Imperfectly, wonderfully visible

This post should dovetail fairly nicely with my last post in which I talk about the fact that we need to quit using the word fat as an insult. Today, I am posting pictures. I am not posting just any pictures. These are pictures of my abs. In some they are covered, and in others they aren’t. They were all taken today, and will be posted for comparison purposes. I have not edited any of them. You’ll even get to see a doorknob because I am such a rocking photographer.

Why am I posting pictures of my midsection? Well, it is far from perfect by current standards. As a matter of fact, I could model for before pictures in a Photoshop class or in a plastic surgeon’s notebook. I am going to lay bare a few facts and feelings before I get to the pictures. I am at a healthy weight and body fat percentage. I workout very regularly, and before anyone thinks they have any useful tips, I don’t need them. I lift and I do cardio. I enjoy both. I have had three children who were all born via c-section. I did not put on more weight than my OB recommended during my pregnancies, but because I am short, the babies had nowhere to go but out while I was growing them, and because of genetics, amongst other things, my skin chose not to bounce back once it was stretched to capacity three times in the space of four-and-a-half years. After the birth of my first child, the weight peeled off and I looked pretty good. I was the poster girl for breastfeeding for weight loss. After number two, most, but not all, of it came off, and after number three, I had the dickens of a time getting the last ten off, plus the five to ten I hadn’t dropped between numbers two and three. I sat there on the high side of a healthy weight, nudging over into overweight, unhappy with myself for about a year-and-a-half. Then, my youngest weaned, and my body was truly my own for the first time in nearly seven years! Between pregnancy and breastfeeding, someone else had always needed something from my body. I could really take it back, so I set to work.

Now, I would love to say that my motivation was purely my health. Heart disease runs rampant in my family, and it likes to take us young. I have Lupus, which, while it is in remission, is going to prefer a healthier, fitter body to stay that way, and I have three young children for whom I am responsible, but I really did it at least as much for the fact that I wasn’t going to buy the next size up in pants, and I wanted all the baby weight gone by my 35^th birthday, which was in November of 2012. I wanted to not feel invisible, so I set about doing something for myself so that I would want to be visible. I joined My Fitness Pal, set up a good routine for myself at the Y, and then I stuck to it. I am now within a few pounds of what I weighed in high school, and I met my original goal before my birthday. I am currently working on maintaining.

All that said, what I have discovered along the way is that I was constantly finding new things about myself to dislike. I would have surges of confidence, and then I would back off of them. My current bugaboo has been my abs. I would look at myself critically, and think, “Gross!” I would joke about them with others, but I really, really hated them. My doctor had already told me that I don’t really have anything left to lose. It’s loose skin from the way my body reacted to pregnancy, and can only be repaired via surgery. I hate being cut open, so I likely won’t get plastic surgery, thus I will always have wrinkled, scarred, puckered abs. Then, just yesterday after reading (and pinning) this quotation, “I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her own skin,” I realized that I was never, ever going to be comfortable with myself if I felt my own body was gross. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I have survived an illness that nearly killed me. I have borne three children. I have chosen to be healthy by building muscle and losing fat, and even when I least liked it, my body was NEVER gross. It has done everything I needed it to do, albeit with an occasional assist from the medical community. I want everyone to hear that, go look in the mirror, and understand the same is true for you. You are NOT gross, awful, horrible, or anything else you can think to say about yourself. Your body is wonderful. It isn’t perfect. No one’s body is perfect, and the “perfection” that is currently sold to us via photoshopped spreads of celebrities in magazines and models in ads, is a particular vision of beauty that no one can attain. For goodness’ sake, they even photoshop out the natural wrinkles and puckers that occur when you bend. They remove muscle definition from women with muscular arms, and they remove visible ribs from very thin models. I will one day do a whole blog about PS, and how some of the “little” stuff is the most insidious. Standards of beauty change, but the beauty that is you with whatever you hone in on when you are being critical of yourself, is amazing, and we need to see more real beauty. I want to be very clear that I am not body shaming those we hold up as beautiful or saying that they aren’t lovely to behold. They are. We just need more than that paradigm. We need to see that there is more than just different versions of flawless to be had. There is the deeply, gorgeously flawed. We are all imperfect, inside and out. If you look at yourself, and think “Gross!” as I have been, you are rejecting part of what is wonderfully human about yourself. Embrace the imperfect. It is that which ultimately makes you unique, interesting, and fully human. With all that in mind, here are photos of some of my imperfections. It's real. It's me, and I'm not ashamed of it anymore.    

Here you can see all the wrinkles and my c-section flap

This one gives a better view of the stretch marks and what I refer to as my second bellybutton  on top of the original

Front view in a flattering dress

Side view in the same dress

Bare side view- you can see a mosquito bite and  a kidney biopsy scar

On Mothering, Really

On Mothering Parenting Mothering, Really

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I do plan on keeping to my goal of at least one to two posts a week, now that I’m back. With Mother’s Day fast approaching, the next couple will be about parenting, and then I plan to move on to other topics because I like to talk about many different things.

