Breasts and the Body Imperfect

8.9.06

I undress to change shirts for dance class and Hanah comes in to ask me something, but changes the subject and looks at my breasts. She asks why I have different bras and then goes on, "Is it because sometimes you want to look like a teenager with your boobs all pointy like this," and she takes my breasts and pulls them out to look like torpedoes. I laugh and start to answer her, but then she takes them in her hands again and says, "or to look younger like this and not so floppy?" as she pushes them together to create a long lost cleavage. I tell her that yes, I wear different bras for different looks as she pulls at my nipples and continues her query,"or to look like you have a baby and are still nursing?" I stand there, 49 years old, with my falling flesh and look down at this lucious young thing, with her innocent questions and bright eyes and thank god for this body which allowed me to create her and her precocious curiosity. At 7 she has an incredible mind, which I hope she continues to use in her exploration of the world, and her growing self. There is something so lovely about a mother-daughter connection, this natural wonder at what the female body can do. I only hope she continues to revel in hers and doesn't fall prey to this culture's obsession with all things firm and young and perfect, even when artificially enhanced.

She loves to pose in front of the mirror and flex her muscles and ask if she doesn't look like a man from the chin to the top of her pubic area and I always say she looks like a powerful woman. I know she is referring to her lack of breasts, but I want to re-inforce in her this body pride without likening it to a male ideal. I think about our society's ideal of a boy like rail thin body with impossibly large (usually enhanced) breasts and want to protect her from all these media messages. She is lucky adn will be tall and gorgeous, may have my sisters DD boobs or my size A, but she will be forever reminded of some way she could improve her self, be thinner, sexier, curvier, smarter, funnier, somethign more-er. I know friends' daughters who at 6 felt they had to "diet." There is something very wrong with this picture, when kindergarteners are aware of their looks in this way.

I remember exactly when my own body image issues began and have vowed to never question my looks in front of the kids, but already, when I was exercizing the other day Noah asked if I was doing it to be thin. I told him no, it was to keep strong and I hope he heard that. At camp he mimicked the older boys with a complaint taht there were no "sexy hot girls" there; this from a boy who otherwise thinks girls, especially his sister, are gross. It seems impossible to protect our children from inappropriate sexual/image issues with billboards using sex to sell everything and video games proferring the same impossible buff bodies on both sexes as action ideals. Don't get me started on Barbie and Ken and their unreal dimensions. We douse them in this sex stuff and then have hissy fits when they actually become sexual and start to explore these budding bodies. This is where our insanity kicks in.

I wonder when Hanah will get grossed out by mom's old body, when/if she will question her own. She seems so matter of fact now, squirting a bottle of red gatorade into a cup adn saying, "Look Mom, it's having a period!" Will she keep this wonderful open, practical sensiblity when the hormones kick in, when the boys start paying attention, when she starts to compare her body with others? We mothers have a huge responsibility to keep our daughters grounded in the wonders that all body types offer. Fathers too, although there seems to be less obsession with males on body image. I hear that’s changing, however, with the new metrosexual ideal of the well tended, coifed, manicured, tailored heterosexual male and then, too, the steroid pumped 6 pack abbed athlete/Abercrombie & Fitch look.

When I think of what we do to our bodies to please others or to quell our own insecurities about our attractiveness, I get sad for the thoses of us who do not fit the insane ideals and who obsess about trying to get there. I have one friend who loves her wrinkles because they are a sign of her passages in life; that’s an attitude I admire. She is small breasted and full hearted and mothers a son who still wears pink. Perhaps I will introduce him to Hanah in 20 years.