Beauty Is...

 "She rolls out of bed 

he covers his eyes

it's a mad dash to the bathroom 

to throw on her disguise

she thinks he finds that beautiful..."

--Dan Tangelson, "Factory" lyrics

Lately I have been pretty disturbed by the concept of "beauty" as it is portrayed in the public eye.

I begin with a quiz for you:

 See these girls? These five busted a move to Beyonce's "Single Ladies" during a World of Dance performance two years ago wearing outfits akin to what you'd find in the musical Chicago during the "Cell Block Tango" scene, complete with fishnets, lingerie-style tops and plenty of grinding. Can you guess how old they are? Hold on to that number--I'll come back to this.

Britain's over-night celebrity Samantha Brick recently shook the internet with a piece she wrote about the woes of being "too beautiful." Brick described the legions of men willing to do her favors, the scores of jealous women she encountered, and the general changes in attitude towards her once she grew out of her awkward youth and blossomed into adulthood. While her message was pretty sincere and meant as a critique on society's tendency to order one another in a hierarchy of beauty, she was immediately and fiercely attacked for what she wrote.

"She's not even that beautiful!" scornful viewers ranted after seeing Brick appear on a morning news show a month ago. Within weeks the feedback exploded--the interview even had to be taken off of several internet video sites, overloaded with negative comments from women who felt Brick was simply a narcissistic attention-grabber. In all of the chaos everyone forgot the essence of Brick's argument, emulating exactly the kind of behavior she pointed out was so shallow--obsession of outer beauty.

Blogger Jenny McCartney sympathized with Brick's plight and noted society's obsession with beauty in the following statement:

The human race has always been obsessed by physical beauty, but never as relentlessly as in this age, in which we are constantly bombarded with fresh images of physical perfection. These are often of models, who are not only extraordinarily pretty but also extremely young, who have been elaborately coiffed and made up by experts, shot in the most flattering poses and light, and then had their images digitally retouched to erase any lingering imperfections. The prevalence of such pictures – in magazines, on the internet, on billboards, television and public transport – ensures that artful images of the tiny minority who have won the genetic lottery are almost as frequently before our eyes as the faces of family or colleagues. 

So what IS beauty? If you watch Toddlers and Tiaras, the hit-series that has generated enormous controversy in recent years with its focus on mature themes for children, then beauty is found at the other end of photo-shop, caked-on make-up, spray tans and adult clothing. This sub-culture of beauty pageants that star girls as young as three or four is an industry that has been growing since the 60's, and is only gaining momentum.

One hundred years ago it would have been absurd--obscene, even--to ask a child to expose her body to a panel of judges in front of the world and be rated things like "Overall Most Beautiful." (Really, how would a toddler deal with the news that they are not the most beautiful? How do you tell your child "I'm sorry sweetie, you just aren't pretty enough"?) Aside from the therapy that I'm sure these girls will undergo in adulthood, the negative impact from shows like this has become increasingly obvious. Young women, now more than ever in history, are being told that their bodies are what will make them or break them in society. And if you can't emulate the sex symbols, models, beauty pageant winners of today, well then,  you just aren't pretty enough.

On a personal level, it pains me to see this kind of mind-screwing. I was blessed to have parents and friends who never made me feel smaller because of my body, and I think that this upbringing helped me feel more confident to pursue the things I wanted: participating in ballet for ten years, never feeling embarrassed in a swimsuit, even trying salsa dancing for the first time this year.

But I am not unaffected by the world's distorted view of beauty. Earlier this week I stepped on my house-mate's bathroom scale and was deflated to see I'd gained six pounds. Outwardly, my appearance has not changed much, but on the inside my insecurities can be dominating. When I walked into a recent interview I unconsciously sucked my tummy in the whole time, trying to be smaller.

When I went to formal dances in high school I was incredibly aware of how my plain black dress looked next to the elaborate gowns of other girls, how amateur my attempts at make-up and hair styling were, and how awkward of a dancer I really was. The first guy to ever call me beautiful nearly knocked me to the floor. Me? Beautiful?

