Respect Yourself

Respect Yourself

   Some of my friends ask me why I subscribe to Ellle, a popular woman's fashion magazine.  But I subscribe to a variety of magazines, over two dozen, maybe more.  And no, I'm not into fashion, or the countless thin models that look as if they could use a good meal, or the endless pieces on cosmetics or the latest goings-on of the fifth cousin of a fashion icon from ancient Romania.  But I am interested in hearing what the other side (so to speak) has to say, and some of what I hear is really just plain fun.  So from the recent 30th anniversary issue of Elle, who would think said this, when interviewed:  Even as an adolescent I had trouble with the way I look.  I always saw myself as "brown haired" because of the myth that surrounds blonds--that they're privileged somehow...My father was a milkman; I quit school very early on--I don't really have a formal education.  What I am has nothing to do with the way I look.*

   One of the most watched talks on TED (20 million views) was by Brene Brown on The Power of Vulnerability.  As a recent feature in The Costco Connection quoted her, "Let go of who you think you're supposed to be; embrace who you are."  During one of her TED Talks, and after nearly ten years of social research, here's a small part of what she had to say: So this is what I learned...We live in a vulnerable world.  And one of the ways we deal with it is we numb vulnerability...We are the most in-debt, obese. addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history.  The problem is --and I learned this from the research-- that you cannot selectively numb emotion.  You can't say, here's the bad stuff.  Here's vulnerability, here's grief, here's shame, here's fear, here's disappointment.  I don't want to feel these.  I'm going to have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin... You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions.  You cannot selectively numb.  So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness.  And then, we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin.  And it becomes this dangerous cycle.

    The always vocal and humorous writer, Sandra Tsing Loh, wrote an excerpt from her book in The Atlantic about menopause: During menopause, a woman can feel like the only way she can continue to exist for 10 more seconds inside her crawling, burning skin is to walk screaming into the sea—grandly, epically, and terrifyingly, like a 15-foot-tall Greek tragic figure wearing a giant, pop-eyed wooden mask.  Or she may remain in the kitchen and begin hurling objects at her family: telephones, coffee cups, plates.  Or, as my mother did in the 1970s, she may just eerily disappear into her bedroom, like a tide washing out—curtains drawn, door locked, dead to the world, for days, weeks, months (some moms went silent for years).  Oh, for a tribal cauldron to dive into, a harvest moon to howl at, or even an online service that provides—here’s an idea!—demon gypsy lovers...But no, this is 21st-century America, so there is no ancient woman’s magic for us but rather, as usual for female passages, a stack of medically themed self-help books. (I ask you: Where are the vampire novels for perimenopausal women? Werewolf tales? Pirate movies?)  That’s right—to fully get our crone on, we’re supposed to read, even though it may feel, what with the giant Greek chthonic headpiece, that one can barely see out the eyeholes. (Who can focus on words on a page? Who can even remember where she left her giant octagonal Medea-size reading glasses?)  Rest assured, though: I’m here to help.  Gentle reader, if you are a female of transitional age, which can apparently be anywhere from 35 to 65 these days, let me be your Virgil to the literature of menopause.  Long have I wandered through the dry riverbeds, long have I suffered; now I’ve come back to share my wisdom.

   Now, several years later, Elle had her reflect even further back to her thirties: I remember my thirtieth birthday well.  It was to be a fresh start.  My twenties were over, and good riddance...The shanky dorm parties, Bartles & Jaymes grape wine coolers, futons reeking of cat pee, books on cinder blocks, bad boyfriends who were broke, my hair!  It was a bad perm, growing out really weirdly.  I'd asked for loose Renaissance Faire ringlets like Jane Seymour's, but --being half Asian-- I ended up looking like a forgotten Taiwanese member of the Jackson 5...So, in the end, my thirties would be a journey of trying to become a grown-up, but to do that cast as myself...My wedding at 34 featured not only a really disastrous hair pile I was talked into but also fabulous drunken interpretive dancing to Mozart and Miles Davis.  I never tried any more celebrity haircuts, but at 36, I got my eyes lased.  Best decision ever.  Grape wine coolers, though?  Still never a good idea.

   There was also the regular column by the motherly, maybe grandmotherly, vixen, E. Jean Carroll:  I'd planned to boom through a couple of decades of Ask Eeee (her column) letters, tabulate the "30 grandest things" women most often mention they wished they could do, and --voila-- edify the planet.  Bah!  It turns out that I and 60,000 Ask Eeee correspondents all either wish for the same things --to be happy, to fall in love, to use our talents to lessen the suffering in the world, to see our children thrive, to be better than we used to be, and to wear a size 6 (2, 14, 22,8)-- or we want something so impossibly idiosyncratic...that I put aside the letters, kept the idea, and...lashed together the Dangerous List.  # 2 on E. Jean's list?  Spend a week in the wild--alone.  Yes, the "outdoors"...deep, deep into the outdoors --where the trees are celebrities and the birds run the Twitter accounts-- it becomes the place where you strip away branding and status, where looks and money mean nothing.  Go!  Strap on  the boots!  Forty-nine bucks for a night for a cabin on Airbnb!  Anyway, when was the last time you were alone--without a smiler, liar, flatterer, chatterer, schemer, or texter within miles?  Go to the woods!  You'll live an adventure tale so gripping that you may discover where you really live, and what you live for.  And #29?  Keep a wabi-sabi state of mind...once you're steeped up to the eyelids in wabi-sabi--the philosophy that celebrates beauty in things imperfect and impermanent-- you will find an old woman more beautiful than a young one, and an unconventional woman most interesting of all.

   Also highlighted was Elizabeth Holmes, Stanford grad, creator of an inexpensive blood test used worldwide, and youngest female billionaire:  I've always been interested in technology.  When I was very young, I would come up with designs for things like time machines, and my parents would very seriously engage with me in conversation about the development schedule and when it was going to go live, which I think was so important because it ingrains in you a belief that you can do whatever you set your mind to.  I started my first company when I was in high school.  I was already interested in building a company because I saw it as a vehicle for making a difference in the world.  Eveer since then, it's been about figuring out how to realize that dream and working really, really hard.

   So, the point of all this is not to push you to subscribe to this magazine or that magazine, but rather to stay open to what may be hiding in places you normally wouldn't look.  All magazines can be hit and miss, some issues featuring terrific writing one month and then headed for the recycling bin after a quick skim come the next.  To date, I've found this with all the magazines I subscribe to, from business and science ones, to men's and women's periodicals.  It happens, and certainly what appeals to me might not appeal to some other reader, the editor has to decide (and obviously did, feeling that what was in that particular issue was quite appealing and worth printing).  So maybe glance beyond magazines and take in shows you wouldn't normally consider, sit with people you wouldn't likely agree with, go to a sporting event whose rules you know nothing about.  Walk the Camino de Satiago and explore both views, one beautiful pro-walk award-winning documentary and one somewhat-critical don't walk authorship by hiker Francis Tapon.

   In the end, just a change of views might prove refreshing and perhaps open a new world, one you previously had no idea about...and you might discover that hey, you're you, and guess what world, there's nothing wrong with that. So head out to the woods, or to your porch, or anywhere, and yell it to the world.  You can see, and look, and go elsewhere, and it's okay because you know who you are.  It was author George Bernard Shaw who so rightly observed, "Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything."


*The quote comes from a young Robert Redford, interviewed in 1988.