Our Bodies, Our Selves

Allegra wrote today about getting a manicure and pedicure and about how she was taught from a very early age to take care of her skin and nails in a beautiful and natural way.
It was a lovely post and as always, made me wonder at the upbringing this woman had- so very different from my own. Hers in exotic lands (at least to me) and mine in a very rural part of Florida. She had a mother who believed in taking care of oneself in a way that my mother never would have dreamed of and I can see how such differences follow one all the way through life, informing our choices, our very attitudes about ourselves.

While Allegra remembers a woman coming to their house monthly to give delicious facials of oatmeal and egg whites and avocados which kept away teenaged acne, I remember using Phisohex, a nasty white medicated soap which smelled terrible and has a list of side-effects a mile long. It was also used in my house to bathe my tiny brothers with and I think about that now and I shudder. Ah well, it was what the doctors recommended and thus it was used, the medicinal green plastic squirt bottle at the sink and at the tub.

My mother was raised by a very practical and very self-denying man who was a good man but saying he was stern would hardly put the label to him. Her mother seemed to have wilted in that man's shadow so that by the time I met her, she was nothing more than a deaf woman whose life was dictated by her deafness, by the heavy black glasses she wore with the hearing aids inside the arms which squealed and caused her pain. She was a sweet woman and I remember her tiny breasts, hanging down in the softness of whichever of the three dresses she wore. She had three, I think, and the brand was Shelton Stroller and two were blue, one was green. I liked the green one best.

Anyway, when we lived behind my grandmother and my grandfather, my mother, my brother and I, our lives were always lived under the watchful eye of Granddaddy and I remember once, Mother putting on mascara and saying, "Don't tell your grandfather."
He was of the firm belief that only whores wore make-up, only prostitutes had pierced ears, only women of low morals painted their fingernails or toenails and I don't know why. He wasn't especially religious. I doubt I ever heard him utter a religious thought. But he had these beliefs, he kept them all his life. He was raised on a farm in Pennsylvania and I can only imagine how cold and dark that life must have been growing up, for the women especially.

Once, when I was probably about nine, I went to a friend's house and we painted our toenails. I felt beautiful, gorgeous, and I ran home to show my mother.
"You better get that off before your grandfather sees it!" were her only words and she meant them.
But how to get it off without nail polish remover? I was in a panic. Nothing I did could get it off. I was frantic, chipping and rubbing and I must have somehow managed because he never saw it.

Is it any wonder that I go through life thinking that any small vanity is somehow sinful? Thinking that my hair, my nails, my feet, my face do not matter unless I am in a play or going on a date or a vacation? Is it?

My Lizzie will put on her jewels and her petticoats for a special night at home with her Lon. I love that about her. My friend, Pam, whose mother also taught her to treat her skin as if it were precious, is always soft and smells good and her make-up is beautiful. Kathleen, although she rarely wears make-up, gets facials for herself and her, mother, too, encouraged her to take care of herself. I am drawn to women like this. But I rarely do any of that for myself. I give my girls gift certificates for mani's and pedi's and once in a blue moon I go with them to get them. Sometimes. Sometimes I do, but then I think of the money and feel it's foolish to spend it like that on myself. I get my hair trimmed maybe twice a year. I file my nails at red lights.

But there is that craving in me to do more. To dress with more care, to wear a bit of make-up, to have pretty toenails, at least, to wear my jewels more often. I had thought, as I have said before, that by now, at this age, I would be in my old gypsy years. This has not turned out to be true and I use my hands and feet like brute animals and am grateful they do for me the work I ask of them and that is about that.

Lis and I used to get manicures. We would go see Mr. Randy at his shop in St. Augustine and get our hair done and Mr. Randy would encourage me to try new things with my hair and Lis and I would pick out nail-polish which took long moments of deciding and the woman would soak our fingers, file our nails, paint them with lacquer. We felt so good. We would dress and share jewelry, share clothes, go out and have martinis, we giggled and got tipsy, we felt like queens. But that was for St. Augustine. That was for playing with Lis. I had forgotten, up until this moment, how fun that was. How we would do that, just for ourselves, just to glitter in the night and be happy.

I wish we still did that but both of us seem so busy now. She with her music work and her house and garden and grandson; me with all that I do here. But Lis still dresses up. She is a performer and that's part of her life but she does it even when she doesn't have to for work. She does it to make her husband happy. She does it to make herself happy.

Allegra has made me think today. She has made me realize that a little vanity is nothing more than taking care of ourselves in a way that cherishes our womanliness. There is nothing evil in a little paint, a little powder, a pretty necklace, a sparkly earring. There is nothing wrong with decoration or pampering. There is no sin in smelling good and paying for the lotion, the perfume, to make ourselves feel that way, smell that way.

I pick flowers all year 'round and arrange them here and there in my house. I doubt anyone notices but me. But that's okay. I do it to please myself, to beautify my house which I love. Is there anything wrong with doing the same for my own body and face, hands and feet? Even if no one notices. Even if it is just for me?

I don't think so and I am grateful to Allegra for pointing this out, for making me realize that even if mothers do not sow the seeds of this self-appreciation, self-love, they can be sown later. I'm going to try and remember that. I'm going to try and do a little better.

What do you do which some would call vanity? What do you do that you do only for yourself? Where did you learn it? Tattoos? Hair? Nails? Make-up? Clothes? Baths?
What do you do to tell your precious body it is worthy of decoration, of care?
And thereby tell yourself you are worthy of love, even if what you are doing is merely a representation of that?

I would like to know on this cold morning.

Tell me.