Guest guest Posted August 7, 2003 Report Share Posted August 7, 2003 http://www.redflagsweekly.com/extra/2003_aug06.html EXTRA! August 6, 2003 THE INSPIRING SAGA OF VICKY LUCAS Thoughts about a woman with a rare genetic disorder that gave her a very large and unusual face By Nicholas Regush When I was just a kid and ate a basket of unwashed raspberries in the back seat of the car, my face began to swell. By the next morning it had swelled beyond recognition and my parents rushed me to the family doctor. I panicked, cried, and also remember asking my mother if I my face would stay swollen forever. After receiving an injection, my face thankfully soon began to return to normal size. I can only imagine how Vicky Lucas must have felt when her face became very large and stayed that way. She tells us in a recent story that her teenage years were difficult. That, " people would sometimes stare or do a double take. Some people would be downright nasty and call me names. " Lucas has a rare genetic disorder called " Cherubism. " As she puts it so well, " this is not just a medical condition, but a social issue as well. " It has to do with how society perceives an individual who is facially quite different. Reading her story, I found it very sad that some people even walk up to her and tell her that she is ugly. But, then again, I am not surprised, particularly when this occurs in a culture that programs individuals via high-powered advertising and promotions about what should be considered " normal " or " beautiful. " As Lucas states, " it’s hardly surprising that people assume that if you have a facial difference, there must be something ‘different’ or ‘bad’ about you in the inside too. " But rather than opt for plastic surgery, she has decided that her face " is integral to who I am. The way people treat me and the way I’ve had to learn to live my life has created the person I am today. " And this: " I love the good genuine friends my face has brought me and I appreciate the way it’s made me want to be a better person. I also have a boyfriend who thinks I look like a cat. I’m not quite sure if I agree with him, but I’m certainly not complaining! " Bravo Vicky! I hope people can learn from your experience and your courage. VICKY’S STORY A HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ARTICLE ABOUT BODY IMAGE http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/body.htm The following is an excerpt from the Body Image chapter of Our Bodies, Ourselves. For complete information and resources, we recommend that you consult the chapter and the book in its entirety. OUR BODIES, OURSELVES FOR THE NEW CENTURY EXCERPTS FROM CHAPTER 1: BODY IMAGE By Demetria Iazzetto, Linda King, and Jennifer Yanco, based on earlier work by Wendy Sanford, with the women of Boston Self-Help Take a moment to close your eyes and visualize your body. How do you feel about what you see? Are your breasts too big or too small? Your butt too big or too flat? What about your stomach or thighs -- too fat? Is your nose too broad? Do you wish you were taller or more petite? Is your body too hairy or your skin too dark? If you're like most women, you answered yes to some of these questions. Almost every woman judges some part of her body -- sometimes all of it -- as not quite right. Think about the tremendous diversity of female bodies: we are tall, short, thin, fat, large-boned and hefty, tiny and frail; our eyes vary in color and shape; our skin color ranges from blue-black or ebony to deep browns to copper to olive to pink; our hair is many-colored and has an almost infinite range of textures. Yet, we are all measured against unrealistic standards promoted by the advertising and beauty industries and grounded in fantasies about how a woman should look and behave. A woman who recently quit her job, after a manager told her to change her braided hairstyle or leave, reflects: Everybody talks about diversity, but if everybody has to fit a certain mold, well, that's not wanting diversity. It's asking people to change who they really are. What are the forces that lead us to believe we're not okay the way we are? What do we think would change in our lives if we could change our bodies and our looks? What would being more " attractive " give us? More friends? More self-confidence? A better job? How can we learn to feel better about our bodies and more loving toward ourselves and other women despite the onslaught of messages about how we " should " look? Just imagine what would happen if we were to take all the energy we expend trying to conform to society's standards of beauty and direct it elsewhere. What else could we be doing with our time? Our money? Our energy? We generally begin our lives feeling comfortable in our bodies. As infants and children we learn about and explore ourselves and the world through our bodies. As we grow up we may become less at home in our skin. We may find that as girls we are often valued more for our bodies than for our minds, and as we reach adolescence we may feel that to fit in and be popular we need to look and act in a certain way. If we don't look and act that way, we may find ourselves harassed and isolated. The teenage years can be hard on all young women, but these years are particularly difficult for those whose appearance is further from the ideal promoted in the media. If we look more masculine than other girls, if our hair is nappy, if our skin is dark, if we have a disability or have problems with our skin, if we are fat, or if we develop too soon or too late, we