Fidelity | The Things They Never Should Have Said

I have my own list, you have yours.

That horrible thing someone said to you that you will never forget. You may have been a child and someone said you needed to shave your legs because they were hairy and you hadn’t even realized that was a thing yet. You may have been in high school and someone told you your nose was big, and you had no idea until it was pointed out to you. But then you knew. Or it may have been last week when someone made an offhand or ignorant comment about your size—or a comment about “thin, beautiful” people, which indirectly implied something about your size...and attractiveness.

Regardless of when it was, we all have them. And some of them haunt us more than others. I have a whole slew of them - you know of my most recent “thunder thigh” incident. Talking about it makes it easier - mostly - but it doesn’t change the fact that I am more aware of my thighs now than I have ever been in my life. It also doesn’t change the fact that my thighs have nothing to do with who I am, so to have my external appearance pointed out to me in such a negative, identifying way just makes me feel conflicted and confused. Because when I’m not looking in a mirror, I feel like I’m just me. Quirky, insecure, funny, moody, intellectual, empathetic, cynical me. But when me becomes my abdomen that’s not flat, or my legs that touch in the middle, or my breasts that aren’t perky and small, or my incessantly dry and patchy skin, or my unbrushed hair, or my unique body shape, then I am not me anymore, I am my imperfect and aging body. And I don’t believe this is who I am. I don’t believe your body is who you are.

So, let’s take a lesson from our own tormentors. Think about the words that are coming out of your mouth - even the flippant and playful words. One little statement from you could change the way he sees himself for the rest of his life. It could cause her to have a complex over that “one little thing” you always pick on her about — in good fun. It might just add one more thing to their list of things they’ve been told they should hate about themselves. And that is probably not your intention - unless you're evil, or 12.

So how about this? How about we not comment on people’s bodies, people’s skin color, people’s imperfections, people’s “flaws”. Because that’s what they become to them: flaws. How about let’s promote love and care with the words we speak to our friends and to strangers, to our family and to our enemies, to people we envy and to people we loathe.

How about let’s not be their 6th grade story, their high school bully, their co-worker that one time, or their 12-year-old on Belmont Blvd….

Remember: You are not your hairy legs, you are not your big nose, and you are not your thunder thighs.

Those are the things they never should have said.

Fashion | "There Are No Ordinary People." -C.S. Lewis

One random day during my high school career, I was standing in a group of socializing people (which was odd for me in the first place) and decided I needed to go, so I said outloud to the group, “I’m outtie!” because I had recently watched Clueless and wanted to try out the phrase…

No one heard me...but I was still outtie.

I would consider myself an individual—one who doesn’t need the approval of others, marches to the beat of my own drum, and I’ve almost always been this way—but even I am and was affected by everything I see—in films, on television, on the news, in my home, out at restaurants and public places. Everything is making an impression on me.

I loved Britany Murphy in Clueless. I loved her Ugly Duckling to Belle of the Ball transformation. And I wanted to be like those girls. As much as I would never be like those girls (it is genetically impossible), I tried.

Late high school is when I began to become aware of myself—what I looked like, my body, the way people interacted with me—and I started to care too. When I was a Junior, I decided I wanted to be thin, so I became obsessed with eating very little and running, doing an exorbitant amount of sit-ups every evening and weighing myself incessantly until the magic number was reached.

It worked. I became thin. I liked the way my clothes looked on me, I liked the size of the clothes I was wearing, and I liked the number on the scale. I wasn’t perfectly content of course, but who is?

I went away to college, and began to interact with people in a completely different way. Basically, men were interested in me—they found me attractive and therefore wanted to talk to me—wanted to listen to me talk. I had never experienced this kind of power before, and while at first I was naive to it, I soon became subconsciously (and then consciously) aware of what was going on and learned to wield my power very carefully and to the end that I wanted.

In the long run, Beauty and Thinness equaled attention and respect from men and often other women; so without it, I was lost in the world. I had no power, no place, no respect, and often no basic human civility.

I spent years beating myself up over it—trying to look a way that would gain favor with people was becoming harder and harder to achieve. I still daily notice when people are kinder to me if I have makeup on or heels, or when they don’t speak to me if I’m in my comfy clothes or looking a bit unkempt in my glasses, hair a mess.

It’s something we all do, right? Judge people by their appearance. And sometimes it’s real. You can actually know real things about people by the way that they look. But this—what I’m talking about is not the same thing. You can’t assume anything about me by my weight. I mean, you can, but you’ll probably be wrong. You can’t know anything about me as a human being by the clothes I threw on today. I mean, you can probably tell that I don’t adhere to the widely held societal fashion guidelines, but that doesn’t mean I should be treated any differently than the woman in front of me who looks like she just left a photo shoot. You can’t know one thing about me or my intelligence or my worth as a human by my subjective or objective external beauty. You do understand that since I have not had any reconstructive surgery, everything about the way my face looks has nothing to do with me and has everything to do with my parents hooking up some 32 years ago, right? So, why is beauty so important? Why do I treat people differently when they’re "drop dead gorgeous" or super skinny and have a svelt bod? Why can’t I take some time out of my day to get to know the person, the human, who for right now is walking around in that particular body that he didn’t choose, but must live in. That includes the “beautiful” and “thin” as well. Everyone. Why can’t we all start at the same place: Human.

This is the grace I am trying to give…to myself and to every person I see.