New Project: Chapter 15
Kristi Coulter, a noted feminist author, recently wrote, “There’s still no good way to be a girl.”
On an early morning in late August, I thought about that statement while running down a hill. The hard dirt gave little and, despite new shoes designed to minimize impact, every step sent a small stab of pain through my lower back – reminding me again and again of what I’d lost and now hoped to regain. Strength. Confidence in my body. The ability to fit neatly in my clothes. Health. Self-determination. The knowledge that, with discipline, I can achieve my goals.
I felt like a hero to myself. Unwilling to let pain win again, I pounded down that road, Coulter’s words in my head like the chorus of a song I’d learned in childhood.
(To the tune of Ain’t no Sunshine When She’s Gone)
Ain’t no good way to be a girl
All you do is somehow wrong
Seems they always dissin’ you
Never likin’ what you do
Go along to get along
And yet, there I was, a middle-age woman wearing a purple sports bra and mango-colored running skort that barely concealed the stretch marks on my ample belly, jogging down a dirt road in an upper middleclass neighborhood on the outskirts of Santa Fe at nine in the morning.
The sky was such a crisp blue it would shatter if I touched it. In the distance, the Jemez Mountains rose like islands from sea-like plains and everywhere miniature sunflowers bloomed sun-bright and smiling amid grass gone wild with monsoon rains.
I laughed out loud, thinking I had become the woman I’d ridiculed with friends in high school – plump, jiggling, sweating and past her prime – wearing an outfit that belonged to us and the bodies we’d flaunted without shame. Oh, those were the days.
Except they weren’t. Even then, every one of us hated at least one thing about our bodies and the lyrics to Coulter’s song had long been ingrained. We’d been passed over in class discussions, touched without consent, ogled on the soccer field, at the mall, and in the streets. We’d learned to hide intelligence or risk contempt, practiced emotional expressions in the mirror to mask despair or discontent. We’d mastered the giggle and blush of embarrassment. Most could not bait a hook (ew!), change a tire, or use a power tool. Pretty mattered most – unblemished skin, hands soft to the touch, nails shaped and colored, nothing rough. All sparkles and sweet smells and brimming health. We were not to be bruised, dirtied, or cut. Instead, we were to be viewed and won by boys and men who would do the difficult for us.
The road leveled and curved. I crossed the arroyo, still wet from last night’s storm, and marveled at deep gouges in the red-brown road. Flash flood. Matted vegetation, piles of brush. Pine needles washed down in the deluge sinuous and root-like over clay and sand, their patterns bespeaking their birth. My breath came in gasps as I pushed. My goal was to crest the hill before me without slowing to rest. I didn’t make it. I wasn’t ready yet.
Still no good way to be a girl. Or woman. Or anyone, really, when you stand back and look at it. Coulter also said, “[T]here’s no easy way to be a woman, because, as you may have noticed, there’s no acceptable way to be a woman. And if there’s no acceptable way to be the thing you are, then maybe you drink a little. Or a lot.”
Good.
Acceptable.
Easy.
Why do we aspire to such things?
Coulter’s right. If we value ourselves according to what others deem good or acceptable, we’re done. Call it a day. Go home. Have a drink (or seven) and pass out on the couch. Be numb.
Beauty and accomplishment are not acceptable, but they’re essential. Creativity for its own sake is not acceptable, but it empowers us. Loving ourselves first is anathema to a social and economic system that depends on our low self-worth, but do we have a choice? If we want to live, I mean really live, isn’t it time to stop worrying about acceptable? Isn’t it time to toss the old recipe and learn a better way to give and love?
I looked like hell running down that road. That didn’t stop a crew of landscapers from driving a little too slow or a guy in a pickup truck from giving me the look we all know, but I didn’t care about any of it. I loved the wind on my bare skin and would have run topless if legal. I loved the trotting dog beside me, the color of the trees, the way my blood pumped through me and the distance I had attained. The world smelled fresh after the rain and I inhaled as deep as I could, calming my heart and filling my lungs. I wasn’t trying to look good. I was trying to feel good and I did. I reveled in the solitude, the quiet, the beauty of my surroundings, and the sense of safety I felt for a change.
Yes, it hurt. There was nothing easy about it. My legs burned. My back ached. The skin of my too fat arms rubbed against the sides of my breasts and chafed. Nobody looking at me, except perhaps those who had done the same, would have thought me acceptable. I should have worn a tee-shirt and hidden a body sculpted by life and age. I should have carried my phone in my hand or a can of mace. I should not run half-naked and unafraid.
It seemed an eon since I sat at that campfire, watching my husband sleep, and having an epiphany. I heard the words again as I walked up the hill. Like a flash flood, they had eroded my beliefs, gouged my convictions, made raw my emotions, and forced me to bow to the power in them. He loves me. He’s trying. You can’t make him something he’s not. What if you’re the one who’s wrong?
I had been wrong. I had learned the wrong way to give and receive, to love and feel loved. I had swallowed what I’d been fed and passed the recipe along.
The fact is it is my right to run half-naked and unafraid with the wind on my body and the sun in my face. It is my right to stare the man in the pickup down. It is my right to determine how and where and why I belong. My little self-love disciplines add up. One day I will crest that hill. I will finish this book and write the next. I will no longer sing Coulter’s song. Instead, I will sing Amazing Grace and the sound will ring sweet, steady, and strong.