may begin to shrink from taking up the space we deserve. We may feel pressured to change our bodies rather than enjoy them as they are. How we feel about our looks and how at home we feel in our bodies is complex and develops in response to the many and often contradictory messages we get from society at large and in response to our actual experiences living in our bodies. Some of the pressure to be different from the way we are comes from outside ourselves, from the media images that constantly bombard us, and from the reactions we get from others; some of the pressure comes from deep inside ourselves, from how we internalize our experiences as females in this culture. Too often our experiences living in our bodies make it difficult for us to accept ourselves. Many of us have experienced violence and abuse that make us feel unsafe in our bodies. One in four women will be raped in her lifetime; one in three girls is sexually abused by age 18. Virtually all of us have experienced unwanted attention from men, whether in the form of compliments, derisive comments, or unsolicited touching. Every woman of color will experience racism. If our culture has different ideals of female beauty from those of the dominant Euro-American culture, the messages we receive from parents and relatives may contradict those of our peers and the media and may cause us additional pain and confusion. As a result of these violations, many of us have come to feel that our bodies -- as they are -- are not safe places to be. We may respond by wanting to look like the woman on the cover of a glossy beauty magazine, thinking that if we had the perfect body, we would be shielded from insults to our sense of self and from discrimination. Or we may respond by rejecting our female bodies, feeding our hunger for acceptance with bags of junk food or starving ourselves so that our bodies take on the shapes of preadolescent girls. We are wounded when a physical characteristic or set of characteristics is loaded with negative expectations. If we have black skin and African features, or olive skin and Asian features, or dark curly hair and a prominent nose as do many Jews and Arabs, or if we have a visible disability, or if we are perceived as " overweight, " our experiences from an early age may be marked by other people's negative reactions to our physical selves. We may have come to dislike, mistrust, or even hate our bodies as a result, feeling that they, rather than the society we live in, have betrayed us. Many of us are painfully aware that how we look is directly related to how others treat us, to our romantic prospects, to where we can live, to our employment possibilities. Recently, in a major settlement against the Publix supermarket chain, one of the plaintiffs reported being refused a promotion and actually demoted because she was " overweight. " Black women, especially those in service jobs, encounter reactions to our hair on a daily basis, including policies banning braids or other African hairstyles from the workplace. Every society throughout history has had standards of beauty, but at no other time has there been such an intense media blitz telling us what we should look like. Magazine covers, films, TV shows, and billboards surround us with images that constantly reinforce the idea that " beauty " is everything. But what is " beauty " and what does it mean to strive to be " beautiful " ? The current ideal woman portrayed in the dominant American culture is white, thin, able-bodied, shapely, muscular, tall, blond, smooth-skinned, and young. The list of what a woman must do to achieve the perfect look is endless, yet paradoxically, it is absolutely essential that in the end she look totally natural! Despite changes in fashion and in attitudes toward women, today's ideal woman is in fact not so different from the original blond Barbie doll. We may find Barbie's distorted body amusing, but as a caricature of the state-of-the-art white ideal of female beauty, Barbie is the standard that millions of little girls learn to desire at an early age. The fact that she has been joined by numerous ethnic variations doesn't minimize her power as a popular icon. This state-of-the-art white model puts a particular burden on women of color who are under " stress to conform to an ideal that is genetically impossible for most of us to achieve. " Never before have there been so many businesses dedicated to selling " beauty " and so many women willing to buy their products. We are sold an infinite array of products and programs to alter our appearance. Almost everywhere we look we receive similar messages: without these jeans (and the skinny body in them), you'll never find a man; without straight, bright, white teeth you'll never find success. The pressure to conform is promoted by a market whose success depends on convincing us that we don't look good enough and is reinforced by employers and others who have control over where we work, where we live, and our opportunities to enjoy good health. Many of us spend precious time, money, and emotional energy trying to make our bodies conform to standards that have little to do with who we are or what our bodies actually look like. The cost, both economical and psychological, is enormous. We may expose ourselves to serious health hazards: dangerous chemicals in cosmetics, hair products, depilatories, and vaginal deodorants; malnourishment caused by low-calorie diets; skin disorders caused by skin lighteners and suntanning. We may wear clothes and shoes that