A starving daughter lies at the center of each perfect girl. The face we show to the world is one of beauty, maturity, determination, strength, willpower, and ultimately, accomplishment. But beneath the facade is a daughter--starving for attention and recognition, starving to justify her own existence.
The starving daughter within annoys us, slows us down, embarrasses us. She is the one who doubts our ability to handle a full-time job and full-time school. She gets scared, lonely, homesick. She drinks too much, cries too loud, is nostalgic and sappy. When neglected, she seeks comfort in cookies, coffee ice cream, warm bread--transgressions that make the perfect girl in us angry.
The starving daughter emerges in midnight confessions, a best friend's sudden tears, a suitemate buried in mountains of covers, shades drawn, eating ice cream in the middle of the day, and watching Buffy reruns in the dark.
Starving daughters are full of self-doubt. We don't want to worry so much about making other people happy but feel like we can never say thank you enough times, never show enough humility, never help enough, never feel enough shame. We feel guilty. We fear conflict. We are dramatic, sensitive, injured easily. We are clinging to all kinds of attachments that, in our minds, we know we should let go of, but in our bodies, we feel incapable of relinquishing. We feel self-pitying, sad, even depressed.
We are tired of trying so hard all the time. We feel like giving up. We feel hopeless. We want love, acceptance, happy endings, and rest. We wish that we had faith, that we weren't ruled by our heads and could live in our hearts more often. We want to have daughters--little girls who will love us unconditionally. We steal small things, such as candy bars and bras--that make us feel special for just a moment. We try to fill the black holes inside of us with forbidden foods. We never feel full. We always feel cold. We starve for a god.
We don't like to talk about this part of ourselves. Our whole lives, we have received so much affirmation for the perfect part that the starving-daughter part feels like and evil twin. Sometimes we can even convince ourselves that the sadness, self-doubts, and hunger don't exist, that we like to be this busy, that we like to eat small, unfulfilling portions or work out constantly.
For a while . . . but then the phone doesn't ring when we want it to or we get passed over for a job or a fellowship. Then the starving daughter makes herself known like an explosion. We collapse from exhaustion, or pick a fight with our boyfriends or families, or sob in the locked bathroom stall. Some girls experience their deep sadness in going on binges (food or alcohol), sleeping all day, sleeping around, buying lots of clothes they don't need, ignoring professional or relational opportunities, dropping out of the race altogether. Some of my best friends have retreated inside themselves in this way, refused help, wasted away, or cloaked themselves in excess weight. We get mono and can't move for weeks. We hate losing control. We hate being "wimps". We fight these breakdowns, but the starving daughter emerges, young and scared and sick of our shit.
Young woman struggle with this duality. The perfect girl in each drives forward, the starving daughter digs in her heels. The perfect girl wants excellence, the starving daughter calm and nurturance. The perfect girl takes on the world, the starving daughter shrinks from it. It is a power struggle between two forces, and at the center, almost every time, is an innocent body.
Courtney E. Martin "Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters"
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
night thoughts
I'm not sure if I actually have much to say tonight, but I feel like writing. Not sure if I wrote about this before but I've been painting my door and just finished it tonight. Something about being done feels very good. And having everything tidied and complete looking. It's utterly girly, but quite beautiful to me. I've been surprising myself because I seem to keep getting girlier. (either I just made up my own word or I just don't know how to spell it.) I've enjoyed painting that door more than any of my illustrations. In part because it simply isn't the same level of work and in one sense it is strictly to amuse myself and have fun.
I've been working on a commissioned illustration this week and enjoying it very much too, come to think of it. Especially the frog bit. I think I need some real watercolor brushes. The one that came with my pocket sized watercolor set is amazing to use for fine lines and details, like using a pencil. I can't do that with any of the other brushes I own. It's kind of goofy taking out a pint sized travel brush that works like a travel tooth brush (in two parts) and doing a serious illustration with it. Works though, I guess that's really all that matters. I was prematurely given a check for the work, which ultimately was the stimulus to resume work on it, but I've misplaced the damn thing in my room. I can't remember at all where I put it and it will probably turn out to be someplace quite logical when it turns up.
I wish I had a digital camera. I'd put more pictures on my blog. I've been learning more about my laptop tonight, a mix of reading the manuel (that turns out to be _on_ my computer) and exploring the different applications. I set up a screen saver, at least I hope I did. It's rather exciting, I want to let my computer sit for a while just so I can see it. The cosmos, I've got a thing lately for space and the galaxy and stars and nebulas and all the rest. So beautiful. (The time on my computer doesn't seem to correspond with google time.)
