Girls, you may have noticed a thin body presented to you as the body you should want. If you are 15 years old, 20 or 30 years old, and all the way to 40 and 50 years old, and if your body is muscular, thin, fat, tall, short, and in between, this one body is the body you are meant to yearn for.
I’m going to teach you something here that I wish I knew when I was a girl. Images from the media do not create stereotypes. Instead they take old ones from the culture and then flash them in front of your face over and over so you don’t forget them.
Also, you have a cloud that floats above your head that is in charge of your stressful, judging thoughts. It puts you down and makes you feel worse than others. It also put others down and makes you feel better than others.
Advertisers know you have this cloud. The bigger it gets, the more you spend.
But it goes even deeper than that. An important question to ask in life is, “Who is benefiting from me having a big cloud?”
For hundreds of years, there have been these gender boxes. There are only 2, because we were taught there are only 2 genders: boy and girl.
If you are put in the boy box when you are born, you are expected to be cool, tough, big, and strong. You are meant hold in your tears, and if you do express an emotion, it must be anger. You are allowed to take up a lot of space.
If you are put in the girl box when you are born, you are expected to be nice, quiet, and “fine”. You are meant to hide your anger behind a smile, and are allowed to cry, as long as it is a pretty cry. You must be small and not take up space.
So, girls, when you see a thin body presented to you as the body should have, you are being shoved in a box. You are being told to stay small and not take up space.
Pause for a minute, put your hand over your heart, and notice any emotion that might be emerging. What does it feel like? Is it hot or cold? Does it move? Does it remind you of an image or metaphor?
Burning, you say? Hot. Like a fire. Moving from low down and traveling upward. Hmmm…sounds like anger? But you are a girl. You are not allowed to feel anger. It’s raging now, you say?
This is it. This is the moment I want you to experience. Because I want you to feel anger. Anger is so much better than shame. Shame goes inward and has nowhere else to go. It just stops there in your body and keeps you small. Anger moves. It drives you forward. It sparks change.
You are allowed to be angry. It is not ok that you and I, and all those who identify as girls and women in our culture, have been told we should be thin because we are meant to stay in our box and be quiet. It is not ok that we are meant to spend hours and hours of our precious life obsessing over what we are eating, feeling disconnected with other women because we are jealous, and standing in front of a mirror and hating what we see.
In reference to my children’s book, The Girl and The Sun, if we were to take all those hours and energy and bring them to the sun in our heart, then the sun would shine through our cloud and we would paint the world with our own unique rainbow. And we would be big. We would be loud. We would take up space in the world.
Imagine if girl after girl, woman after woman, did this. Imagine the colours and the change. Boys and men would then join. Two-spirited, non-binary, and transgender folks would too. And, holy shit, my heart is so big writing this I don’t know what else to say.
The metaphors that make up the story in my children’s book The Girl and the Sun were molded piece by piece from my own pain and subsequent drive to overcome it. I use these metaphors every day to parent myself and my children. They are not my own ideas. They come from many teachers along the way: Anita Johnston, Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Jeff Foster, Marianne Williamson, and many counselors and colleagues who guided me along my journey. Through The Girl and The Sun I can now share them with the world. The sun, cloud, and rainbow metaphors that make up the story in my children’s book. Please visit www.ashleyandthesun.com/free-handouts-parents-and-teachers for free handouts and www.ashleyandthesun.com for a thorough explanation of the sun, cloud and rainbow metaphors.