Beautiful

My heart raced as I stood up to talk to the girls, and my hands trembled as I gave out the construction paper and magazines.  Breathe a voice commanded somewhere in the back of my mind.

“OK, girls, we’re going to look through these magazines and cut out images of people that we think are beautiful, and then we’re going to discuss why.”

I flipped through the magazines knowing I would select Oprah for her self-confidence and Hillary Clinton for her intelligence.  I completed my collage with a picture of a healthy body--I found the Williams’ sisters in a milk ad. 

I’ve never appreciated a scrawny body on a woman, as I have always been blessed with muscular thighs and curves that don’t disappear no matter what number the scale displays.  Unlike my graduate school roommate who binged and purged to beat her body into submission, I was more likely to go into a Victorian decline and eat just enough to keep functioning.  The thighs and curves remained, however.

The girls discussed their magazine finds, and some of their finds were remarkably unconventional. Two girls chose babies as beautiful.  One girl mentioned personality as a key factor in defining someone as beautiful. Of course a few girls talked about clothes and hair as being part of the total beauty package. Glossy lips and white teeth were unanimous choices.

The leaders chose women with normal body types for our collages.  We told the girls that all body types are beautiful as long as they are healthy, and heroin-chic isn’t healthy.

For our second exercise, we had the girls list all the negative things people say about them on a sheet of paper.  I told the girls to write down the things that keep them up at night--the words they have tape-recorded in their heads that play back in their weak moments telling them that they’re not good enough.  One girl asked how I knew about the late night replays, and I told her that I have them, too. 

After writing down the nasty, ugly words, we would purge the hurt permanently by shredding the paper.  We would not share the hurtful words with others, so the girls could be as candid as they wished.

I watched pencils move too quickly across the paper.  My heart broke—at eleven and twelve, they already feel invalidated.  Quite the scathing commentary on 21st century American society. 

One by one, the girls came up and shredded the paper; we clapped.  One girl flipped the paper over and filled out the back.  I was moved to tears as I understood her perspective.  She was the last girl to complete the exercise, and I wanted to hug her.  She smiled as she fed her notes into the cross-cut shredder. 

All of the faces of the girls gleamed, and through my misty eyes I saw true beauty--nothing that Madison Avenue could reproduce in its wildest attempt.

The blades of that shredder protected against a different kind of identity theft last night—one much more destructive than a stolen account number.