This is going to be
another one of those blogging weeks where organization is difficult due to
interrelated points. I will try and be coherent.
I'm going to start with
my Facebook status today: Do you like yourself?
I do. I was thinking
about it because of a conversation with someone else whom I suspect doesn't. I
think you should. I do.
Picking up last week's
thread, I have found that I am basically the person I want to be. That is good.
When it was less true, at least one of the problems was that I could not see
myself accurately, and there were things I didn't know about myself.
One factor was that we
are not good at talking about bodies. Maybe we are better now, but having those
conversations where you could feel good about the areas where you were fit and
work on the areas that needed improvement - it just wasn't happening.
I mention that mainly
because in other areas where we worry about polite conversation, the primary
result seems to be reinforcing a harmful status quo.
For example, it's not
polite to talk about money. That leads to not knowing when the pay of you and
your coworkers is based more on gender and race than on contribution and
competence. It makes it easier for people to cheat you. It makes it easier for
people to create false impressions, and it makes it easier for people to
brazenly spend ridiculous amounts of money in ways they should be ashamed of.
When it's awkward to talk
about sex? Sure, one result is sex that is less enjoyable than it could be
(perhaps without people even realizing that it could be better), but it also
leads to issues where consent is poorly understood, and where diseases get
spread, and unintended consequences happen.
Also, if someone is being
rude - especially in a passive-aggressive matter - where it feels like anything
you do to stand up for yourself would be even more rude, that's just not any
fun at all.
So it is important that
we talk about things, and that we care more about substance than surface. It is
important that we learn vocabulary for talking about things, allowing us to
understand others and to give form to our own thoughts. We need to be able to
analyze and comprehend when things aren't working and work out ways of
addressing that.
The other contributing
factor, though, is that girls aren't supposed to know anything good about
themselves anyway.
I am smart. It became
clear early on academically, other people notice, I know it, and it still feels
wrong to say it. If I can't admit to the most obvious good thing about me
without feeling awkward, what positive traits am I allowed to own?
If you say something bad
about your looks, a lot of people will contradict you. That's nice, though it
can backfire. For example, if I complain that I'm fat and someone answers
"You're not fat; you're pretty!" that merely reinforces the utter
incompatibility of "fat" and "pretty", and I am fat. Again,
that one is really obvious.
This may circle back to
the first problem, that we are not good at talking about things. Maybe it is
better to be able to admit that someone's nose isn't great, but also that it
doesn't make them hideous and it is the least important thing about them. There
are minefields in that direction, but there might be something really good on
the other side too.
Regardless, it should be
okay to be able to know good things about ourselves. I know I am smart. I also
believe it is a gift from God. That would make it very inappropriate to hold it
over other people, when in fact I should be using it to serve people. I also know
that there are areas that I don't know a lot about, there is training I haven't
had, and I am fallible. There can be balance in knowing your strengths.
It should be possible for
pretty girls to know they are pretty, or to be glad they have manageable hair
or to like their eyes without feeling better than everyone else. It's so common
that they aren't even allowed to know they are pretty, and that is worse for
girls.
I am going to spend more
time on that, but I will go in a slightly different direction tomorrow. In the
mean time, here is an old blog post and one recent article:
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