Starfish

Starfish

Irena Sendler

          When Irena Sendler died at the age of 98 in May of 2008, she was survived by a daughter, granddaughter, and thousands of men and women who existed because of her fearless beauty. I ran across this article about Sendler a couple of weeks ago and knew immediately that I wanted to write about her. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and put about 450,000 Jews into the Warsaw ghetto, Sendler was 29 years old. By 1942, she headed the children's section of an underground organization established for the express purpose of saving these Jews. 
 

          As a social worker for the city of Warsaw, Sendler had a pass that allowed her to go in and out of the ghetto. Once inside, she and her network of volunteers set about convincing Jewish parents to let her take their children out of the ghetto. They smuggled the children out in ambulances, coffins, potato sacks, and even hid a sedated baby in a toolbox and took them to safer locations. Sendler often hid the children with non-Jewish families, and she later said that no one refused to take a child from her, despite the fact that harboring a Jew was punishable by death. It is estimated that Sendler and her network saved 2,500 Jewish children from deportation to concentration camps. 

          But she did something else too - something a mother might do. She made a meticulous coded list of the children's names and their hiding places in the hopes they could be reunited with their families after the war. Identical lists were filed neatly in two glass jars buried under an apple tree. In 1943, Sendler was arrested and tortured, but the Nazis never found the jars. She did not consider herself a heroine and regretted that she did not do more. About her achievement, Sendler said, "Every child saved with my help and the help of all my wonderful secret messengers...is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory."

          
          When I first read this woman's incredible story, I did not know I would include it in a post that also discussed the U.S. president, Mother Theresa, and starfish. The same week I learned about Irena Sendler, I saw President Obama's speech about race in our country. At the end of that speech, he said, "We need to spend some time in thinking about how do we bolster and reinforce our African-American boys?...There are a lot of kids out there who need help, who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement. And is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them, and values them, and is willing to invest in them?"

                                  The portion relevant to this post starts around 12:15

                                      

          Don't worry. This is not going to become a post about politics or race. It is, however, about being a human being (so Vulcans should stop reading now). I was glad to hear Obama make this statement, but I also felt incredibly powerless. I am not a boy or even an African-American woman. I am not a lawmaker, a teacher, or a sociologist. Basically, I could not think of a single way in which I was remotely qualified to give anyone "the sense that their country cares about them."

Then I remembered Irena Sendler and the oft-quoted but still beautiful passage from the Talmud: "He who saves one life saves the world entire." One woman, a baby when she was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto, credited Sendler with her own life but also the lives of her children and grandchildren. 

          This reminds me of something my friend Colin (who is not a woman but is beautiful all the same) told me in high school. I affectionately dub it the Starfish Story and it goes something like this: a man walks along a beach where thousands of starfish have washed ashore where they will dry out and die. He encounters another man walking along, picking up starfish, and throwing them into the ocean. The first man says, "What are you doing? There are thousands of starfish and you can't possibly save them all. Your efforts will make no difference." His companion simply picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean, saying, "It made a difference to that one."

          I hope no one will ever again find themselves in Sendler's position. I believe I can say with certainty, however, that we will all encounter someone in need of remembering their worth to the human race. Because are we not all starfish at some point? Mother Theresa said, "Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile." And this is the point in the journey that has been writing this post that I started to feel full of power. I cannot rid the world of all evil and injustice no matter how much I feel like it every time I reread the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I feel constantly embarrassed by the fact that I cannot even make myself love everyone I encounter. But kindness - that I can do.

Mother Theresa, a beautiful woman with

kindness in her face, her eyes, and her smile

          My mother told me - and I believer her (most beautiful woman I know, remember?) - that often this kindness can merely take the form of openness.  We are so often closed off from others, focused on computer screens, text messages, or simply the task ahead. I work in the library at my university where, literally, hundreds of students walk by me. A lot of them are stressed. Unless they approach me with a question, I rarely look up from what I am doing. I have a job to do, you know. Yet, is my productivity lessened because I look up and smile? In a single smile, anyone can see kindness. I hope that a starfish - someone in need of encouragement or just a conversation - would see an open door through which they might enter. 

