The following is what resonates with me and I hope it encourages people to dive into the text or the audiobook and find what resonates with them.
Chapter 7 – Joyous Body: The Wild Flesh
Raise your hand if you’ve ever been victimized by an arbitrary beauty standard. Of all the struggles Dr. Estés lists in the first six chapters and those that will come after, I know this is my greatest one. A lifelong battle to accept what my body looks like and learn to be kind to it. I don’t believe I will ever get to full acceptance or love for my body. I’m being realistic. I know myself and at best I can soften the wiring or redirect my energy when I become critical.
All the narrow paths with 50-foot-high walls with slivers of sunlight are crushing us as women. The requirements for gaining respect are subjective and the goal post moves every single day. Society’s singular beauty standard, with small deviations by region, strips women of our freedom (p. 213). We are subject to unwarranted comments from strangers and any number of assumptions on worth, brainpower, motivation, and capability top off the spoiled sundae.
We are not meant to spend all of our time obsessing over our looks (p. 217). We are robbed of joy (p. 214) and confidence (p. 217). To teach a woman to hate her body is to teach her to hate her family line (p. 217). She shares that body with women in her blood going back to time immemorial. She will criticize and curse every part of herself that society deems unacceptable. Her worth is now based on how she looks and not her character.
I try to separate what I believe I deserve from how I look. All my angst is related to the shape my body takes. You can never shake my confidence in my skin color or hair texture, both phenotypically and deliciously Black. But when I look at where my body curves or puffs out in places, I hate it. I can’t stand it; it is constantly on my mind. I can’t get out of bed without thinking about how I look that day, how my clothes lay on me, will other people see and negatively note the parts of me I do not like.
I am certain that my struggles with vaginismus come from decades of sucking my stomach in. There was a constant refrain to hold my stomach in and the tension affects my entire body. My pelvic floor is in a constant state of tension. My hips and lower back are tight, my glutes are too but also weak. There is not a part of me from my neck to above my knees that hasn’t been dry needled by my physical therapist. I even saw a pelvic PT in my early twenties, my issues persist. Pole built a half level of acceptance, but I still find myself wishing I looked a certain way. Then I could be more confident, more fluid, and convey a performance’s message better.
My omnipresent self-critique is why it’s not my practice to belittle a person’s looks. It’s an odd thing to do unprovoked, it screams insecure or lack of imagination. What do you gain by drawing hateful attention to a person existing and minding their business? Now if you go poking around and someone returns fire in kind, don’t play victim. Step outside of your business and you might get whacked. There are better uses of our time than to further the haphazard whims of a disconnected populace.
Energy, that all facets of our lives including our creativity (p. 218) needs, is siphoned out of us when we internalize judgement of our bodies. As with any hurt and mistreatment, Dr. Estés tell us how to change our attitudes (p. 219). We must recognize what our bodies truly are and what they are for. I enjoy the term “meat suit” but our bodies are beings who care for and need us (p. 223). Our souls animate us, but we have to care for and gently teach our bodies if we are to live out our soul’s desires and purpose. I cannot emote through pole if I am chastising my body for what she hasn’t mastered yet.
Our bodies are meant to protect and tend to the fiery souls within them (p. 221). Our cells hold memories (p. 214) and produce feeling (p. 221). The only thing we fully own and is with us all day every day is our bodies. They have always been with us and have seen and experienced everything we know. Some of those things are bad, that is not the body’s fault. It is not your fault. Memorialize those harrowing experiences but you cannot stay there (p. 210). Our bodies also know the good, they know triumph. They are vulnerable like the land (p. 227), overworking and mowing down the natural features steals its power.
A little effort is all we need to save ourselves and change our views (p. 227). A heaping pile is made by adding smaller amounts over time. Did you learn to read and write by ingesting a dictionary in one day or did you learn letter by letter? Take back your confidence and joy by reclaiming your body’s power to help you. The wild spirit needs to know if the body can do the following: “Does this body feel, does it have right connection to pleasure, to heart, to soul, to the wild? Does it have happiness, joy? Can it in its own way move, dance, jiggle, sway, thrust?” (p. 228).
Can the body live a life? Can it respond to our feelings, desires, wants, and needs? This is what the body is meant to do. It does not exist to please and serve those outside of you. Fickle mandates are not the body’s business and should not be ours either. In no way do they help us live out our purpose or guide us toward an equitable, healthy, and just future. Narrow demands keep us distracted and weak. They keep us insecure, anxious, and unsure. We deserve better and no one will give it to us, we have to take it.
Our various skin tones, shapes, sizes, and physical abilities represent the vastness of the wild spirit and Wild Woman. There has never in the history of humanity been one singular look. How boring it would be if we were all the same. Find a way to honor your body and what it does for you daily. I owe mine a lifetime’s worth of apologies.