There are only two times in my life that I've felt truly beautiful:
--when I was eight and my mom gave me a new velvet dress for my baptism, and
--at my wedding.
The rest of the time I have to catch myself mid-comparison to someone and else and say NO--you are fine the way you are!

Remember the picture from earlier? The five girls who starred in "Single Ladies," amassing over 5 million views on Youtube, were SEVEN YEARS OLD. You might think there is something fundamentally wrong with exposing kids that young to a sex-status this mature, but by entertainment standards, you'd be in the minority.

 I think Dan Tangelson said it best with his song, (aptly titled) "Beauty Is":

"Beauty is a ten-story building,

beauty is a parking garage, 

beauty is a desert oasis

if it's not some thirsty man's mirage.

...

Beauty is the voice of my father,

beauty is the life of my son,

beauty is the plea of a sinner

when he says: "all my wicked days are done."

It's in your mind, (it's in your mind)

beauty's in your mind."

Beauty is "to each his own." Beauty, ladies, is in all of you. Stand tall and be proud of what's in you!


*Images from Google*
Link to 7-year old "Single Ladies": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir8BO4-7DkM
Link to Jenny McCartney's blog on Samantha Brick: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9191482/The-moral-of-the-Samantha-Brick-brouhaha-is-that-self-dislike-is-the-new-vanity.html

God Is A Troll--Or A Crisis of Faith

Context: This post is not about me becoming an atheist, or hating on any religion, or stirring anybody's pot. It is simply an honest admission of confusion from a girl stuck in the unlabelled grey...

When people asked me the question "are you a Mormon?" in high school I always responded with a solid "yes I am, would you like to know more about it?" Years of seminary and Sunday school had prepped me to respond to various questions about the church and our beliefs, and I was blessed to grow up in a place where these things were discussed with open minds and honest curiosity most of the time. My closest circle of friends were not Mormons but a variety of faiths--Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Ba'hai, Buddhist, agnostic and atheist alike. This made my early years of religious experience pretty atypical compared to most LDS youth, who have never attended Mass, or a Buddhist temple service, or swayed in the congregation while a live band played the hymns at Harvest Church. I was blessed to never develop prejudice to any denomination, a blessing I am discovering is pretty rare.

At college, it is a very different story. The LDS church is often the butt of every joke in Caldwell and is usually discussed with open hostility, if it is discussed at all. There has only been one time in my three years here that "Mormons" was not synonymous with "gay-rights haters," "elitists," or simply "LAME" in a class discussion. Nobody wants to know more about Mormons here--and it's not just the students. Professors, faculty, members of the community...the feeling is mutual across the board.

At first, this was very difficult for me. The impulse to defend my faith and my church was strong and I often tried to have open religious discussions like the ones I'd been able to have all my life with my friends. But increasingly these attempts were met with indifference or anger and I backed off, surprised at how quickly hot emotions rose to the surface at the mention of "Mormon." Over time I started to learn what I had somehow avoided in my youth: the gospel may be good, but people are flawed. When I started to ask why people didn't want to talk about the church, an ugly story unfolded. Members here had often offended or unwittingly degraded non-members with their words or actions. Many of the students told me that growing up, the Mormon kids at high school were the popular mean crowd who made it a point to exclude anyone who didn't have the same standards. Feelings were hurt. Thoughtlessness prevailed. Resentment was born.

When I came to the College of Idaho, I had made the conscious choice NOT to attend BYU or BYU-I because I was confident that my faith was strong enough to persevere no matter where I went to school. I was wrong. Within an embarrassingly short amount of time I stopped attending church completely. At first I felt justified--I have too much homework right now. I just need to settle in to college life. I'm too tired. It's just one Sunday. But one Sunday turned into dozens and before I knew it, I'd gone nearly a year without a single attendance. As every college Freshmen does, I recognized that I was as close to independent as I'd ever been, and I might as well break a few rules and experiment while I had the chance. It started with a cup of coffee. And then several R-rated movies. Before long my vocabulary had picked up a few choice words I'd never use in front of my family, I no longer felt guilty about wearing clothes that were too short, and for the first time in my life, I met a guy who thought I was desirable in ways I'd never been desired before.

