be a lesbian because I don't like boys, I like girls. (I was on the right track at least...) My mother's face paled at that declaration and she said that I was too young to know and that as I got older I would like boys the way my mom loved my dad. At the age of 14, I really got to hear my mother's homophobia. While we were discussing same-sex marriage, she professed that being gay is a choice and is absolutely unnatural. As a sexually confused 14 year old, I shut up at the realization that if I was gay my mother would probably send me to a religiously backed camp to turn my straight (did I mention this conversation was in a church parking lot?).

Since it was apparent I couldn't go to my mother for advice or guidance regarding my confused feelings, I turned to magazines. After all, magazines had guided me through puberty, why would they fail me now? I read ElleGirl, CosmoGirl, Seventeen, and Cosmo. As I searched for answers (primarily to the question if every girl felt the way I felt about my best friend), I absorbed the latest fashion trends, how to put on eyeshadow, and how to flirt with boys. There was nothing useful (no, I take that back, I did learn about fingering and cunnilingus and for that I am grateful).

These magazines were marketed as possessing all the sexual knowledge a modern woman could ever need. But there was nothing about being...what exactly? I knew I wasn't a lesbian because guys turned me on, but I knew I wasn't straight because I was certain not everyone felt the way I felt in the girls locker room (apart from the body embarrassment, that seemed almost universal). Occasionally there would be a shout out to lesbians or bisexuals, but nothing about coming out or how to deal with homophobia. If these magazines that existed solely for doling out fashion, dating, and sex advice didn't regularly talk about my burgeoning sexuality then, teenage me deduced, my sexuality must not exist.

The media taught me that lesbians were dangerous, manly women. My family added to this by never uttering the word "lesbian" and if it was it was either said with disgust or at a whisper. I didn't want to be feared or unliked in that way. Whenever I encountered bisexuality it was Britney kissing Madonna for attention, my junior high friends making out with each other to the cheers of boys, it was a passing moment done for the male gaze. If a tree falls in a forest with no one around, does it make a sound? If a "straight" girl makes out with another girl without a man around, does bisexuality really exist? In high school, my answer was "no." So I pretended to be straight. I rationalized any and all crushes I would get on people not male-identified.

This is a very drawn out way of understanding why I write and think so much about dating and sex as a queer woman. Because I lie awake at night and think about what could have been if I had had resources in high school about being LGBTQUIA+. What if I my family wasn't a bunch of pseudo-religious homophobes? What if my high school wasn't so fucking heterosexist, sexist, and homophobic? What if I had actually lived in a community that supported queer people? What if when I had tried doing internet research about my confused feelings I didn't just get a bunch of porn (thus making me terrified of ever trying to research that again)? What would my life had been like if I had learned about pansexuality before I was twenty years old (because even though I accepted I was most likely bisexual for lack of a better term, that identification never resonated enough with me to encourage me to come out)?

I'm writing for that fourteen year old girl who is scared to think about her sexuality because her mom thinks being gay is a choice. I spend so much time thinking about dating and sex in my own life because for so many years, I was never allowed or capable of even imagining a pansexual, polyamorous life. My focus on dating and sex isn't part of my patriarchal socialization, it's part of my un-socialization. I write about it and post about it because it disrupts all the heterosexist bullshit that gets shoved down the throats of teenage girls.