Beauty revolution?

January 31, 2009

I have all these thoughts hitting up against each other in my head and I don't know how to sort them out. Maybe I'll just spew and see what happens:

I went and got my hair cut this morning. I was in desperate need of a hair cut. I didn't feel attractive or like getting my hair cut was going to make a difference for me. Nonetheless, I work in a professional setting and felt the need to look the part.

My clothes don't fit me right now. Even my "skinny" jeans are hanging on my hips. My weight has been all over the place this year. As I think I've blogged about before, when I was in the hospital I put on 100+ pounds of fluid in a matter of weeks. I think the highest my weight was (that they actually recorded anyway) was at 255. When I was discharged from the hospital the first time I had no clothes or shoes that would fit me. My mom and sister had to go to Walmart and buy me all new clothes - size "XXX." My skin stretched something awful all over my body. As a result, I have stretch marks from the middle of my waist all down the inside of my legs. Believe it or not, if you look closely you can even see stretch marks on my feet (from where water blisters would form anytime I tried to get up on my feet and walk).

No one told me when I was in the hospital how quickly I would lose the weight. They just told me not to worry - it would go away. But I thought it would be a year before I could lose 100 pounds! Come to find out, I peed off eleven pounds in one day, so within the matter of a week or so I was down to 130-something. I had no muscle and was very weak. I could hardly walk I had been so malnourished from the month's worth of bloody diarrhea I had had. I had lost so much blood while I was in the hospital I had to have five blood transfusions and two plasma transfusions (thank you to all you good souls who donate blood). I was just in really bad shape when I got home.


I don't know that I can even explain how traumatic this experience was for me. My skin was stretched so tight that when I would bend my arm (as best I could - which I really couldn't do), water would ooze out of the crease in my arm. I've written about this so many times, but still when I write I can hardly keep from sobbing. It was terrifying for me. I didn't know what was happening to my body.


So I'm in the fitting room at JCPenney today trying on some clothes that might actually fit me right now, and I'm faced with my reflection. And the stretch marks bring the trauma back. As do the baggy work pants that hang on me when I walk down the hallway - they bring the trauma back. You would think that needing to buy some new clothes because you were skinnier than you've been in probably decades would be fun, wouldn't you? But it's not for me. I want my body to be the way it was. I want to fit in my clothes again. I want to go back in time. I would give anything to go back in time.

I'm going to have to make peace with my body somehow. I just don't know how to do it. If I try to deny that beauty matters, I end up feeling like crap and not taking care of myself. If I believe that beauty matters I end up feeling like crap because I can't meet the standards. I know I'm not alone in dealing with this issue. I think it's just heightened for me because of the drastic changes I've been through lately.

While I was taking my nightly hot bath I thought about bucking the system and redefining beauty. Could we do that? Could we stand up together as women and buck the beauty system? Could the men in our lives join us and support us in that? I thought about all the brave people I've been getting to know on jpouch.net and jpouch.org - people who show pictures of their stomas and scars to help others going through the same thing. I thought about how freeing it would be to show the world my scars and stretch marks. I'm tired of feeling like I have to hide and be ashamed. So I'm not to the point that I'm going to post any pictures of my stomach yet or anything, but writing about it is my first step into living shame free. I've written about it before and I'm sure I'll write about it again.