Three years later, I'm still sketchy on my attendance at church. The members of my ward barely know who I am and have stopped calling to check in on me when I go missing. I've never been visited by Home Teachers and despite several months of meeting with the Bishop, confessing my sins, and working through the repentance process I am still at square one. I cannot take the sacrament, go to the temple, or participate in a number of things that I used to take for granted in my eighteen years as a member. I now find myself an Outsider. One of the lost sheep that members whisper about but don't know what to do with. I have been branded: "Inactive."

Recently my aunt and cousins invited me to celebrate Easter with them by attending a church play in Meridian about Christ's life and resurrection. It felt strange to put on a skirt again and even stranger to sit in an audience of people who were so clearly touched by what they were watching--while my eyes were dry. I was surprised at how cynical I'd become. Didn't this day used to mean something to me? Didn't I believe what I was watching?

Well, did I?

In the days since then I have pondered this and tried to figure out where my heart is at. There is a popular set of jokes on the Internet that refers to God as a "troll." In Internet-speak, this is an individual who seeks to provoke others, to cause irritation or bad situations just to watch the chaos ensue. I stumbled across a bunch of pictures like this during a late night of studying. This one struck me particularly hard:

Beyond the intent of these jokes, which is most likely to spark some trolling in themselves, I found that I connected with the deeper paradox within them. If God was supposed to love me unconditionally, then why had so many things gone wrong? As human beings we are presented with an enormous spectrum of answers to the question who is God? Sometimes He is kind, forgiving, and fair. Sometimes He is jealous, angry and wrathful. During times of trial and tragedy we tend to blame God for our troubles. To say He abandoned us. I realized while reading through these jokes that I had taken on the latter of these opinions.

For over three years I've struggled with depression, suffered pain I'd never suffered before, and lost a sense of who I was. I've watched family and friends undergo horrible trials and get hit with wave after wave of adversity, seemingly never able to get back on their feet. All this suffering makes me furious and helpless and in that helplessness I started to shake my fist at God. Started to join in with the cynical cracks at religion and the church. In short, I believe I lost my faith. I never once paused to consider that all my troubles began when I stopped being active and stopped trying to live up to my standards. I never took responsibility.

Ok, so God isn't a troll. But then who is He? What does He want from me? A great many of my concerned family and friends have given me advice on the subject and encouraged me to "do what I know is right." Only the thing is, I'm not so sure I do know what's right. My lifestyle has changed and for the most part, I am happy with it. But then I do something like attend an Easter play and I feel the hole where part of me is missing

... and I don't know how to fill it.

Weeds

"Everything the light touches...[is yours]" Mufasa famously said to his son Simba in Lion King. Every time I open my front door and look out across the expanse of our lawn/rock garden I picture this scene in my mind, puff out my lungs a little with pride, and think I am the mighty keeper of these grounds.

Ok, so the lawn is more like a forrest--it grows at a freakish rate and quickly gets overrun with all manner of creepers and crawlies. And the rock garden is more like two random clumps of loose gravel that somehow manage to produce more weeds than anywhere else in the yard...but still it is something of an achievement to live in your first house and have your own grass to cut and flowers to pick.

Growing up I never much cared for yard work. I was the first to disappear when it was time to pack paper bags full of fallen pine cones so my father could mow the lawn. And if anyone even mentioned mushy apple duty (picking up fallen, rotting apples from underneath our three fruit trees) I conveniently made other commitments fast. But the older I get the more I'm finding that the chores I considered "adult stuff" are not so bad. Some of it is actually pretty fun! Cooking my own meals, scrubbing my own floors, even doing my own laundry has all become something of a rite of passage for me. Something to reap the benefits from. Something to be proud of, even.

Mowing the lawn and pulling up weeds are acts of catharsis. Therapeutic. A time to sweat about something other than schoolwork and focus energy on a chore that doesn't require much thought or anxiety. In a Buddhist kind of way I find more peace with my environment when I'm doing yard-work. Small garden spiders and ear-wigs scatter around me and for once I don't scream, don't stomp furiously at the ground trying to snuff the life out of them. They don't bother me and I don't bother them.