severely hamper our freedom of movement, making it difficult for us to defend ourselves if threatened; have tattoos or piercings done in nonsterile environments, putting ourselves at risk of contracting hepatitis or HIV; or undergo highly risky cosmetic surgery to radically change the shape of our eyes, our noses, our faces, our breasts, or our thighs. We all participate in maintaining the popular myths and fantasies of how we should look. Not only do most of us try in one way or another to conform, but we have learned to judge others by the same standards we use to judge ourselves. We look at each other in school, on the street, at work, at the gym and compare: we want to know how well we are doing in the competition for female perfection. Sometimes we reject the dominant fantasies about how we should look only to create an alternative ideal, wanting ourselves and our friends to fit other, equally oppressive stereotypes like the Amazon or Earth Mother. The choices we make about our appearances can affect how we feel about other women. Think about it. When we constantly diet and exercise to be thin, how do we view women who are fat? When white women go to great lengths to emulate the state-of-the-art model, how does this affect their relationships with women of color? If we remove the hair on our legs, under our arms, on our faces, or other parts of our bodies, how do we feel about women who don't? None of these actions are good or bad in and of themselves. We all make choices based on what we think is best for us. We don't often think, however, of how these choices affect our relationships with other women. Sometimes our efforts to alter our bodies to emulate some ideal may distance us from women who are, through choice or not, further from that ideal. We might term these women who are different from ourselves " other, " " uncool, " or " minority " and keep them at the margins of our consciousness. But when we do this, when we constantly judge ourselves and others by standards that are narrowly defined and inevitably out of reach, we drive a wedge between ourselves and other women. Most of us will, at times in our lives, make some concessions to the dominant ideals for reasons of economic and social survival. If we can recognize, however, when we are reshaping our bodies to fit someone else's demands, we can begin to develop a different relationship to ourselves. As we become conscious of the model body image and the forces that push us to emulate that image, we can learn to know the differences between our authentic selves and the compromises we make with the outside world. We can start feeling freer to make our own choices. There are many ways to begin this journey. We can explore ways to feel attractive and appreciated that nurture us and respect our integrity as persons. We can find ways of ornamenting our bodies that do not expose us to health risks. We can take the time to learn to appreciate the sheer pleasures of being in our bodies. We can explore ways to enjoy the sensuality of our bodies, through being outdoors, walking, swimming, dancing, taking a hot bath, or getting a massage. We can focus more of our energy on developing other aspects of ourselves through involvement in our communities and through learning and sharing what we know with those around us. We can talk with other women about body image and begin to name the deadly assumptions underlying the standards of female beauty. We can recognize how we've accepted these ideals and how our buying into them reinforces their power. Thankfully, growing numbers of women question our need to change our bodies to fit the ideals. Many of us are finding power in defining our own standards of beauty. As more of us learn to love and value ourselves and each other just as we are, and as we begin dismantling the stereotypes that equate physical characteristics with our value as persons, media images and social messages will have a lesser impact on our sense of self. Finding new and positive ways of thinking about our bodies allows us to extend the same accepting attitudes to other women and also affects how others perceive us. No matter what our size, shape, color, or physical ability, if we love ourselves and believe in our own beauty, we are more likely to find that others see that beauty, too. And if they don't, believing in ourselves gives others less power over us. RACISM AND BODY IMAGE WE LATINA WOMEN We Latina Women Fit perfectly into Rape Culture because we're so Hot We can be Raped We're such dancing, slick, dark skinned, inherently sexy, Hot oily little things Screaming for Domination. Oh Mira! We Want A Boss! We are told to forget we are Human My Black Sisters Fit so perfect Because they're such exotic animal -- jungle -- Beast-like Tiger women that want nothing but sex and to be Fucked with that they are they, less Human While My Asian Sisters are so perfectly submissive, slave giving, oriental, kiss your toes, serve you tea, 24/7 Mistress with that subordinate-passive Childlike behavior is considered the non the not really yet Human The perfect Rape Culture is a continuum taking every Woman every Man every Human being turning, twisting, forming, re-molding, breaking, shaking, silencing, slicing, denying us to the death which is not Human not soul, heart, mind, voice which is just where they want us. -- Tina D'Elia CONTINUE READING AT http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/body2.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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