          So there's my jumbled mess of a blog post and my goal for the future. It is a simple goal but one essential for promoting the well-being of starfish. 

          Kindness in my smile.

Dustin Hoffman: An Interesting Woman

Dustin Hoffman: An Interesting Woman

The Beautiful Rachel Gonia sent me this video, and it simply must be watched! It is enlightening for men and women and really touching. In an interview for the American Film Institute, Dustin Hoffman talks about his experience making the comedy, Tootsie. Tootsie is a hilarious film about an unemployed actor who pretends to be a woman to get a job and ends up as a powerful and inspirational character on a popular soap opera

Hoffman discusses how he had makeup tests done to see if he could realistically be made to look like a woman. When he saw footage of himself as a woman, Hoffman asked the makeup artists to make him more attractive. When told they had made him as beautiful as possible, he had a revelation. He recounts tearfully telling his wife that he believed he was "an interesting woman." In spite of this, he would never have approached himself at a party or asked himself on a date because he did not meet society's standards for beauty. He then makes a profound and emotional statement: "There's too many interesting women I have not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed."

Wow.

Dustin Hoffman, in Tootsie

First of all, I must say something about Ms. Rachel. She is a busy and accomplished lady! She is the pastor of her own church, the wife of a pastor, and the mother of a beautiful daughter. She has also been involved in gleaning ministries and promoter of a healthier congregation. The last time I remember seeing Ms. Rachel, I was a freshman in college (that was 6 years ago). However, I emailed her several times throughout college with theological questions and concerns and she always sent back long, detailed, and well-thought out responses. Just last fall, I needed a bit of extra encouragement and she emailed again - those long, thoughtful responses that let me know my concerns and questions were valid and worthy of serious answers. When I started writing this blog and published it on my facebook page, she started sharing links that might be of interest.

Ms. Rachel sent this video to me in a link that was titled "Dustin Hoffman breaks down crying explaining something that every woman sadly already experienced." It's great because Dustin Hoffman is a wonderful actor and it's wonderful to hear him advocating for women.

But I love it most because it is so true and so relatable. I have never felt that I conformed to society's idea of what a woman should be. It is not simply that I feel chubby but that I am also a shy person with a heavy dose of introversion. In high school, I often felt like "the single friend" to my best friends whom I found prettier and more social than me. It's not that there was anyone at my high school that interested me. But one does want to be wanted. To hear Austin's version of it, high school seems to be fairly traumatic for all involved, guys and girls alike! However, my point here is this: as a teenage girl, the thing I felt my value depended on was being found attractive by teenage boys. This is the same girl, by the way, who took AP courses, read voraciously between classes, and got a scholarship to a private liberal arts college. I wish I could tell her a thing or two now.

Except, I didn't exactly stop thinking that way when I graduated from high school. Now I have a boyfriend, and, hard as I seem to try, he doesn't appear to be going anywhere. But I still have ideas about what a woman should be, and I still feel somehow inferior when I don't meet those "requirements". 

A year and a half ago, my very dear friend and college roommate asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. I was positively thrilled and honored. However, the closer it got to her wedding day, the more nervous I became. I was painfully aware that I'm hopeless with doing hair and have no idea how to do formal makeup. I felt nervous and stressed. But, most of all, I felt bad about myself: not fat or ugly but something much worse. I felt like a failure as a woman because hair spray and a curling iron were foreign instruments to me.

That day I was rescued by none other than the beautiful bride herself. In the midst of having her own hair and makeup done, getting into her dress, having pictures made, and doing general bride stuff, April, who knew about my irrational concerns, made sure one of her other friends took care of everything. She also complimented me several times on how nice I looked. So, thank you, April McArdle, for making me feel beautiful on YOUR wedding day :)

Hopefully, the next bride will have an easier time of it. Because now I know that those are not the things that make us women or beautiful. Many of my friends are great with makeup and have a lot of fun with creative and artistic styles. This doesn't make them vain or shallow. That is not the point I am making here. The point is, they ENJOY it. It is an artistic outlet. I don't feel that way. I find it to be generally tedious. It is not something that I value enough to spend my precious time doing. And it is positively silly to get worked up about something that I don't care enough about to learn how to do in the first place.