The last couple of weeks have seen a lot of rain and a lot of sunshine, meaning the growing things in the yard are primed for explosion onto the surface. With each passing day my housemates and I found more clumps of weeds spreading like smallpox across the shallow gravel, threatening to choke out what sections of the flower bed survived the mild winter. Dandelions, purslane, ground ivy, chickweeds, bull thistle, Russian thistle, and wild onions all shoulder one another, trying to gain some elbow room as they inch closer and closer to the tulips, the daffodils, the rose bush blushing in the corner and the brave soldier line of hyacinths toeing the sidewalk.

Arming myself with gloves and a garbage bag I set out for battle and find joy in the challenge of loosening the invaders from their posts. Each weed requires a different approach: the purslane and wild onion are simplest, as they are the most shallow and pull away easily. The thistles and dandelions have to have their leaves bunched around them and twisted like a lightbulb, using equal leverage on each side to wrestle it from the earth. The others vary in how easy they are to get out, but all of them share the same reward. The satisfaction inherent to hearing the *pop* of roots separating from the rest of the soil and meeting the air, seeing the whole plant swinging there in your hand. It's a primal kind of happiness, like I imagine our ancestors had when they bonked squirrels on the heads with their clubs or pulled up their first harvest (or whatever they did).

At the end of the day I pick a few of the flowers and stick them in a vase on our table, looking once more across the lawn before closing the door. I am the mighty keeper of these grounds...

Peter Pan Syndrome--AKA How To Smile More =)

This morning, 9:00 AM: Knock knock knock

I roll over, go back to sleep.

9:25 AM: KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

I growl, pull my pillow over my head, and go back to sleep.

9:35 AM: BAM! BAM! BAM!

"WHAT??" I yell.

"It's time to get uuuuup and go on our Easter egg huuuunt!!" my housemate sings through the door. Seriously?? I look at the clock again. I'd forgotten all about the little plastic Easter eggs my housemates had bought last night and convinced me to help hide all over the house--a couple of eggs for each of us with surprises inside. I put my face in my hands. A few hours of sleep was just not enough for these shananagins.

I rip my door open and storm to the bathroom, stomping and fuming and completely living up to the nickname "Dragon Lady" that has been given to me on similar mornings. I haven't done an Easter egg hunt since I was very little, before all of us kids were old enough to understand that the day was bigger than candy, bigger than colored boiled eggs. Over time the holiday became something sacred and our parents celebrated with a dinner akin to Passover--a meal they might have had in Biblical times with unleavened bread, fish, and grape juice (in lieu of wine) and a devotional about the life and re-birth of Christ.

So now, over a decade later, it seems silly to be hunting the flourescent treasures again. But my housemates are over-joyed and soon their laughter and excitement for the game is contagious.

10:30 AM: After all the eggs have been found we sit around the table and feast on the candy, sharing the small slips of paper tucked in each egg with a happy message on it and reminiscing on childhood egg hunts. One of my housemates says with a grin: "I don't ever want to grow up!" Surprisingly, I grin back and agree.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lately I have been reading a lot of Peter Pan stories. My other housemates, the ones who live in the apartment back home, lent me a couple of good ones that have completely transformed my perception of the boy blessed (cursed?) with eternal youth. The Child Thief by Brom offers a darker take, where very grown-up and very ugly situations (drugs, crime, domestic abuse) confront Peter's gang of "Devils," young teens he kidnaps from the human world to fight for him in the magic one. It becomes blatantly obvious throughout the book that being a child forever is not as romantic a notion as it seems, as Peter is both unable to grasp the seriousness of the issues around him and incapable of keeping his attention locked on anything once it becomes too boring. He is a character who lives entirely in the moment, incapable of empathy and, in many cases, good judgment. He is ruthless, tricky, and seductive to be around.

Peter Pan in Scarlet (by Geraldine McCaughrean) is a lighter version with the same moral. A sequel to the original Peter and Wendy, the novel deals with Neverland twenty years or so later. The message is clear--adults will long to return to childhood, return to the addictive and spontaneous land Peter offers, but in the end they must learn to move forward. To accept maturity and their roles in adult lives with adult problems.

