by tashmcgill | Oct 22, 2014 | Bodies, Culture & Ideas, Health, Mind
I got to 200 the other day. 200 gym sessions this year. I train for lots of reasons.
I need the stress release of boxing.
I like to talk to my trainer who is both my friend and therapist.
I like getting up to go to a place I want to be in the mornings.
And then there’s the real reason, that I sometimes admit to myself.
Because I want to be beautiful, I secretly whisper to myself.
Then I have to follow it up with empowering feminist phrases like ‘beauty is strength’ and ‘healthy is beautiful’.
But I released when I counted to 200, I’m not chasing beautiful at all. I’ve been chasing normal these 200 sessions or so. In fact, normalized beauty is probably what I’ve been chasing since my early teens.
So much comfort is found when you can establish your identity within the spectrum of normal. Society doesn’t push uncomfortably on any of your sharp edges that way. Nothing feels like a mis-fit if you can find a spot in the middle of everything.
Normal is not even about being a certain weight or shape. It’s about fitting in. Fitting into clothes, fitting into expectations, fitting into.. normal. Fitting in substitutes for having a sense of belonging, but belonging to what?
Normalized beauty is a set of homogenized templates. Haircuts, fashion cuts, brow styling. Slightly deeper we get to athletic versus curvy and I’ve already talked about the fashionable butt trend. I was just reflecting on the waif trend of the early 2000s. Normalized beauty changes to reflect societal trends. Normalized beauty is formed by comparisons and averages.
So that changes something for me, because actually I’m not humble enough to aspire to normal. I want to be beautiful. I want to be extraordinary. I want to be captivating – and I want to be all of that beyond a normalized beauty template.
At my age, the internet and Facebook is full of pithy sayings and blog posts from women who mean well. They write about becoming comfortable in their own skin, loving their stretchmarks and how their partners are truly attracted to them when they are full of confidence. I want to rally against that, because it feels like just another form of normalization.
I do want to be beautiful in ways that are more than just my body, my shape and my skin. I want to be seen as beautiful in all the ways that only I can be seen. I want to be incomparable, therefore nothing about my beauty can be normalized. I think we all do, men and women alike.
I think I am idealistic. At my age, I’ve pursued this game before. But perhaps it’s not a game. Perhaps all I’m chasing at the gym each morning is strength. Perhaps it is confidence that makes you beautiful, once you know who you are. Perhaps it’s having confidence that there is beauty within you, instead of being concerned with how I average out on the scale of ‘normal’.
Normalization is a creeping vine that has the power to choke us. It pushes us to keep up with the ‘human experience timeline’ – marry at a certain age, buy a house, have kids, change careers, travel overseas, buy that beach house… and so on. Normalization starts on the inside though, in how we see ourselves, then how we see others, how we relate or compare ourselves to others and then how we compare against the timeline.
It comes back to identity. Who am I? What am I about? Where and how do I find meaning for myself. What am I going to do about it?
I’m going to get up in the morning and hit the gym for session #201. I’m going to look in the mirror and see what I see, instead of what I’ve been looking for. Instead of chasing normalized beauty, I’m just going to chase uncovering, discovering me.
by tashmcgill | Sep 25, 2014 | Bodies, Culture & Ideas, Health, Mind
I’m not Beyonce or Kim Kardashian, but I’ve got booty. And I’m resolutely proud of it, actually. Prouder now than I was ten or even five years ago. It’s a symbol of strength, capacity and my relative wealth. Still, I’ve scorned and joked my way through endless Instagram posts.
“Do you even lift?”
“Squats all day.”
“Every day is leg day.”
I never considered myself to be body-obsessed, let alone butt-obsessed. Body conscious, for sure. Who isn’t? I’ve written about those issues some. Then I was talking with my friend Jessie – the talented, intelligent and compassionate @bloore). In talking about self-image and the age of selfies, she told me about removing almost every mirror from her house so she could learn not to look at herself.
Jessie’s captivating thought, while not the central idea of my post is worthy of a summary. Our obsession with mirrors and now, selfies, causes us to form our identity or self-image from an external observation. We observe ourselves and pass judgement or scrutinize our flaws. (At the same time, I think it gives us carte blanche opportunity to indulge our vanities too – TM.)
So I tried it for a few days. I paid attention to how I used the mirror. To be honest, I think I did ok. Not that many selfies, a tiny mirror in the bathroom doesn’t allow much scrutiny and there’s no full length mirror in my bedroom either. That might explain a few things. But I was totally mistaken.
I realised what was happening while I was walking to work. Past a run of glass windows, I caught myself studying my reflection. I’m a secret glancer, but not too secret. I caught myself almost every day. Not just mornings, but on the way to meetings and leaving at the end of the day.
