Fake It Until You Make It

In my weaker moments, I wonder, why did I need to mutilate my body? Why do I like to wear high heels and the feel of skirts playing against my legs? Have I become plastic? Have I become fake?

Maybe a little bit. Today, I wore fake hair to work. I wore it for two reasons: 1) in defense of some of the girls that I teach and who are constantly taunted by their male peers for wearing hair extensions and clip-ins, and 2) because I followed an impulse to pluck it up and put it on when I got to work. This is the same impulse that prompted me to buy the thing this summer whilst impulsively getting a second set of piercings in my ears (again...so re-piercing). I do that a lot.

Intently or intensely, I end up improv-ing most of my life. I spend most of my time vacilating between sticky notes with lists scrawled primly upon them and split second decisions to turn left or right or to buy a fake hair piece after surprise-violating my ears. All of these things are part of my ongoing and epic battle for control of my life and my body.

As my Dad says, "You might as well pee in the sea for all the difference it will make."

When I think about what it means to be "fake" I struggle with the idea of what it means to be "real." In my world, being "real" is a fake tv show on a fake music network. But beyond that, it's also a world filled with women who are told they are too fat, too thin, too curvy, too straight, too tall, too short, too smart, too dumb, too happy, too sad...too everything.

I'm not alone in my doubt of my body and my doubt of my choices. I'm not the only woman who has felt the need to "fix" everything. Is this wrong? I've come to decide that it's not. It's not wrong to want to feel comfortable in your body and it's even less wrong to want to feel comfortable in your mind. What is wrong is thinking these things so easily happen with anything you can do to "fix" yourself.

Today I wore fake hair to prove a point, but not just to my students. I wore it to prove something to myself. I enjoyed the fake hair. I enjoyed the different feeling and image of the fake hair. But it did feel like playing at wearing some sort of Halloween costume. One of my coworkers said, "You look like Aphrodite." I found this both flattering and embarassing. I felt like a caricature of an ideal. And that's what most people--not just women...men find themselves contained by all sorts of cultural assumptions, too--spend their lives trying to become. A image of something they think they are supposed to resemble.

Don't get me wrong; I think being compared to a legendarily beautiful woman is pretty sweet. But I think her job is pretty hard--always being perfect and expecting it from her followers. In my strongest moments, I imagine that I don't have control over anything. That my body is not my own and that written on me are the words and pictures of my culture, my fears, and my hopes. I wonder, have I become a real girl? Do my flaws show? Can I see my imperfections and find comfort in them?

So ladies (and gentlemen), raise your hair up if you're a little tarnished and flawed--maybe it's better to be Hephaestus.

Steady As She Goes

Every once in a while my body betrays me. I imagine that I am free from the cage that once held me. I imagine that there are no limits to hold me, contain me. I imagine, for a moment, that I have escaped Daedalus-like, the prison of physical self.

This is a mistake. In many ways it is a mistake.

To think of your body as your enemy and captor is wrong-minded. It should never be a contender for your sense of self--lap band or no. One of the many mistakes I have made in the last three years, well, the last 28 years is to think of my body and my lap band as something I must fight. I even went so far as to name my lap band "Freddy" after Freddy Krueger for the havoc and dream invading nightmare qualities I felt it created for me sometimes. But "Freddy" is really an alarm bell for me--one I didn't seem to have naturally (something else I blamed my body for).

But it's not just Freddy I think of as an enemy. For me, most recently, it's also a matter of my own jumble of weaknesses and physical dailies. This last spring I was finally given an opportunity to do something I had dreamed of doing, quietly dreamed of doing, for a long time. I ran a half-marathon. Let me repeat--I RAN a half-marathon. That's 13 miles in two hours, forty-seven minutes, and 30 seconds (give or take a few). For me, preparing for the half-marathon and running the half-marathon were a test of something much deeper than my legs, though they too felt the lesson. That much time alone with your own brain and a body you have never trusted works out a few things.

I cursed, I cried, I labored, and I lied: "Please God, let this be the end and I will never eat ice cream again."

But more important I began to remember, remembering rising like dough over the last few months, that my body should never be my enemy. The things my mind and my body are capable of together are amazing.

In the last few months, I've struggled with my own weaknesses again in different aspects of my health and body. It's infuriating to escape the chains a burdensome physical self only to discover you're tethered by some other means. I haven't been able to run in three months, almost to the day. It chafed and felt like some cruel joke. Beyond not being able to run, it meant my sense of control over my body was completely gone.

And isn't this the real problem? There are things in this world that we, that I, cannot control. There are things we shouldn't try to dominate. My mistake has been that I want to command my physical self and my world when I should be asking myself why my body is demanding so much from me of late.

If you fly too close to the sun, your wings melt. You fall into the ocean. If you fly to low, the waves catch you and you can't get high enough to escape them. When my body "fights" me, it is trying to tell me something. Heal. Think. Be mindful. Remember. My body hasn't betrayed me; my mind has betrayed my body.

In ran most of the half-marathon by myself, utterly alone, and without even a single other runner to pace me. Except, I didn't. For each second my mind fluttered closer to quitting and closer to pushing myself too hard, my skin and bones and muscle and nerves reminded me--steady as she goes.