I think what I love the most about these stories is that they resonate with me on a deeper level. At college, students are not so far away from childhood that they can't appreciate spending a day on a playground or trading references to old Saturday morning cartoons. We try to recreate our childhood traditions on our own with improvised egg hunts, paper snowflakes, and video game nights. It's no surprise that the most popular event on campus is human vs. zombies, where we hunt one another with nerf guns and rolled up socks. We dance around bonfires and hold Mario Kart contests, we talk of Harry Potter and Disney like old friends. I strongly suspect many of us still believe in magic.

Yet students are not so far from adulthood that they can't feel a shiver of fear at the word taxes. We know that soon enough our lives will be dominated by concerns of money, careers, families, and children of our own. But it all seems so strange, so foreign and far away, that we put it off as much as possible.

I think we are the Peter Pan conundrum, and at least for these few years we will happily remain here on the gray line, Lost, refusing to define ourselves in terms of the other, the grown-up, the Found.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The truth is, I am grateful to my housemates for waking me and giving me a dose of Peter Pan syndrome. I spend so much time thinking about the serious, the tragic, the difficult and the sad, that I don't allow myself to be silly. I can't count how many times this past year someone has told me to chill out, to have fun, to "smile moar!", as an old friend told me recently (misspelling intended).

(<--Me)

I don't want to be a child forever, but maybe that's not what the spirit of Peter Pan is all about. Maybe it's just about allowing yourself to still let go sometimes, to see things from younger eyes and be a little Lost. I think this is why we have children in the first place, to keep us from getting hard.

Today, I am a child again =)

*Pictures by Google and myself*

Why I'm Starting To Loathe World of Warcraft

Picture this:

You wake up at noon with a headache to the sounds of your three housemates cussing loudly in the living room, the volume on their laptops cranked so high the walls shake with the sounds of swords hitting their marks, spells being cast and a deep voice taunting, "YOUR FATE IS SEALED!" You glance at the clock and remember being awake only six hours before to the same sounds, your dreams punctuated by combat scenarios and the patter of hands rapidly moving across keyboards. Secretly you cheer on the figure belonging to the deep voice, wishing he really could seal some fates so you could sleep already.

After lunch you try to get some work done, but part of you gravitates towards the couch in front of the three glowing screens. What is it about this game that is so fascinating? Admittedly, the characters are pretty cool. And ok, the scenery and the graphics can be so beautiful at times that you find yourself staring at it and wishing it were real. And it is pretty exciting to do a quest with a gaggle of strangers, united together across the internet for a common goal, no matter how absolutely nerdy that goal is.

But spending hours? Weeks? Years in front of the computer doing endless mindless strategizing? That doesn't make sense. And should I be offended that my husband spends more hours a day looking at a blue elf-girl's ridiculous figure than he ever does mine?

It makes even less sense when your significant other comes home after a long day of work and after dinner, no matter how exhausted he or she seems, logs in until the early rays of light break through the curtains. On the weekend you try to escape this gamer's madness and go with your significant other to a mutual friend's house. Finally, a chance to get out of the house! To sit with real people and have some real conversation!...but it is not so simple to escape from an escapist masterpiece. Minutes after you open the door the computers are booted up and to your horror the game has started again, with both of your friends joining in.

Facepalm.

I have tried to be patient. I have even tried showing interest in the game, creating a character, trying a fun plants vs. zombies style quest and winning my significant other a sunflower companion. And ok, the sunflower was pretty cute.

 But seriously? Hours a day? Sacrificing health just to earn more imaginary gold to purchase imaginary items and boost the image of an imagined, personalized "me"?

With an entire world out there ten times as beautiful and horrific as any graphics can display, full of real-life quests and real-life characters that can actually be touched...I stay away from games like World of Warcraft. Maybe the life of a college student is not as glamorous, and I don't get to wear sexy armor and weild mighty swords as I face my midterms and evil professors, but damnit--I'd rather take a crack at reality before I waste any time on fantasy.

So. Irritated.