Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Body Images


In ninth grade, I was in chorus. It was a very egalitarian chorus, they didn’t mind if you weren’t fabulous. I wasn’t fabulous. I love to sing. I think everyone should sing, out loud, in public, whenever the spirit hits them. Singing frees up your soul. Singing is the wings on the angels, its what lets them soar. If I am sad, music picks me up. I have a weird line up of records to play, specific songs from each, to lift me. I start with The Mills Brothers. By the time I’ve played the first three or four songs in my line-up, I’m down right cheerful. I progress through the songs, each perkier than the last, then wander through many other albums, singing my heart out.  I may start with Mood Indigo, but I end up somewhere around Aerosmith, The Rave-Ups, and They Might Be Giants. Singing makes me happy.

Anyway, in ninth grade chorus, there was a girl who looked like the meanest girl on the planet. She had jet black hair, DoubleD breasts, and a vicious scowl. She scared me. She was quite pretty but mean looking. Now, our chorus room had bleachers. We’d line up on the bleachers just as we did on the stage for concerts, and that’s how we practiced. One particular day, the teacher called the Sopranos down to the piano to do warm ups, and this mean faced girl was the first to arrive there. She stopped on the lowest tier of the bleachers, lifted up those DoubleD tits, and dropped them on top of the piano! And then she smiled.

This was the first time I ever saw her smile. Her face lit up. She lit up. She became, in that moment, the most beautiful person I had ever seen. This was a joy like I had never expected her to possess, and I suddenly understood that those massive breasts caused her a lot of pain. I suspected there was plenty of emotional pain, since young males were (are) enormously distracted by tits and hers were enormously distracting even if you weren’t interested in tits. I wondered how she could ever know if a boy liked the person behind the breasts. That isn’t the pain I suddenly understood.

It was the recognition that large breasts were heavy that struck me; the slow comprehension that this weight pulled her off balance and required her spine and muscles to work constantly to keep her balanced and upright. I don’t think I ever would have understood that if I hadn’t seen her drop those boulders on top of the piano and smile that stunning smile.  Whenever I see one of those women who have had mega-implants installed, I think of this girl.

I think it odd that people never seem happy with how they look. Girls with straight hair get perms, girls with curly hair iron it flat.  We get breast implants or reductions, tummy tucks, nose jobs – now having your lips fattened is the thing. I don’t get that, at all. Most of the women I see with that lip thing have weird looking mouths. Honestly, to me, it looks like they have a vagina on their faces, which is probably why so many men think this is sexy. This fixation with altering appearance isn’t restricted to women. Men do it with bodybuilding, often going to bizarre extremes.

We tan, tattoo, make-up, curl/straighten/dye/cut, nip, tuck, inflate, and pierce. Using our bodies, we find infinite way to express who we are. Our bodies and faces are the ultimate canvas on which we display our creativity and individuality. If we don’t like something, we change it, sometimes permanently, sometimes not. I wonder that girl from chorus had her breasts reduced. I wonder if the lip-fattening women have regrets. I wonder. Mostly I wonder if these changes give the sculptee lasting pleasure. What I mean is that plump lips or big tits don’t change who you are, and if who you are doesn’t change, how you feel inside doesn’t change either. It doesn’t matter how you look - pretty does not equal happy. Change how you think and you change how happy you are. Change how you look and you change how you look.

Mostly. Seriously, not every one has cosmetic surgery to be more popular or sexier. Not everyone pumps iron to get hulking. There’s nothing wrong with making yourself over in your own image. Just take a good look inside and see why you are doing it. If you are doing it to ‘make’ yourself happy, it isn’t going to work. If you’re doing because the outer you doesn’t reflect the inner you, go for it. Just be honest with yourself.


© Copyright 2011 Rikki Ansell
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