Kathleen Johnson

                              The Body Has a Mind of Its Own

You would never talk to a beloved child the way you talk to yourself.  You would not point out
flaws, or make fun of or tell a precious child how ugly, fat or imperfect she is… and yet we
women demean and insult ourselves constantly.

Recently, a friend of mine showed The Breast Dialogues film to a group of women friends.
As part of the event she asked the women to write down five words that described their
breasts.
The results were almost all negative words…too big, mismatched, gross, droopy, ashamed,
ugly-are just some of the words written on index cards by the attendees.

In The Breast Book, Author Marilyn Yalom, states that “How a woman regards her breasts
is a good indicator of her personal self-esteem, as well as the collective status of women in general.”

It’s very sad that many women think their breasts are unacceptable. How sick that we hate our very flesh.  
How stupid of us to measure ourselves against the airbrushed pubescent girls we see everywhere in the
media.  As if to be happy, successful or accepted we must look like them.

I wonder if other cultures bombard their women with beauty standards that are unattainable? And judge them
less if they don’t?  Do other women in other countries have the same concerns about how they look?

Recently, I read that Brazil leads the world in the number of women who get buttock implants.  Well-rounded
butts are necessary to show off the thong bikinis worn in this beach culture.  In some countries, however,
women are too busy trying to survive to despair over stretch marks -or whether their buttocks and breasts are
firm enough.

The average life span for an African woman is just 40 years old!  She dies before she has the privilege of
aging.  I’m sure she is more worried about AIDS than droopy breasts.
Repeatedly, I have to remind myself to be grateful to grow old.   Many women do not get the chance. I am
healthy, more mature, wiser…but when I stand in front of a full-length mirror I am in shock.  My body doesn’t
look at all familiar.  I am aging and in this culture that is not a good thing.  To accept or not accept the body,
that is the question.

There’s always plastic surgery.  Women are lining up to get surgeries to lift, erase, plump up, tighten, snip off,
fill in, you name it and it can be done.  A friend of mine just had her chin shaved down, her eyes done and
botox shot into her frown lines. Another friend just had a face peel and a tummy tuck.  

My 27 year old daughter tells me that she and her friends are horrified by aging. They are obsessed with
every gray hair and wrinkle they find. They will have no hesitancy to get plastic surgery in the future. A billion
dollar industry thrives on women’s lack of self- acceptance and fears about aging .  As much as I tried to
teach my daughter that it is what’s inside that counts, she and her peers have bought in to the media myths
about what you are supposed to look like just as I did and just as my mother did.

We can refuse to buy into the beauty myth in several ways. Don’t read fashion and celebrity magazines with
page after page of “beauty babes.” And let us stop the depreciating talk that women indulge in.  You don’t
hear a group of men at lunch discussing their frown lines or comparing themselves to Mel or Danzel.

However, both men and women have a tendency to push the body.  We’ve been taught to feel the burn, to
run just one more lap, to compete, conquer and overcome. Whether it is through exercise or sports we often
ignore what our bodies are telling us with that cough, dizziness, headache, fatigue, muscle spasm, or
heartburn.

The body’s communication style is expressed through pleasure, pain, discomfort and disease.  However,
there are more subtle commentaries going on all the time if we would only learn to listen.

The body has a mind of its own.  It has a vocabulary all its own.  Each person’s body has signals and cues to
express what is going on. I know when the lymph node under my left arm pit gets sore I need to stop and relax
immediately.  It tells me I have pushed myself way beyond my stress limit and need to stop whatever I am
doing NOW!

If you want to start listening to your body try contemplation, yoga, journaling, guided visualization, stretching,
dancing, art, massage, introspection, relaxation, prayer and meditation.  Listen to music that you love and let
the body move the way it wants to-(dance, stomp, roll, wiggle). Or if you like to write you can write your body a
thank you note or love letter. An intriguing book called The Power of the Other Hand explains a wonderful
technique using your non-dominant hand to dialogue with the body and your inner wisdom.

In Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, by Dr. Christine Northrup, in the chapter called Healing Ourselves,
Healing the World, talks about listening to her fibroid tumor and what it came to teach her.  She ends the
book with the affirmation to trust that the next step for healing is there already waiting for us. Dr. Northrup
exhorts us to ”pray to be teachable and disarm ourselves of self hate, refusing to no longer be at war with a
part of your body that is trying to tell you something.”

P.S.
Since my neck is hurting sitting here at the computer, I think it’s time to end this essay and lie down.  I want to
honor the body’s signals that holding my head in this uncomfortable position is painful.
Journal Entry for June 2006