Dustin Hoffman is right. As a man, he was brainwashed into believing women were supposed to look and be a certain way. And that's an important issue that needs to be addressed, but I am much more concerned with how we women brainwash ourselves. Why are we so obsessed with these features of femininity? What exactly is so special about a pretty face and flowing locks? I am a woman because I was born that way, along with about 50 percent of the rest of the world's population.

But I am me because of a million tiny factors that came together in a completely unique way, turning me into me. It's an amazing and painful and wonderful process called childhood and college and grad school and friendship and falling in love. It's what makes me beautiful.



Goodness and Truth

Goodness and Truth

 

Eric Gill, An Essay on Typography

 

Wow! The beautiful women I have encountered this week have given me some great material! I won't cover all of it in this post because of time constraints. However, I did want to write a quick entry today.

 

The first beautiful woman I encountered this week was a woman who works at the local public library. I do not know her name, but as she was checking out my items, I complimented her red and black earrings. I didn't pay much attention to the colors of her outfit as a whole but I thought they were a cool shape. She thanked me and explained that red and black are her "power colors". "I always wear one of my power colors on Monday," she explained cheerfully. "Today I decided I would wear both of them." That ended our exchange and it doesn't sound like much, but I felt inspired.

I find it so easy to feel overwhelmed by the stresses of the week to the point of feeling powerless. But this woman reminded me that a human being is a powerful thing. A woman is a powerful thing. We only need to remember it ourselves. I am smart enough and experienced enough to take on any challenges that come my way. And these challenges will only make me smarter and more experienced, further preparing me for the next thing. 

 

Beautiful women recognize the strength and power within them. And they help others to find the power and worth in themselves as well.

 

Which brings me to my second encounter with beauty this week. My friend Kacey Werle posted the following statement on her facebook page:

 

"Was told by a barista at Starbucks that I am the politest person she has served in months. This little compliment made me happy because I make it a point to be kind in my transactions with people, but sad too. Why are we so unkind to those who perform a service to us? They make pennies and if their attitude is less than amazing maybe the person before you brought them down by being less than kind. You might be the nicest person someone deals with today so make an effort everybody." 



 

 What a great reminder! To makes others feel that they are less attractive, less powerful, or less valuable than ourselves (intentionally or not!) does not enhance our own beauty, strength, or worth. Rather, I believe it has the opposite effect. While I am never intentionally rude to anyone, I am often so focused on my own thoughts and world when checking out at the grocery store and walking across campus that I hardly notice the people around me. Well, we all deserve to be noticed because we are all beautiful in our way.

 

I will end with the same quote I began with : "If you look after goodness and truth beauty will take care of itself." 

 

So, my friends, know your strength, wear your power colors, and always be kinder than necessary 

 



Not On Her Resumé

Not On Her Resumé

My Mother on a train ride with her oldest grandchild

This is a blog post devoted to my beautiful mother so I wanted to start it with one of my favorite poems (by Joyce Sutphen) that reminds me of her.

Things You Didn't Put On Your Resumé

How often you got up in the middle of the night

when one of your children had a bad dream

and sometimes you woke because you thought

you heard a cry, but they were all sleeping.

so you stood in the moonlight 

just listening to their breathing, and you didn't mention

that you were an expert at putting toothpaste 

on tiny toothbrushes and bending down to wiggle

the toothbrush ten times on each tooth while

you sang the words to songs from Annie, and

who would suspect that you know the fingerings

to the songs in the first four books of the Suzuki 

Violin Method and that you can do the voices

of Pooh and Piglet especially well, though

your absolute favorite thing to read out loud is

Bedtime for Frances and you picked

up your way of reading it from Glynnis Johns,

and it is, now that you think of it, rather impressive

that you read all of Narnia and all of the Ring Trilogy

(and others too many to mention here) to them

before they went to bed and on the way out to

Yellowstone, which is another thing you don't put

on the resumé: how you took them to the ocean

and the mountains and brought them safely home

~ Joyce Sutphen

My mother has a pretty impressive resumé as it is, and you could see by glancing at it that she is an incredibly compassionate person. As a social worker, she has spent my entire life working for children's homes, nursing homes, and hospices. Whenever people ask what my mother does and I tell them that she is the director of a hospice, they say "That takes a special kind of person." And Mother is a special kind of person, but she doesn't think of it that way. She just recognizes that everyone has to die and thinks that everyone deserves to die with dignity and in physical, emotional, and spiritual comfort. Because that's the kind of person that she is.