I wonder if I'll ever have clear skin again? I feel like I'm going to have acne for the rest of my life. (well at least until menopause when my hormones dry up. But how much does that suck?) I wis I had beautiful skin now, I wish for all the years of my twenties I had nice skin. I'm sick of my acne. I can't seem to find just the right song and dance to get rid of it. The one thing I don't think I can do is change my diet enough to help my face. Too hard. I love sugar, and bread...
I hope I dream about nice things tonight. And not old stick shift cars that are hard to shift into gears or people from the past I don't want to see at night.
good night...
I've been working on a commissioned illustration this week and enjoying it very much too, come to think of it. Especially the frog bit. I think I need some real watercolor brushes. The one that came with my pocket sized watercolor set is amazing to use for fine lines and details, like using a pencil. I can't do that with any of the other brushes I own. It's kind of goofy taking out a pint sized travel brush that works like a travel tooth brush (in two parts) and doing a serious illustration with it. Works though, I guess that's really all that matters. I was prematurely given a check for the work, which ultimately was the stimulus to resume work on it, but I've misplaced the damn thing in my room. I can't remember at all where I put it and it will probably turn out to be someplace quite logical when it turns up.
I wish I had a digital camera. I'd put more pictures on my blog. I've been learning more about my laptop tonight, a mix of reading the manuel (that turns out to be _on_ my computer) and exploring the different applications. I set up a screen saver, at least I hope I did. It's rather exciting, I want to let my computer sit for a while just so I can see it. The cosmos, I've got a thing lately for space and the galaxy and stars and nebulas and all the rest. So beautiful. (The time on my computer doesn't seem to correspond with google time.)
I wonder if I'll ever have clear skin again? I feel like I'm going to have acne for the rest of my life. (well at least until menopause when my hormones dry up. But how much does that suck?) I wis I had beautiful skin now, I wish for all the years of my twenties I had nice skin. I'm sick of my acne. I can't seem to find just the right song and dance to get rid of it. The one thing I don't think I can do is change my diet enough to help my face. Too hard. I love sugar, and bread...
I hope I dream about nice things tonight. And not old stick shift cars that are hard to shift into gears or people from the past I don't want to see at night.
good night...
Saturday, February 23, 2008
stars
Something I've always wanted in the back ground of my blog is a body of stars. Not like you see in photographs from space but something that does exhibit the magnificence of clusters, and clouds of billions of tiny bodies of light penetrating a dark body of space.
To become finite
I think I'm generally starting to get sick of typing with my computer at my side. But that's where the reception is. Although when I blog I don't need reception... (until I post)
I'm feeling pretty down, mainly because I just watched a show on the universe that ended with the theory of the eventual destruction of everything as we currently know it... What doesn't seem to be enough to keep me feeling fine is the fact that these things will not happen in my life time or even anywhere remotely near it. What gets me is the ultimate implication that what I know is finite. Not eternal. I want what I know to be eternal... Even the physical world, it's hard for me to imagine a spiritual realm that isn't "bound" to the physical. I can't help but think of them both as coexisting, that in some sense the spiritual does occupy the physical. Maybe it doesn't but that is how it seems in me. All these feelings, in their present strength will pass, and I won't be upset about it for very long. But the right now part isn't so great.
I've been reading a book titled Starving Daughters Perfect Girls with a great subtitle, something like the new (something) of hating our bodies. Normalcy? bloody hell I'll go grab the book. I was close, the frightening new normalcy of hating your body. The title is in the opposite order of what I wrote. Important because the one leads to the other. It caught my attention when I was shelving at the library, hard title to pass up, especially when the title eerily reflects back to me a short, sweet, concise appraisal of my own life. (I still do have more of a tendency to starve than I would like.) But it is kind of vindicating in a lot of ways too. One is realizing that in a big sense my generation and those immediately around me are driven by the circumstances of our lives to be this way and it's incredibly wrong and I'm incredibly angry. Mostly at men at the moment. Because starting from the earliest days those voices around me influenced how I saw myself and my value it was boys and men who were speaking. Who were piece by piece pulling me apart and trying to reconstruct me as it suited their desires, without shame. I want to scream for all the damage I let them do, for the intense voice of self hate that I so early on adopted and that has damaged me so horrifically over my short life. I want to scream because I also know I'm not free yet, so much closer, but still those voices have power over me and my self-image, my value. In a sense I feel like a sell out, and like I've been a sell out since I was quite a young girl. I have a hard time believing I'll ever be truly free, that I will always on some level believe that my value comes from how beautiful and desirable I am. And that it's my fault if I don't do the work to be that perfect. There is a quote from the author Anna Quindlen that I'm going to include in this blog (To immortalize for myself):
"Someday, sometime, you will be sitting somewhere. A berm over looking a pond in Vermont. The lip of the Grand Canyon at sunset. A seat on the subway. And something bad will have happened: You will have lost someone you loved, or failed at something at which you badly wanted to succeed. And sitting there, you will fall into the center of yourself. YOu will look for some core to sustain you. And if you have been perfect all you life and have managed to met all the expectations of your family, your friends, your community, your society, chances are excellent that there will be a black hole where that core ought to be."
