In high school and college I lived in the frumps. I would go so far as to say that at 24 I have just decided to claw my way out of personal neglect. I spent my high school years wearing baggy boys pants, mens’ boots, and too big flannel shirts. I told myself that these clothes were comfortable (and they really were), and at least I was dressing modestly (right?). In college I traded in my boys jeans for camo pants of flannel pajama bottoms. I still wore boots–paratrooper jump boots–when I wasn’t wearing my old, falling apart, imitation birkenstocks. The day I met my husband I was wearing camp pants, jump boots, a mens XL ski jacket, and a stocking cap with flames on it (the picture at the beginning of this post. It’s clickable if you want a better look). I was in college and didn’t have time to worry about dressing up, or at least that’s why I told those around me.
When I did dress up, I felt like a moose just walked in wearing a pink leotard. The typical question was, “Did you run out of blue jeans?”
During those painful middle school years, when I so desperately wanted to gain attention from…well pretty much anyone, I saw myself fading into the shadows while the girls around me blossomed into beautiful women. I remember sitting for hours trying to recreate a hair style only to burn myself with the curling iron. I felt so stupid with makeup (I still do in fact). My nail polish always chipped. I never had the newest coolest clothes, and the logical part of me didn’t care a whit. I didn’t really want to be a walking advertisement for Calvin Klein or Tommy Hilfiger. I have to admit that every time I tried to live up to some standard of beauty and failed, I was left with another gaping wound slashed across my heart.
Like a good psychology study, I put up a reaction formation defense mechanism to hide the pain that was pouring out every time I didn’t,couldn’t…failed to live up to the standard. Every time I tried, I was told that I wasn’t enough of a girl, that I would always be just one of the guys. Eventually I just quit trying. Eventually I was told that trying to be a girl was violating my own mold, so I lived in baggy pants and boots with unkempt hair and a non-existent beauty routine protecting me from what I saw would be certain failure if I tried to emerge as a female.
All along, I knew that I had something more to offer. I’m not just talking about another made up face or pretty smile. I knew that I had substance, brain, beauty, personality. All along, I knew that I was more than just ‘one of the guys,’ and I longed–craved–for somebody to notice that something more in me. I refused to become less than myself, and in my aching middle school girl heart losing myself was what I had to do to be noticed for anything.
Paradoxically, I was too much and not enough at the same time. Too much one of the guys to be one of the girls, not enough one of the guys to be one of the guys. Too much confident to be insecure, but beneath that facade of confidence was a horribly insecure and lost little girl. Too much wild to be mild, not enough wild to be wild. I am and always have been a free spirit. Too much of a free spirit to let myself be caged, but that free spirit has never been enough to let me soar above the rocks that have been thrown at my soul.
There is not a woman in the world who has not felt those rocks. Every one of us longs to be accepted as we are (warts and all). Still with just a strong of a yearning, we want to be found lovely, beautiful, feminine, graceful, soft, and strong. Those arrows that pierce our hearts point out flat hair, acne scars, extra pounds, the dirty dishes, ever demanding _______(children, husband, church, family, schoolwork, boss, etc.), working without recognition, ordering fast food one more night because all the meat is in the freezer, freckles, wrinkles, glasses, the car that breaks down, the flowers that don’t grow, the house that won’t stay clean, and on and on and on. Eventually all those things wear us down, and we become convinced that we are failures as women. When we think about trying to regain sour lost femininity we feel unworthy and certain we would fail if we tried.
We hide our hurts. For some women it’s done through personal neglect (clothes, weight, hair, etc) others exploit themselves to hide their insecurities. Some women hide behind their family. I hide behind my free spirit.
Women don’t lose their beauty when they gain weight or get a few gray hairs. Beauty isn’t something that money or time can change. A woman becomes frumpy when she walks around defeated by the world. The battle scars that criss cross our hearts pour over into our appearance and we live our lives looking defeated. I feel like a bystander to life, so I look like I want to blend in with the wall.
There are so many spiritual principles in this discussion of beauty, but right now they sound like those trite Christianese answers that make me want to slap the speaker This has been one of the most difficult blog articles I have ever written because I have offended many of my readers with my last post on this subject. Mostly it has been difficult because I have had to stare my heartache in the face and then lay it all out on the table for you to read. My gut instinct tells me that this is not the last time I will be writing about hiding my sexuality. I’ll leave you with this thought:
You can’t stop hiding unless you know what you are hiding. What are your hurts that you are hiding? What is defeating you?