So I paid attention to the pattern my eyes travelled. Butt, hips, knees, hair, sometimes the shadow of my chin, and then my butt. Lingering on the butt, particularly if walking uphill. In the work kitchen, the mirrored splashback means I pay attention to my hair and eyes, same as in the rear-vision mirror of my car. But anywhere else, I was a butt-watcher.
Day after day, I caught myself in the same patterns. So I started to think even more about what I was paying attention to and what I was looking for. Then I realised it was beauty, normalised beauty. My stomach is strong but soft. My arms have definition and curves. My legs are powerhouses. I’m short and curvy and strong, but all of that is acceptable in the curvaceous globes of those gluteous maximus and their supporting muscalature. In those moments, I belong to the beautiful crowd – we are alike. Those rounded curves are just as well formed as some of the best I’ve seen, hidden in clothes.
That beauty is more than just a physical sense of appreciation. It’s deeper. We have to become reconnected to our bodies and integrated with what they tell us. My butt is a staunch reflection of my character and personality. Gregarious, generous but in proportion, equal parts soft and strong, with strength that can’t be seen but only felt or experienced. My butt is one part of my body that really feels like me, if my heart and soul was flesh and blood. And my ass doesn’t make apologies, or demand them from me. It just opens doors with a kick of my hip or sashays down the pavement when taken by the mood.
I’m in two minds about the the endless parade of booty songs on the radio – they are not the kind of empowering I was looking for. But they rightly give women the opportunity to reclaim their bodies. I just want to reclaim mine for more than sex, whilst still being sexy.
I don’t wear yoga pants outside of the gym. I do wear tight jeans. My ass is not #belfie-perfect but I do squat and lunge and lift and climb steps taller than my calves. My ass is not a sex-symbol, it’s a powerhouse of confidence. That’s no brave feminist voice, either. I literally can carry 15 – 20kgs of toddler on each hip, supported by that butt. It powers me up stairs faster than my long-legged colleagues and it cushions every hard and cold surface I have to sit myself on. Am I a proud butt-watcher? Well, I don’t know. I’m not watching anyone else’s. I just see what my own is accomplishing and feel somehow stronger. I appreciate how I fill out my own jeans. I’m not likely to post a #belfie anytime soon – but I have a butt worth admiring on it’s own merits.
What is this vanity – this self-obsession with my physical being that can produce such torment and such joy, such satisfaction and a sense of pride? Can I weather it, just accept it and let it be – that the one thing I might catch myself watching is the one thing that gives me confidence instead of robbing it?
There are other parts of my physical self I might add to the watching list then; my cooking callouses, my calf definiton, the scalloping abdominals under their soft stomach blanket. The skin that carries my stories in tattoo, the eyes that are equal parts my mother and father. There are many parts of my body I would reclaim and let them be pride-stirring, strength-giving reminders that I am in fact, not my body. But my essence is reflected in it.
by tashmcgill | Feb 5, 2013 | Church, Spirituality, Youth Work
Honesty is always the best policy, except for all the occasions on which honesty will cost you almost, if not absolutely everything. This is true in a number of places but mostly true in church. This is surprising, considering the enormous effort we invest in trying to help young people feel confident to “be themselves”.
A week ago, I wrote a couple of very honest blog entries on My Fear Of Failure and Frustration: The Agonizingly Slow Pace of Transformation. I loved the comments, feedback and a dozen or so emails and Facebook messages I received from people sharing their thoughts and stories. One friend said “I just thought, wow, Tash is being really vulnerable.”
That comment both graced me and irked me, as I’ve previously taken pride in my ability to be honest and vulnerable. Yet, on reflection – I remembered another conversation just a couple of weeks ago. In passing, I made a statement that was truthful, but sharp.
Me: “Oh, was that a little too honest? I may have crossed the line.”
Him: “No, it was fine – better it be said and heard, than thought and not spoken.”
Me: “Well, you know me – never one to hold back an opinion if given the opportunity.”
Him: “Maybe a few years ago, but if I was being honest, you haven’t been that honest for a long time.”
When Did I Stop Being Honest?
As soon as I learned how honesty could hurt me and that honesty wasn’t always acceptable. And then I realized that I learned to be dishonest in the Church. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Oct 18, 2012 | Culture & Ideas
“…Thus, our humanity became defined by the collection of transactions in which we traded peace, war, love and chaos.
We hoped for triumph, we landed in despair. Then we began again.”
We are in the wild days. Not the wilderness, or a desert or a walkabout gone on too long. No, these are the wild days and the wild nights – it’s we who have become the untamed, the unleashed, the unhindered, the uninhibited. We have loosed our bonds or had them loosened so we have redefined ourselves without boundaries and cast ourselves out into the endless wondering of possibility, the freedoms of being unconstrained.