What is so significant to me about that quote is that I want all the young men out there who have written most of the girls and women they have known off as deranged, crazy, prudish, what ever cruel and judgemental verdict that have not hesitated to brand her with to read those words and have some window in to the torture that this world unflinchingly applies to women. I want all those boys and men who have never had the maddening expectations of being perfect held over them constantly, relentlessly, with out pity, or love to wake up and feel like the wretches that most of them have been in their relationships. I apologize right of the bat to the few men that do occasionally subject themselves to my blog, these words in no way reflect you. It sounds like a harsh generalization because it is difficult to make such statements and carefully exclude the people that don't apply. I have known many men who are not at all like this. But I think that they have not enjoyed the luxury of being regarded as perfect without trying or earning it. They have suffered too. In my early years I did not enjoy the benefits of knowing such men. That might have salvaged a good deal of my self-esteem if I had.
The first time I was truly aware of a deep void in my core was at the age of seventeen. It was a god awful year and it led to many subsequent years of quiet despair. I don't think it's a black hole anymore, I've gained a lot of me to fill that massive, seemingly bottomless void. There is still a twinge of empty. But it's so mild, like an occasional prick. An old injury that reminds you there is still a sensitive scar, even if it has healed. The body never fully recovers, the nerves are forever gone where the scar is. But for the most part we've gotten used to it's presence, like a feature in our identity.
I feel better. Did some emotional purging.
I'm feeling pretty down, mainly because I just watched a show on the universe that ended with the theory of the eventual destruction of everything as we currently know it... What doesn't seem to be enough to keep me feeling fine is the fact that these things will not happen in my life time or even anywhere remotely near it. What gets me is the ultimate implication that what I know is finite. Not eternal. I want what I know to be eternal... Even the physical world, it's hard for me to imagine a spiritual realm that isn't "bound" to the physical. I can't help but think of them both as coexisting, that in some sense the spiritual does occupy the physical. Maybe it doesn't but that is how it seems in me. All these feelings, in their present strength will pass, and I won't be upset about it for very long. But the right now part isn't so great.
I've been reading a book titled Starving Daughters Perfect Girls with a great subtitle, something like the new (something) of hating our bodies. Normalcy? bloody hell I'll go grab the book. I was close, the frightening new normalcy of hating your body. The title is in the opposite order of what I wrote. Important because the one leads to the other. It caught my attention when I was shelving at the library, hard title to pass up, especially when the title eerily reflects back to me a short, sweet, concise appraisal of my own life. (I still do have more of a tendency to starve than I would like.) But it is kind of vindicating in a lot of ways too. One is realizing that in a big sense my generation and those immediately around me are driven by the circumstances of our lives to be this way and it's incredibly wrong and I'm incredibly angry. Mostly at men at the moment. Because starting from the earliest days those voices around me influenced how I saw myself and my value it was boys and men who were speaking. Who were piece by piece pulling me apart and trying to reconstruct me as it suited their desires, without shame. I want to scream for all the damage I let them do, for the intense voice of self hate that I so early on adopted and that has damaged me so horrifically over my short life. I want to scream because I also know I'm not free yet, so much closer, but still those voices have power over me and my self-image, my value. In a sense I feel like a sell out, and like I've been a sell out since I was quite a young girl. I have a hard time believing I'll ever be truly free, that I will always on some level believe that my value comes from how beautiful and desirable I am. And that it's my fault if I don't do the work to be that perfect. There is a quote from the author Anna Quindlen that I'm going to include in this blog (To immortalize for myself):
"Someday, sometime, you will be sitting somewhere. A berm over looking a pond in Vermont. The lip of the Grand Canyon at sunset. A seat on the subway. And something bad will have happened: You will have lost someone you loved, or failed at something at which you badly wanted to succeed. And sitting there, you will fall into the center of yourself. YOu will look for some core to sustain you. And if you have been perfect all you life and have managed to met all the expectations of your family, your friends, your community, your society, chances are excellent that there will be a black hole where that core ought to be."
