Well, I took an incredibly long break from blogging over the winter due to several illnesses between Sept and March (thank you daycare germs) and a big move into our newly built home.
It isn’t only blogging I took a long break from, it’s people – friends and family. This wasn’t intentional by any stretch, unlike when I was pregnant and chose to keep away from people for their own benefit, it just happened.
Yup, I’ve been a shitty friend. People are getting annoyed with me and have stopped communicating with us. Clearly, they think I’ve distanced myself from them purposely. I can’t blame them at all but this is just not the case. However, as things calm down and we finally have the time to begin catching up with people, I’m beginning to wonder…. “Did I subconsciously INTEND to stay away from people?”, “Was I tired of them before fall began?”
I couldn’t put my finger on what was bothering me about my friends. I love them. I have often had a lot of fun with them. I care about their lives and what makes them happy, what they’re interested in. Then as I sat with one of my friends watching a slide show of pictures of the past few years, it hit me. It isn’t my friends, it’s their behavior. Most of the women I know can’t seem to keep from putting themselves down. They spend the majority of our time together talking about how they hate their hair, they hate their bodies, they hate their faces, they’re embarrassed or worried about what people think, etc.
Having lived through an eating disorder and going through grueling counseling to overcome it, I understand that this is BORING conversation. I finally understood why I had lost so many friends in the process. No one wanted to listen to my skinny size 4 ass talk endlessly about the fat flaps that hung over my bra in the back or the fact that I still couldn’t fit into my size 2 jeans from high school. Who cares? BORRRRRRRING! Never mind offensive to a friend who was sitting in size 10’s (A perfectly healthy size for many body types, by the way).
Yes, I have the skinny friend who does nothing but talk about how she lost “ALL THIS WEIGHT” (she was thin already) and how fat she was before (you know, when she was my size). I have the beautiful friends who sit and talk about how fat their asses are, the insecure friends who force me into a 30 minute IM discussion about whether the purse they want to buy is too loud for them and whether people will think it’s tacky, the ones who won’t sit in certain places when we go out to Happy Hour because they don’t want people to see them eating chicken wings and think they’re a pig and the ones who obsess about whether people will think they let their 4 year old daughter dress too trashy because she has a pink hair clip on in her hair and fake tattoos on her hands.
Don’t get me wrong, I have been guilty of many of these things in the past, but I have a daughter now. Suddenly, these behaviors make me sad and the sadness turns to anger and impatience. These are learned behaviors. My generation has somehow learned that it’s endearing to put ourselves down, that it’s a good way to initiate conversation, make others like us and not feel threatened by us. We learned that if we put ourselves down first, perhaps others wouldn’t be so quick to put us down. They wouldn’t make fun of us to our faces or talk about us behind our backs – the job was already done.
How did we learn this? Our mothers or mother figures did it. Our aunts, grandmothers, sisters, mothers’ friends all did it right in front of us. We learned that if we were too fat or our clothes or hair weren’t right, our adult role models who were putting themselves down would probably put us down too (if not to our faces, behind our backs or in their minds). Sure they never told us this, but the writing was on the wall. We’d watched them do it to themselves and to others and we followed suit without a hitch.
I’ve decided that I’m pissed and I’m not gonna take it anymore. I’ve started telling my friends – “I am not going to listen to you put yourself down anymore. I will not engage in this type of conversation”. When I compliment their hair and they start to say “Ugh I need to do something different with it I hate it”, I say “No – stop it right now, remember my rule. Tell me something you like about yourself today”. When someone compliments me, telling me I look thin, I fight that urge to say “UGH I hate how out of shape I am right now, I need to work out” and I say “Thank you. I appreciate the compliment”.
It’s hard work. It’s difficult after 36 years, to learn to accept compliments and not argue with people. My friends probably don’t like my “rules” about our conversations, but I can’t sit around and watch these amazing women constantly knock themselves any longer and I can’t have my daughter watch me engage in such discussions and think it’s ok to put herself down as well. They very thought of her feeling that she has to look upon herself in a negative light when it’s not necessary and potentially engage in harmful behaviors because of a negative self-image completely shatters my heart.
Why am I telling you this? I’ll tell you. Most likely, you agree with me. You don’t want to watch your children destroy themselves because of a negative self-image either. If you don’t have children, you don’t want the women in your life to do it and IF you do it, it needs to stop. People don’t want to hear it. If they do want to hear it, they are not your friends. People who love you don’t want to hear you put yourself down.
So say something positive about yourself today. Think something positive about yourself. Let’s do something about this vicious cycle. Is that cliché’? Awwww CRAP – I just did it, didn’t I? Well, one day at a time.
