It doesn’t take us long, does it? We have only to look at those magazines to think, Not me. I could never look like that. Ever. We have only to look at each other—the thin, the round, the short, the tall, the fair, the dark—to remember that there are standards for this, that there are outer attributes that matter more than others: thin, big-breasted, long-legged, large-eyed, shiny-haired, smooth-skinned, thin, thin, thin.
We have only compare.
That’s where it all begins. At the comparison between her and me and you and me and you and them. We are women. We’re really good at comparing.
Comparison doesn’t stay in just the beauty places. We see it, too, in careers, in parenting, in marriage, in influence, in finances, in success.
We read about that author who did something we’ve wanted to do all our life, and we think, Well, guess I’ll never do it now. We hear of parents who never yell and parent in the most empathic way possible and, bonus, have perfectly polite and wonderful kids, and we think, She must be much better at this than I am. We listen to our friends talk about their new opportunities and we see the new cars of acquaintances and we can’t celebrate, not really, because it’s exactly what we wanted, or the idea of it is, at least, and now we’re never going to get it because someone else got it first.
When other people show up with the things we want—the perfect body we’ve been trying so hard to scupt, the accolades we dreamed about, the promotion we should have gotten, the book deal we set out to snag, the song we should have written, the children we long for, the popularity we deserve, the love we desire—we think that means those things aren’t for us, too. We think we should have gotten there first, if only we had done the work it required back when we actually had the time to do it. We think we should be different—flatter stomach, more muscular legs, bigger eyes, more defined chin, bigger breasts, everything that comes with beauty.
But sisters, there is something we’re missing here, and it’s this: There is room enough for all of us.
There is no better or worse, no more womanly and less womanly, do you see? There is only us.
I know it’s not easy to remember, exactly, but it’s true. Someone else having what it takes to be beautiful doesn’t mean that we don’t have it, too. Someone else finding love doesn’t mean we won’t. Someone else walking away from anxiety because they got lucky in that exploration of their past and found the root and pulled it up fast, doesn’t mean we won’t ever be able to do the same.
We think that there is only one space for people. Only one small space to be beautiful, and it’s already occupied. Only one small space to be successful, and it’s already occupied. Only one small space to be adored, and it’s already occupied. So, then, what is left for us?
There is enough to go around, sisters. We live in a world where scarcity is the truth of the day, but it is not the truth of us. Sure, the marketers will try to make us believe it is, because scarcity is what makes people buy, buy, buy, but while there might be a limited supply of products and a limited supply of resources and a limited supply of people making products and securing resources, there is not a limited supply of the things that really matter—love, beauty, family, success marks of a career, dreams come true. And so there is room for all of us in this world. There is room for all of us to be beautiful, for all of us to be successful, for all of us to be loved.
I know how it is. I know how we can get caught in the web of thinking-that-becomes-believing that someone else got something we should have gotten and now there’s nothing left for us. I know, because I have to shake off the stickiness of getting caught every single day when I read writing and blogs from women and men who are trying to do the same things I am—blast the world with truth—and the market feels saturated and water-logged and too concerned with shallow words instead the deeper ones, and maybe I just don’t belong. Maybe I should just stop trying.
But there is room enough for me, too, if I’m willing to carve and bare and build. And I will find my space, because I am unique, and I am my own person and I have something to offer the world from my own individual perspective, which no one in the whole world has exactly.
I only say all that because I want you to understand that there is space for you, too.
Just because the beauty magazines define beauty in those you-don’t-have-it ways doesn’t mean we can’t make our own definition. Just because the world tells us what it takes to be successful people in today’s reality doesn’t mean we don’t get to make our own definitions and shove it in society’s face. Just because that person who was dealing with infertility like we were and now has two babies of her own and we still have none doesn’t mean that there is not space for us here in this miraculous world of parent.
We’re beaten down and kicked around by the subtle message society tries to tell us—that only a select few matter. That we are not, in fact, in that select few. That we should move over and let others take our stage.
It doesn’t matter how we think or how we live or how we love or how we dream or what we do or what we look like or what we see or what we need, there is space for all of us. One’s beauty doesn’t detract from our own. One’s success doesn’t detract from our own. One’s love doesn’t detract from our own. One’s good-mom-ness, good-wife-ness, good-worker-ness, good-citizen-ness, good-decision-ness doesn’t detract from our own.
We are each as different as those stars hanging the sky, and there is nothing that will make us the same, and when we’re thrown together into the black, that’s when we really start to shine. That’s when we begin leaving space for each other.
That’s when we really waver into beautiful.