What is so significant to me about that quote is that I want all the young men out there who have written most of the girls and women they have known off as deranged, crazy, prudish, what ever cruel and judgemental verdict that have not hesitated to brand her with to read those words and have some window in to the torture that this world unflinchingly applies to women. I want all those boys and men who have never had the maddening expectations of being perfect held over them constantly, relentlessly, with out pity, or love to wake up and feel like the wretches that most of them have been in their relationships. I apologize right of the bat to the few men that do occasionally subject themselves to my blog, these words in no way reflect you. It sounds like a harsh generalization because it is difficult to make such statements and carefully exclude the people that don't apply. I have known many men who are not at all like this. But I think that they have not enjoyed the luxury of being regarded as perfect without trying or earning it. They have suffered too. In my early years I did not enjoy the benefits of knowing such men. That might have salvaged a good deal of my self-esteem if I had.
The first time I was truly aware of a deep void in my core was at the age of seventeen. It was a god awful year and it led to many subsequent years of quiet despair. I don't think it's a black hole anymore, I've gained a lot of me to fill that massive, seemingly bottomless void. There is still a twinge of empty. But it's so mild, like an occasional prick. An old injury that reminds you there is still a sensitive scar, even if it has healed. The body never fully recovers, the nerves are forever gone where the scar is. But for the most part we've gotten used to it's presence, like a feature in our identity.
I feel better. Did some emotional purging.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Uncertain as usual
For the first time since starting my blog I missed an entire month... Not that it actually matters, but it's kind of a little girl incantation with no ultimate goal. Like carefully avoiding cracks when you skip the sidewalk... (The H on my keyboard is cracked! I wonder if it's possible to replace a single key?) So what was it about tonight that got me to blog? I feel reminiscent tonight, sentimental? nostalgic? My hands smell like puppy. It's a clean smell, not like dog. Girly even.
My mother sometimes tells me I'm in love with love, and I know it's true, but I don't know what to do about it. I want to be in love. I wish I'd had that first love experience as a girl, pure and safe, reciprocal... But I didn't.
I feel regret, but over strange things, possibilities that were never explored, things that never began even... Things that I suspect weren't even right for me. I feel that these doors closed on things that weren't meant to be, but what I regret is I closed them for the wrong reasons, or I didn't explore them for the wrong reasons. Instead of wisdom or seeing what was good for me, I stayed away because of self-doubt or fear. I didn't believe in myself, I didn't want to embarrass myself. What a stupid thing now!
I struggle with feeling ugly when I haven't washed my hair and it's pulled back in a sloppy pony tail or when I have a lot of acne. I go around projecting ugly out no matter what other people might see. But I think I finally realized today that I'm not ugly to other people because of that. Guys still want to see me smile at them or talk to me, not avoid me... It's hard to feel beautiful and valuable when I'm flawed. I have this harsh internal voice that has demanded nothing short of perfection to be worth anything, to be loved... I've started walking away from that as an artist. God that voice is gone now, it's totally opposite has taken it's place. I paint and make mistakes and the voice I hear now just says over and over "it's okay, it doesn't have to be perfect, it looks good enough and it will get better." I almost feel guilty like I'm turning into a slacker and I'm not at all!
I've been using youtube a lot recently and it's wonderful. It has brought a new level of joy to my life. So I've been checking out the songs and videos of musicians I want to learn more about and I like to read the comments of the people that visit. Generally the comments are positive, effusive, and innocuous. But I discovered today that the band Beirut brings out some divisive feelings in people. The only thing that barred me from responding was that I'd have to create an account with them and I really don't want to. (mainly due to laziness.) But I wanted to react and confront some of the attitudes flying about that seemed irrational, small minded and extreme. But then I have to step back and remember that it doesn't really matter. It's petty of me to get worked up over these opinions and I'm making them important when they aren't.
Beirut as a band is glorious, the music evokes a sort of euphoria, a filling. Inside I soar, and for the most part the other people who listen and respond seem to soar too. They do things musically that I haven't seen before, and it's beautiful and expanding. what ever...
