Welcome! How are you today? I hope it super sunny and you have a nice cup of coffee or tea in your hand. Maybe a bagel too. What kind of fixings are on your bagel? I'm totally digging the lox and cucumber with tomatoes and cream cheese. *takes a really big bite*
Today we have Deirdre Riordan Hall, the author of SUGAR. This is a book I read first on Kindle First and I feel in freaking love. It broke my heart and built it again and broke it and built it. It, for the lack of a better word, is stunning. Seriously y'all, do yourself a favor and buy yourself a copy.
Thank you, Jackie, for having me by to discuss self-worth. Here
are some of my thoughts on bullying and body image…and how we can rise above
self-doubt, comparison, and learn to value ourselves and each other.
Sometimes the cruelest, harshest, and most hurtful voice is a
quiet one, creeping in when we catch our reflection in a shop window, when
seated next to a friend whose thighs are smaller/larger, or flipping through
our Instagram feed where there's just so much bronzed skin to scroll past.
For a long time "the voice" was LOUD in my ears.
At times, it sounded like my parents:
"Fat head."
"Stand up straighter."
"Your hair is so oily."
I heard that I wasn't good enough, didn't measure up, and had to
be better.
Other times it sounded like my friends:
"I wish I had thighs like that."
"If only my nose were smaller."
"What did you eat today?"
If they thought these things about themselves, then surely my
thighs needed slimming, along with my nose, and possibly every other part of
me.
It also sounded like celebrities on the TV screen, made up and
decked out by a team of stylists. It morphed from an image in a magazine to a
paper doll of what I should look
like. It came on strong when in crowds of people, gatherings with friends,
swimming pools, the beach, anywhere and everywhere (*Except, interestingly, I
realize as I reread this, when I was/am reading fiction.) It fed me a constant
message of inadequacies: too big, too little, too flat, too round, too bumpy,
too smooth, not enough, too much, and on and on and on.
AHHHH.
Girls hear it. Boys hear it. Young and old, fat and thin, black
and white, and everyone in between and along the seams.
Close your eyes. Listen.
Do you hear it? I hope you don't. But if there is a pernicious voice
telling you that your arms are too skinny, that your ankles are too fat, that
your hair isn't shiny enough, that you're too short, too tall, too freckled,
your hair isn't straight enough…
Take a moment.
Take a breath.
How do you feel? Crappy? Lousy? Inadequate?
Listen again; really hear it this time. Is the voice an octave too
high or low? Are the -ing's are missing or are they there to begin with? Is it husky
or shrill?
What you're hearing isn't your voice. It's a bully. A
"perfection pusher." A liar and a thief, stealing moments away when
you could be splashing in the pool, showing up at the party wearing that dress, enjoying a cupcake because
it tastes good. When you could be thinking up the next big thing, writing your song, creating your dreams. It robs us of
the truth of who we are.
We can blame the media and companies for perpetuating the model
perfect body, for telling us we need longer lashes, fuller lips, and silkier
hair. We can blame our parents, our friends, strangers on the street…
We can ask ourselves why. Why do I want to look like her with those wide eyes, the guy on the
football team with the big pecs, or the girl who can get away with wearing anything?
We can hire therapists, doctors, a team of people to poke and prod
and figure out why. Sometimes that's necessary. It has been for me. It might be
for you and that's okay.
We can search for approval, seek likes, favorites, and followers.
We can insult others. We can change ourselves: new clothes, less food, more
exercise, self-tanner, extensions, make up. But the high is temporary. The
voice comes back. More, more, more. Or as the case may be, less, less, less.
Over the years, I've listed the accused and the reasons I've
struggled with food and my figure and how it's associated with my self-worth
and how looking in the mirror is an exercise in deflecting criticism. I've
listened to the voice; I've told it to shut up and told it where to go; I've
ignored it. In my experience, it only mutes the voice temporarily. The bully
came back. The messages kept coming, some days louder than others. I've written
about my relationship to my body/self-worth publically and privately. I've dug
deep and then deeper trying to understand why and what and where.
And one truth has emerged…
Comparison is a trap.
I'm me. I have this
body. This brain, heart, lungs…skin, hair, fingers, chin, tummy…
This brain that helps me create worlds on paper, this heart that
is so full of love, these lungs that move me through every day. My skin that
holds it all together, my hair that is, despite my attempts to make it
otherwise, greasy, a chin that is sweetly round, and a tummy, well, that too.