She is also the kind of person who, while she sometimes feels overwhelmed or stressed, is made happy and satisfied by doing for others at least as much as (and often more than) for herself. She is a naturally quiet and shy person but she never lets it keep her from doing what needs to be done. She has a fantastic smile. To other people, she is all these things and more.

But I think she is beautiful for all the things that she doesn't put on her resumé. It is not necessarily the specifics of the poem that I love so much as the sentiment behind it. Because my mother is a person who, though an intelligent and accomplished person who is great at her job, takes her most pride in being the mother of Justin and Caitlin and the Nonna of Preston and Nico. It's what she's absolutely best at but not necessarily something she gets credit for.

My mother does not know that she is a beautiful woman, something I know beyond question. Like me, she recognizes her accomplishments but is easily depressed by her belief that she looks fat and old. I wouldn't say fat. I would say comfortable. Because my mother has never put a child under the age of three to bed without rocking it to sleep first. She laid down with me until I fell asleep for a significant chunk of my life and would sing whatever came to mind. I specifically remember "Doe-Rae-Me". I still love how she can transform me into a child again whenever I come home, whining about some complaint, and she lets me snuggle up while she plays with my hair.

As for age, I don't think my mother looks her age (which is not old!). I see no shame in being old enough to have been married to the same person for thirty years! I think my parents are great role models as a couple and as parents and I always trust her relationship advice. When my nephews get into trouble, she doesn't fuss or raise her voice (even if they do!) She trusts in the rationality of children and explains what the appropriate behavior is. In spite of not always having a high opinion of herself, Mother is WONDERFUL at making other people feel good. She knows when to just listen to venting and when to be in fix-it mode. And she will stay awake or stay on the phone however long it takes to start feeling better. And she has always told us how amazing and beautiful we are.

This is what I want to say to my mother: You tell me I am wonderful and beautiful but I came from you. You created me and raised me (with help, of course) so the only logical conclusion is that you are wonderful and beautiful too. In fact, here's something else that you won't put on your resumé: you are unquestionably the most beautiful woman I know.

me and my mother!

P.S. Mother also has a passion for music and is, frankly, more "hip" than I am. She is forever introducing me to great music and musicians. Here's one of my favorite songs that she recently sent to me.

Irrelevent

Irrelevent

Dove's Real Beauty Sketch Ad

In May 2013, Laurie Penny wrote an article for the New Statesman titled "I don't want to be told I'm pretty as I am - I want to live in a world where that's irrelevant." It's a very interesting article (found here) in which Penny discusses beauty and cosmetics advertising campaigns that seem to combat stereotypes about women while actually reinforcing them. 

For example, she talks about Unilever, the company that owns both Dove and manufactures Axe/Lynx deodorant (It's the same product, called Lynx in the UK and Axe everywhere else). Here is Dove's new ad campaign in which a sketch artist draws women the way they describe themselves and again the way they are described by others. The message: you are more attractive than you think you are. 

The Axe Ad

Now here is an ad for Axe/Lynx deodorant in which a mob of sexy women in bikinis rush a man spraying himself with the product. The message here is equally obvious: use this deodorant and beautiful women will want you. Now I presume that most men are not stupid enough to believe that their deodorant brand can really influence their sex life (because this ad is not about dating or relationships. It is unquestionably about sex.) However, the two ad campaigns - both created under the same company - speak volumes about what is known as the "double standard" associated with gender.

The Dove ad clearly addresses women and says "You are beautiful as you are!" The Lynx ad, however, is talking to men, telling them "Women are beautiful when they look like this." So who are we supposed to believe? The ad directed at us or the one directed at our boyfriends and brothers? In all honesty, I find the ad as insulting and dangerous to men as to women. Not only does it dictate what women are supposed to look like but also what men are supposed to want.