Time magazine has fired yet another salvo in the “mommy wars” (a term I have grown to detest, by the way) just in time for Mother’s Day. If you haven’t seen it, the cover depicts a young mother nursing her three-year-old child, who is standing on a chair and latched on as the mother stands staring at the camera, next to the tagline “Are you mom enough?” I will state right here and now that I haven’t read the article because you have to be a subscriber to read it online and I won’t buy the magazine.  I wonder if for Father’s Day, we will see a photo of a young father wearing a pre-schooler next to the tagline, “Are you dad enough?” Somehow, I doubt it. It irks me to no end that nearly every parenting debate is a mothering debate, and nearly every mothering debate is more about pitting women against each other and playing on our worst fears, that we are somehow damaging our children and not doing something right, and it will be our fault if something happens to our children, than it is about a truthful, open discourse where we can learn from each other. After all, Norman Bates didn’t have daddy issues, did he?

Since I have not read it, I won’t address the article. I will simply talk about the picture and the backlash. People on all sides are offended by it. I don’t find it particularly offensive. I am annoyed, but not offended, that they obviously did it to be titillating, rather than spark an honest discussion about attachment parenting and extended breast-feeding. Those are both interesting and intertwined topics. I am also annoyed that people took the bait. It isn’t titillating. It looks a little uncomfortable, but not indecent. I would certainly rather sit and have my child snuggle into me while I nurse, but if the chair thing works for you, have at it. I would rather see a picture of what most women who engage in extended breast-feeding look like when they nurse because it is a more honest place from which to begin a dialogue. I promise that it would still have enraged those who were going to be put-out by it, but it wouldn’t have made people feel like they have to defend a picture that doesn’t necessarily depict what they do. People would be defending something real, not something designed to be as inflammatory as possible. I am so sad that women who make a choice that is already looked on with suspicion have been put in the position of either defending this photograph or saying “I don’t do it like that!” Both things are ridiculous, and neither will mollify those who are offended by the act in the picture.

Speaking of the people who are offended by it, I am even more annoyed with them. This picture is not the end of the world. It isn’t child abuse, and it isn’t indecent. It is just a mother doing what she thinks is best for her child. Where were your voices when the hundreds of other truly exploitive and degrading magazine covers and ads that are published every month were released? Pictures where you see airbrushed breasts that are being used for no other purpose than to be ogled? Pictures where women are nothing but objects of unattainable beauty and sexuality put there to satisfy the male gaze(even the models in the pictures don’t actually look like that, in real life)? Pictures of women who are barely old enough to vote climbing all over each other in various states of undress? Pictures of women climbing all over ridiculously oiled and hairless men? Pictures of women bending to the will of others and of objects? We see those images every month, every week, every day, but this picture is what has you foaming at the mouth? Priorities, people.  

I have absolutely no desire to nurse my pre-schooler, but I don’t care if another woman does. By American standards, I nurse for a long time. My oldest was just a week or so shy of two when he weaned, my middle child was 22 months, and my youngest could wean any day now, and I would be thrilled, but she will be weaned by her second birthday. That is my comfort level. It conforms with the WHO guidelines, and it works for my family. I see it as my duty to support any mother who feeds her child in any way that is healthy and keeps everyone happy. Do you need breastfeeding support? I’m your woman. Do you need someone to let you know that your child won’t die and is not being denied a future Pulitzer Prize if you formula feed? I’m there for you. Do you need someone to not look askance when you nurse in public regardless of whether your child is three weeks or three years? I’ve got your back. Are you somewhere in the middle? That’s cool, yo.

Here’s the thing. We should all support each other. What good does all of this endless debate and fighting about the “right” way to do something that there is actually no one correct way to do, do for anyone? If I make a different choice for my family than you did for yours, that is not a reflection on my opinion of you or your parenting. It is a reflection of what seems instinctual and best for me and my family, and vice versa. What works for one child in the same family might not work for another. With that being the case, why on earth would we think that what works for one family will necessarily work for another? If I offer advice, it’s because I think it will help, not because I will be offended to the core if you don’t take it. If I don’t take your advice, it isn’t because I don’t like and respect you, it’s because it didn’t feel right for my situation. We need to let go of our own fear of being judged, and respect each other. This need for understanding goes for pretty much every non-abusive parenting decision people make. I used to be much more defensive about a lot of my parenting choices because it’s hard to feel completely secure when you’re responsible for someone else’s life. I am much more secure in my choices now than when I began my parenting journey. I may never be mother-of-the-year, but my kids love me and they are good kids who know they are loved. At the end of the day, what more do we want?