I proudly consider myself a feminist. As such, I have tried to be vocal about the idea that women have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies without anybody else’s input. Dress up, dress down, shave, don't shave, gain weight, lose weight; it is nobody's business but your own. Of course, in my mind, this line of thinking seems to apply to every other woman in the universe except for-- you guessed it-- myself.
I was presenting a scene in my acting class the other day when I realized that I hadn’t shaved my legs. Normally, it’s not that big a deal for me in the fall, since I usually wear long pants. But for this scene, my costume was a mid-thigh length dress and a pair of black heels. All that exposed leg instantly negated every single good thought I had about how well the scene went, and every useful critique I had gotten, only to be replaced with “Oh god. They think I’m disgusting. I look like Chewbacca wearing a shag carpet”.
In all truth, I don’t think anyone in that class was paying that much attention to my legs. There were twenty million other things going on in that scene that were far more important to be looking at. More than that, not a single person at any point said anything about my legs. It’s completely possible that I am the only one who even noticed it at all.
This got me thinking: what good is challenging social norms if I’m going to continue pushing them on myself? I personally don’t believe that body hair is gross at all. If I became a hermit, my happy, hairy self would not care one single bit about shaving. But because I am convinced that everyone else cares so much about what my legs look like, I will put myself into a panic and spend ridiculous amounts of money on trying to emulate a Barbie doll. That means that on top of grappling with insecurity and putting sharp blades close to my skin, there is some rich CEO out there profiting off of my insecurity.
If there’s one thing I hate more than gender norms, it’s capitalism.
As stated in a previous article, I consider myself a new-age hippy weirdo. So of course, my proposed solution to dealing with this issue was to create a mantra. I’m trying a little experiment where whenever I’m experiencing negative self talk about my appearance, I’m going to ask myself “Would you judge someone else for that?”. The goal in mind here is to treat my body with the same kindness I would treat anyone else’s with. We have all grown up hearing “treat others the way you want to be treated” but when was the last time we treated ourselves the way we treat others? This goes even beyond gender norms and body image. Forgive yourself, take care of yourself, and love yourself just as you would your best friend.
I invite everyone to try out this mantra themselves, and share your stories with using it in the comments below. Be good to yourself today.