Well, Laurie Penny is having none of it. She finds fault even with the Dove ad, saying "The message...is that before we can be happy, women have to feel 'beautiful'." I can certainly relate to this. I have always doubted my physical beauty. Tired of that, I decided about two months ago to be more creative with my outfits and jewelry (not the same ring and necklace every day) and take the time to do my makeup. My thought process was "If I can't be beautiful, at least I can feel beautiful." Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The problem is sometimes I don't feel like planning an outfit or doing my makeup. I'd rather sleep in. Or I'd rather be comfortable when I spend the day in the library working on a paper or cuddled on my couch with a book. So on those days I'm more rested or more comfy, but I don't feel beautiful or even very good about myself.

And that's just ridiculous. 

Because I am me every day. And that's not something to sneeze at because I'm a pretty cool person, thank you very much. But it's not easy to be myself when I am worried about how I look. So maybe I don't need to focus on feeling physically attractive. Maybe I need to focus on living my life, loving my family and friends, writing my thesis, and reading as many novels I can get in before school starts back. Maybe I should focus on knowing that I am a beautiful person and not because of my hair, clothes, or makeup.

Here is a long excerpt from Penny's article that I found inspiring and wanted to share:

          "Rather than fighting for every woman's right to feel beautiful, I would like to see the return of a kind of feminism that tells women everywhere that maybe it's all right not to be pretty and perfectly well behaved. That maybe women who are plain, or large, or old, or differently abled, or who simply don't give a damn what they look like because they're too busy saving the world or rearranging their sock drawer, have as much right to take up space as anyone else.

          "I think if we want to take care of the next generation of girls we should reassure them that power, strength and character are more important than beauty and always will be, and that even if they aren't thin and pretty, they are still worthy of respect. That feeling is the birthright of men everywhere. It's about time we claimed it for ourselves."

And speaking of social pressures on women, I'd like to end with an image of what Barbie would look like if she were an average woman (since if the original Barbie were a real girl, her proportions would fit the criteria of anorexia). My mother sent me this article which describes how artist Nickolay Lamm used the measurements of an average 19-year-old to create a realistic model of Barbie.

   

What Makes a Woman Beautiful?

What Makes a Woman Beautiful?

 It occurs to me that I have titled this blog "Beautiful Women" without defining the term "beautiful." (I am assuming that "women" is pretty self-explanatory.) Obviously, I am using the word broadly to encompass all the women I love. But what makes these women beautiful?

 

Obviously, beauty is related to appearance and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) provides such a definition first. According to this most trusted dictionary, beauty is "such combined perfection of form and charm of colouring as affords keen pleasure to the sense of sight."

 

So beautiful women are nice to look at.

And I do wish to point out that this is not a blog devoted to women who are beautiful on the inside but not on the outside because it simply is not true. I believe that EVERYONE, even those of us not satisfied with our bodies, can find something positive to say about them. I have already listed all the things I don't like about myself in previous posts, but what about what I appreciate about my appearance? I have an attractive smile and, as weird as it sounds, I think I have nice hands. I also have a very expressive face which I like about myself. It lets people know that I'm listening to them (or that I'm not) and that I care about what they're saying, even if I don't know how to respond.

But, of course, my primary interest in creating this blog is to change my focus away from my physical appearance to the things that really matter about myself. So the OED's second definition of beauty is of much greater interest to me.

Beauty is "that quality or combination of qualities which affords keen pleasure to other senses, or which charms the intellectual or moral faculties, through inherent grace, or fitness to a desired end."

According to this definition, women are beautiful when they have pleasing qualities. So beautiful women are clever, funny, kind, happy, graceful, goofy, loving, hard-working, brave, strong, good listeners, carefree, organized, sympathetic, creative, etc., etc., etc.

Now I can be highly grumpy and unpleasant when I'm stressed (which is pretty much anytime that I'm in school) but I do not know anyone who can be unpleasant ALL the time.

So, according to the most trusted dictionary in academia, every woman is beautiful!