And if I took any of that away, even just one part of it, somehow I wouldn't
look like me anymore, and worse, I wouldn't feel
like me.
So what do we do?
Instead of the shoulds,
the criticism, the body judgments and the booty judgements and the eyes, nose,
mouth judgments—instead of focusing on all of the things that we think we don't
like, what if we listed and told "the voice" what we do like?
Close your eyes. Pick one thing. I like my fingernails.
How did that feel?
Try again. I like my wrists.
Keep going. My elbows are
pretty cool. I have nice eyes. My neck is lovely. My backside is a top-notch
cushion, baby.
Try for one more. Maybe two. Do this again in an hour. Again, next
time you hear the voice of comparison, the bully, the harsh critic. Tomorrow
and the next day. Keep going. You can say the same things over and over. Then,
if you're feeling brave, do it in the mirror. Look at that gorgeous, buxom,
slender, athletic, brave reflection of yours. You can do it. You, my darling,
are worth it. You're worth the effort to change the sound of that voice, one syllable,—that
becomes a word that is strung into a sentence—one compliment at a time, until
it's tuned to the same pitch of your own voice, reminding you that you are
beautiful, just as you are.
And you might say, but my nose IS big. I AM fat. My arms ARE
short. And I say to you, compared to who? Surely, not compared to you, the only
measurement that matters, because you are imperfectly, perfectly you already,
no changes necessary.
Why is this important? Because you were put here for reasons, big, small, and in-between, amazing
reasons. You have a gift, a voice other than the sound of the bully. And that
voice is meant to be heard. You may be meant to sing, or have fingers that were
meant to sew, or a brain that can figure out something so mind boggling no one
else can perceive it yet. Or you'll mend broken arms, or help other girls or
boys who look in the mirror and see someone other than gorgeous, or write a
book, a play, a song. You are unique, inside and out, and they are related, interconnected to how you see yourself—the
big and intimate picture of you, and when we shortchange one, we spite the
other.
The truth is, we deserve better than a bully. We've got this
vessel, this body, our gifts, secret talents—whatever they are and whenever
they emerge, now or in ten years—and it is up to each of us to be a super hero,
whether we wear our capes in a quiet gray or boldly with sequins and streamers.
I hope there's a quiet whistling, a raucous applause whenever you
walk into the room and not because you’ve whittled your waistline, or lifted
your booty, or fit your form into someone else's mold. But that voice in your
head, in your own unique tone, who isn't a bully, but a best friend.
I'm here to tell you that you're beautiful. As you are. Yesterday,
today, and tomorrow. You're beautiful because you're you. There isn't anyone on
the planet exactly like you, inside or out. So what if. What if instead of comparing, criticizing, and listening to
the voice that tells us to—fill in the blank—we accept ourselves, where we are,
now.
So what if?
A revolution, I suspect. Be the change, the revolutionary, because
your self-worth matters.
Over to you. How do you practice self-love? How do you stop the
body shaming? How can we, together, lift each other up? And thanks again,
Jackie and everyone who's read this far.<3>
Sugar by Deirdre Riordan Hall
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
// Age Group: Young Adult
I’m the fat Puerto Rican–Polish girl who doesn’t feel like she
belongs in her skin, or anywhere else for that matter. I’ve always been too
much and yet not enough.
Sugar Legowski-Gracia wasn’t always fat, but fat is what she is
now at age seventeen. Not as fat as her mama, who is so big she hasn’t gotten
out of bed in months. Not as heavy as her brother, Skunk, who has more meanness
in him than fat, which is saying something. But she’s large enough to be the
object of ridicule wherever she is: at the grocery store, walking down the
street, at school. Sugar’s life is dictated by taking care of Mama in their
run-down home—cooking, shopping, and, well, eating. A lot of eating, which
Sugar hates as much as she loves.
When Sugar meets Even (not Evan—his nearly illiterate father
misspelled his name on the birth certificate), she has the new experience of
someone seeing her and not her body. As their unlikely
friendship builds, Sugar allows herself to think about the future for the first
time, a future not weighed down by her body or her mother.
Soon Sugar will have to decide whether to become the girl she sees
in the mirror or sink into the darkness of the skin-deep role her family and
her life have created for her.
Deirdre Riordan Hall is the author of upper young adult and
new adult fiction. She spends her days writing at the custom-made desk her
husband crafted, with her family, or seaside, pretending she's a mermaid.
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