What I really wanted to say tonight was that Alex has been on my mind a lot and it kind of hurts. I can't seem to shake my own regret and sense of inadequacy. My brain says one thing and my heart another. I can't get them to understand each other and I want to change and still haven't. I'm going to be thirty in just over two years and I still feel and see myself as a child. In my mind I will always be in my twenties. Because that is when I gained a sense of myself, an identity. I'm scared to grow up. I don't feel ready at all. Despite my choices I don't want to be alone as I age, but I can't settle, that's even more unbearable. I know Alex isn't my soul mate, I know we have so little in common, and that I can't make him happy nor him me, but still I can't shake the pain and the memory. I want to meet a man like me, in all ways, a man that thinks like me, lives like me, looks like me. I don't mean my twin, but I guess someone I recognize. Slight, a little taller than me, middle class educated artist with a bohemian bent... (loves cats.) Drinks wine, likes coffee and tea, will smoke an occasional cigarette. Intelligent and kind, talks about life, beliefs, philosophy and meaning, reads fiction and classics, believes dreams are meaningful, has a soul... Is it true? The only way to get a Mr Darcy is to make him up? I hope not...
good bye
My mother sometimes tells me I'm in love with love, and I know it's true, but I don't know what to do about it. I want to be in love. I wish I'd had that first love experience as a girl, pure and safe, reciprocal... But I didn't.
I feel regret, but over strange things, possibilities that were never explored, things that never began even... Things that I suspect weren't even right for me. I feel that these doors closed on things that weren't meant to be, but what I regret is I closed them for the wrong reasons, or I didn't explore them for the wrong reasons. Instead of wisdom or seeing what was good for me, I stayed away because of self-doubt or fear. I didn't believe in myself, I didn't want to embarrass myself. What a stupid thing now!
I struggle with feeling ugly when I haven't washed my hair and it's pulled back in a sloppy pony tail or when I have a lot of acne. I go around projecting ugly out no matter what other people might see. But I think I finally realized today that I'm not ugly to other people because of that. Guys still want to see me smile at them or talk to me, not avoid me... It's hard to feel beautiful and valuable when I'm flawed. I have this harsh internal voice that has demanded nothing short of perfection to be worth anything, to be loved... I've started walking away from that as an artist. God that voice is gone now, it's totally opposite has taken it's place. I paint and make mistakes and the voice I hear now just says over and over "it's okay, it doesn't have to be perfect, it looks good enough and it will get better." I almost feel guilty like I'm turning into a slacker and I'm not at all!
I've been using youtube a lot recently and it's wonderful. It has brought a new level of joy to my life. So I've been checking out the songs and videos of musicians I want to learn more about and I like to read the comments of the people that visit. Generally the comments are positive, effusive, and innocuous. But I discovered today that the band Beirut brings out some divisive feelings in people. The only thing that barred me from responding was that I'd have to create an account with them and I really don't want to. (mainly due to laziness.) But I wanted to react and confront some of the attitudes flying about that seemed irrational, small minded and extreme. But then I have to step back and remember that it doesn't really matter. It's petty of me to get worked up over these opinions and I'm making them important when they aren't.
Beirut as a band is glorious, the music evokes a sort of euphoria, a filling. Inside I soar, and for the most part the other people who listen and respond seem to soar too. They do things musically that I haven't seen before, and it's beautiful and expanding. what ever...
What I really wanted to say tonight was that Alex has been on my mind a lot and it kind of hurts. I can't seem to shake my own regret and sense of inadequacy. My brain says one thing and my heart another. I can't get them to understand each other and I want to change and still haven't. I'm going to be thirty in just over two years and I still feel and see myself as a child. In my mind I will always be in my twenties. Because that is when I gained a sense of myself, an identity. I'm scared to grow up. I don't feel ready at all. Despite my choices I don't want to be alone as I age, but I can't settle, that's even more unbearable. I know Alex isn't my soul mate, I know we have so little in common, and that I can't make him happy nor him me, but still I can't shake the pain and the memory. I want to meet a man like me, in all ways, a man that thinks like me, lives like me, looks like me. I don't mean my twin, but I guess someone I recognize. Slight, a little taller than me, middle class educated artist with a bohemian bent... (loves cats.) Drinks wine, likes coffee and tea, will smoke an occasional cigarette. Intelligent and kind, talks about life, beliefs, philosophy and meaning, reads fiction and classics, believes dreams are meaningful, has a soul... Is it true? The only way to get a Mr Darcy is to make him up? I hope not...
good bye
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