We have hoped to be brave enough to say “nothing is forbidden” but we are bound in by fear, regardless. We are in the wild days but our hearts are wrestling for constraint.
Wild/wīld/
Adjective: (of an animal or plant) Living or growing in the natural environment; not domesticated or cultivated.
Adverb: In an uncontrolled manner: “the bad guys shot wild”.
Noun: A natural state or uncultivated or uninhabited region.
Synonyms: adjective. savage – mad – feral noun. wilderness – waste
We live in boundaries, in a series of social norms that provide a sort of governance. Beyond these norms, when they are stripped away and discarded, no longer functional or necessary – we fear and risk losing ourselves. We try to replace boundaries, to redefine and reestablish them in hope of finding our secure footing again.
But often the last time we were on the loose without these boundaries was adolescence. In adolescence we treated boundaries with disdain but discovered ourselves by them. Too harsh and we rejected them, too soft and we bowled them over emerging somehow into our first adulthood. So now, we seek out our new rules, our new fences by the same methodology we employed then. Sensationalism, expression, exploration and extremism. We live on high alert, our senses ready and receptive. Still, now is not the time to re-imagine our awakening into adulthood. Once landed there, despite an absence of the boundaries we knew – it’s time to redefine ourselves into adulthood.
Perhaps the final stages of growing up, is redefining yourself into adulthood the second time around. It might be your quarter-life, mid-life crisis, your divorce, a faith crisis, the death of a loved one, an addiction or just boredom that launches your redefining moment. But never have you been more ‘be-coming’ than in that moment of coming home to yourself, in the last rendition.
We are fearful of the wild. The wildness within us, the wildness around us, the wildness of others. Our boundaries, social or otherwise, are our great defensive blockade against the wild. As husbands and wives, we harness each other up to prevent the wild from breaking loose. We employ rules like, “don’t a say a word, if it won’t be nice”, because in the unloosing of our tongue – the wildness might escape.
But I am not afraid of the wild. I long for the wild.
late in the night
i wake, dreaming
saying to myself over and again
‘don’t try to tame the wild one’
then i dream on waking
asking myself which fence to build
which gun to load and thus
hear the lion roar, feel the tiger’s claw
no one ever tamed the wild one.
Don’t build fences, dig deep wells. That is my philosophy of love, loyalty and passion. The concept is self-explanatory – don’t make rules to keep, control or constrain people just create places of deep refreshment that draw people back to the centre.
Here’s why I’m not afraid of the wild within. My well is deep. The tiger in me is well-satisfied. I am at home. Be at home with yourself and the wild within. Don’t build fences, don’t rely on the boundaries. Learn to live from deep within the well. Learn to live in the wild, with the wild, out of the wild.
by tashmcgill | Jul 22, 2011 | Prose & Poetry
We forget that the seasons of life do not move as quickly as the seasons of spring, winter and fall. For some of us, we have never been known in summer; in full bloom. Some of us are re-emerging, seen for the first time.
I wrote this poem when as I was stepping back into myself after some time away. I realised that while the reflection of myself I saw in the eyes of others was familiar to me; they were seeing me for the first time.
Oh, the possibility that we could see ourselves new again, recognising our strength, our beauty, our wonder as if for the first time and without fear.
Fierce.
This woman is like an army in front of me
Like a great tiger out of hibernation
Everything about her uniform is strong,
she is oiled like snakeskin
I forget, you have forgotten her – before the Hiberation,
that great dark winter when she watched
hovering from the north west east south borders of you
And you, hidden in the corner, did not know me
before the winter; cracking brittle icicle heart.
That underneath, she is entirely fierce
You over there could not know, you there, have pushed it from your mind –
That I am always summer.
Always, like an unshakeable,
immovable living oak tree, a cedar, fragrant – I am drenched
in some internal sunshine, I am always summer merely beneath snow
My blazing flesh becoming sacred, holiness of ash and ice
I have a secret, layers of secrets over hidden things and the most
furthest hidden thing in my heart, beating like a drum…
I do not need to feel happy to be happy
Happiness is in me like spring, summer and snow
now that I have remembered
How to roar from within to always be warm,
the dancing hunt of the tiger, the flight of the dove –
do not forget me again (I will not forget myself)
I do not need to be happy as some people need happiness
or melancholy as fuel, not to be happy or sad
the deepest melancholy is joy to me in summer, spring or snow
I fear nothing, I am not burdened by desire – I am freer
than one who tries to satisfy the burn
the burn instead delights me
i do not need to feel happy to be happy
I am fierce, like summer.
Fearless like this army within me.
