How it started:
It’s 2023 — I don’t think you need any convincing that the world of fashion, wellness, and beauty are oversaturated with thin-ish bodies. Sure, the incredibly unrealistic and unattainable beauty standard may have shifted (by mere centimeters) towards thicker hips or fuller lips, but the underlying goal for our (millennial, I’m assuming) generation has been some iteration of thin…. small. slender. toned.
For me, this has generally been the goal since about 2003 - when I started paying attention to things like boys, status, “it” girls, and whether I should put squares of toilet paper in my bra to fool my classmates (spoiler: I did).
While over the years I was occasionally encouraged to view “all bodies as beautiful” and learn about the dangers of disordered eating through well-meaning sources like our bi-monthly “Life Skills” class in high school, it wasn’t until recently that I actually started un-learning the decades of stubborn toxic-beauty grit.
While the focus of today’s newsletter is more about my hands (more on that later), it would be a shame to pass up on an opportunity to share a few of the resources that are helping me understand the real implications of toxic beauty standards:
Alex Light - particularly this video if you need a shock to your system to get you out of your 30-year trance.
This Ted Talk by Lindsay Kite, PhD - also this book that Lindsay wrote with her sister, Lexie Kite PhD.
Burnout by Amelia & Emily Nagoski (another badass sister duo!)
Jessica DeFino’s substack, “The Unpublishable”
How it’s going (and what my hands have to do with it):
So, there I was, starting the morning by brushing my teeth and putting some balm on my face (with a technique that would almost certainly appall the beauty influencers of Vogue GRWM videos) … when I had a thought: “I wish my hands were thinner.”
More specifically, my fingers. Since the toilet-paper-squares-in-bra era, I’ve been aware of my (completely normal) hands. My (completely normal) fingers are a bit short (actually a completely normal length), which has led me to think my hands aren’t quite as elegant (re: thin) as I’d like them to be. I wonder if these internet hands have anything to do with it?
My hands are perfect – ten fingers, ten fingernails, one cute mole on the palm of my right hand, and a particularly crooked pinky finger. With my hands, I’m able to eat spoonfuls of peanut butter, hold my husband’s hand, support my body weight in yoga class, make dinner at the end of a long day, shake a new friend’s hand, color in my Japanese Zen coloring book while listening to podcasts, scroll through pictures of houses I can’t afford on Zillow…. My hands are perfect.
Not to mention, they’re adorned with three incredibly special rings: my engagement ring that has been in John’s family since the 1800’s, a ring my mom gave to me on my 16th birthday, and my recently deceased grandmother’s wedding band.
How dare I spend a moment considering the worthiness of my fingers, when the life they provide and carry means more to me than I can express?
Why do we give away even an ounce of our attention to reducing worthiness and beauty to mean something as insignificant as the smallness of our hands, no less our bodies?
Why Why Why Why Why do we do this?
When will that voice in my head give up turning me into a smaller version of myself?
So well written. Loved this Noni