"Who do you think you are to help anyone? You're a frickin train wreck."
The cruel belittling voice that had kept me playing small, suddenly ceased to commandeer my life. (I didn't say it went away mind you, it had just lost it's totalitarian grip on me.) Simultaneously, another voice became painfully audible. I believe it's often referred to as The Calling. Sounds cliche I know, but still, there it was calling me... calling me out. No more stories about being too young, too old, too messy, too white, too poor, too privileged, too loud, too imperfect...
I stepped forward with bold humility, having no answers, but some ideas, no cures, but some practices, no beliefs, but some curiosity. I asked to be a vessel for something greater than my ego's mandate.
Ironically the wounds of these women were the same wounds I'd been healing in myself. It was nothing I had advertised about. Actually I wasn't even talking about it to anyone yet. Nowhere in my branding did I even hint at molestation, rape, or bulimia. Apparently the energetic ad world superseded my website and brochures, and my niche market was barreling straight to me.
What I saw in my own journey was the common denominator these wounds shared: Self/Body loathing. Yeah, turns out it's quite a pervasive thing. In the last decade of doing this work I've come to realize that no matter what brand of abuse women have endured, or self inflicted, the same common demon, I mean denominator is present. I have yet to meet one of us who doesn't come face to face with this insidious symptom of our cultural conditioning at one time or another, let alone the millions of women who are driven, consumed, and crushed by it.
We can fling around the ball of blame, hurling it at the patriarchy in general, media, the modeling world specifically, parents, or whatever your fave flave of fault is. It doesn't actually help other than that immediate and fleeting exhale of "at least I'm not to blame." Oh, but aren't you? On some level we are all agreeing to this collective cruel consumer contract. They're only selling what we're buying.
But that is a whole other blog, speech, or lifetime workshop about voting with our dollar.
In the black sea of body dysmorphic retail campaigns, there is one who has risen of above and replied to the cries of young girls, moms, career women, menopausal mavens, and our wise women elders. I've never been to one give a rah rah to corporate anything. I'm a small business owner, farmers market, buy local, organic, chem free, kinda babe. And yet here it is on a massive scale that only the corporate world has reach and breadth for, the 10 year old Dove campaign. A seed of consciousness was injected into the corporate cookie cutter machine, an infiltration of sorts. I can not deny the smile that rushes in, or the tears that these commercials have brought. My heart whispers thank you.
It's as if the work I, and so many of us have been devoted to, is being broadcast on the big screen. A macrocosmic recognition of what the microcosmic grass roots feminist revolution is doing. Rather than diss it with arguments of what Unilever's other companies are up to (ahem Axe Body Spray, yes I get it.) can we just pause, nod our heads and admit that this is significant progress? We all know the road to wholeness, respect, and Self love is a long one. Let us welcome every ally, even if they are making money at it, because last time I checked so are we.
I'll keep doing the work of bringing women back home to the wisdom of their unique perfectly imperfect bodies, and bringing women back together in Circle, in community and collaboration. You keep doing your part. We are affecting the whole. We are influencing the collective, or Dove wouldn't be mirroring this back to us.
Keep looking for what IS working. In the meantime, eff perfect, you be you!
