This past weekend, we attended our first elementary school dance together as a family. My daughter, who is in Kindergarten, informed me about this dance weeks before the flyers came home. "It's going to be a decade dance, Mama! You have to dress like you're from a decade in history.
I want to dress like the 1920's! I want to be a flapper girl!" She's six. How does she even know about flappers? But her enthusiasm was contagious and one weekend we found ourselves in every department of Target searching for the perfect accessories.
My goal was to look authentic while spending as little money as possible - this was a two-hour school dance, after all. For my daughter, we found two purple sequined skirts on the clearance rack. We used one for her top, gluing on purple ribbon for straps, and one for the bottom. We added black tights and dress shoes, a purple boa, some gold beads tied in a knot, and a black feathered headband. Her purse was a clutch. She was in heaven! The boys were easy. My 3-year-old wore a white dress shirt with a built in vest and bow tie, jeans, and a baby blue fedora. My husband wore a shirt and tie along with a fedora as well. They were the cutest gangsters I've ever seen.
And then there was me. I went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth about what to wear. Trying on outfits for a costume party is akin to shopping for swimsuits. I finally decided to simply focus on the accessories. So I wore a black knit dress with black leggings and flats and jazzed it up with a hot pink feathered fascinator and wildly fun boa. I was feeling good. That is, until I got there.
I looked around and I realized that we were the only parents in the room in costume.
Let me say that again.
WE WERE THE ONLY PARENTS IN THE ROOM IN COSTUME!
Unbelievable.
When you're someone who doesn't feel comfortable in their own skin, it's hard to get dressed up and parade yourself in front of a group of people you don't know. It's very hard. But when you are the only one dressed up in the entire gymnasium? It's brutal. I felt like I was at my own 8th grade dance - all gawky and shy - and wanted to hide under the table.
But then, yet again, I saw my daughter.
She was glowing in her purple sequins and had a smile a mile wide. I wanted to bottle that girl up and drink her down so that I could feel a tiny bit of what she was feeling - free, uninhibited, joy. She wasn't worried about her costume, or her body, or her lack of anything. She was just having fun without a care in the world.
I scanned the gym and realized that not only were the parents in their everyday clothes, they were all sitting on chairs lining the perimeter of the room. What? This is an elementary school dance, not a funeral. Get up, damn it! Go dance with your kids.
And so I did. Well, first I asked my daughter if she wanted to me to dance with her and then I did. And we danced the night away - my fabulous 1920's family and me. We laughed and jumped and whooped and hollered until the kids were so tired they were begging to go home.
That, my friends, took some courage. Not the kind of courage required to don a bathing suit in the middle of winter, but courage nonetheless.
And you know what? It felt fabulous!
Certain foods are triggers. We all have them. Sweet, salty, crunchy, gooey - whatever the trigger - the result is still the same. Overeating. Call it binging, perhaps. Me, I have MANY triggers.
Pretty much any food that I try not to have in the house is a trigger for me. Just the fact that I know I shouldn't have it sends the food rebel in me on high alert. Sometimes I get this idea in my head that I really should be able to buy a trigger food, store it in the pantry, and munch on it in moderate portions. Because isn't that the goal? To eat a sensible diet with the occasional treat? Then reality sets in.
My latest purchase was a bag of Cheez Doodles. I saw them on BOGO at the grocery store and bought them on a whim. Wow, I haven't had these in ages. Let's buy a bag and enjoy them throughout the week. Surely, I can control myself. Fast forward two days later. I'm sitting at my computer and I look down at my fingers as they swiftly tap the keyboard. Orange. Bright, neon orange that only comes from one source - processed powdered cheese. Yeah, that cheese tapped into some anger at myself for mindlessly eating too many Cheez Doodles. Sure, I felt a huge amount of frustration that I couldn't just stop at one serving. Of course, I felt some guilt that there weren't many left in the bag for the kids' after-school snack. But worst of all, that orange cheese stuck in the crevices of my fingernails sent me back - way back - to when I first started feeling bad about myself and my eating.
I'm not going to go into all the details - because, let's face it, that's like 43 more posts. So I'll just summarize by saying that I was taught at an early age that being overweight was a death sentence and that I was not in charge of my own hunger and fullness. Worst of all, I was taught that no boy is ever going to like me if I'm overweight. God, it hurts just to type that...
So where did those orange fingers send me? To one memory of a thousand like it.
I'm 12, maybe 13, sitting inside a crappy rented beach house while the rest of my family is outside enjoying the sun and sand. I spent a lot of time inside - just wishing that I liked myself enough to join the world. I remember hiding behind the brown plaid curtain in the bedroom window, my cheese-stained fingers moving between the open bag of Cheez Doodles and my mouth, secretly looking at a boy that I thought was the most wonderful thing on Earth. A boy who was not only drop-dead gorgeous, but was sweet and kind. A boy who, moments earlier, had come by to see if I would play volleyball with him and his friends. A boy who was always trying to include me. But I couldn't - I just couldn't. You see, it was much easier to hide away with my neon orange friend than to argue against my own thoughts of self worth.
That memory makes me cringe. I hurt not only for the girl who hid behind those curtains, but for all the girls out there who still do. I hurt for my daughter who I desperately want to be confident of herself no matter what she looks like. Will I be able to instill that confidence in her even if I don't have it myself?
Screw the `Cheez Doodles! This isn't about Cheez Doodles or serving sizes or overeating or food, really. This is about loving yourself no matter what - something I wasn't really taught as a kid. But I'm starting now. Because it's never too late to show yourself - or your daughter - that you matter. That you are worthy. That you are deserving of all the love and all the respect and all the joy the world has to offer.
