You're Perfect Just the Way you Are

You're Perfect Just the Way You Are

While listening to one of Micheal Franti's recent songs, Maya says, “Mom all women should listen to this song so we can appreciate our bodies!” I acknowledge with a deep breathe the wisdom my daughter is weaving into her evolving self and I reply, “yes gyal, we got to shake what our mama's gave us! Appreciate what our bodies can do for us!” And with a roll from Maya's eyes, we start singing along with Franti and Lady Saw “Your perfect just the way you are!” shake it shake it shake it like a tamborine”

i begin to think about raising our daughters; raising our daughters to love their bodies, their natural curves; soft bellies, short limbs, wide hips, flat noses; thin noses; straight hair; fizzy red hair; small one side breasts; large symmetrical breasts, coco brown skin; peachy white skin. Many of our daughters measure themselves up against a saturated media market of thinness, whiteness, shallowness; perpetual images that squeeze our daughters into inconceivable spaces that hold very little meaning outside a very small one dimensional box.

It wasn't until I moved to the Caribbean that i began to feel comfortable within my own body, within my own soft belly that is genetically and wonderfully a part of me; my buddha belly, soft like Maya's favourite pillow; like a warm corner of a colourful cushioned house. It is here in Grenada that I witnessed beautiful full bodied women who weren't afraid to be their natural selves, who didn't try to hide or camouflage their size through large clothing or a shyness that confines and hovers like a rain cloud without rain; it is here that i experienced women moving their bodies with such confidence and delight; with a flavour of gratitude and pride for what their female ancestors gave them.

At first it was difficult getting used to the compliments that were part of the returning ritual “What gyal you looking real fat, your mama feed you well!” or “How you looking so fat! Canada agree with you!” I soon realized these comments were meant to be compliments telling me i was healthy and stress free. Women who are too thin are assumed to either have money worries, not enough food to eat, husband stressing them out, or physically ill.

Beauty conditions exist in Grenada as well, just as they exist all over the world; conditions that limit, confine, bury woman's natural ability to be themselves. For example in Grenada, and in many parts of the world, the lighter your skin the more beautiful you are considered. In many families, schools, communities the lighter skin children have more privileges. Colonial mentality is alive and thriving. The more European you look the better for you. I remember our 85 year old neighbour giving me nose straightening exercises to perform on Maya's nose so she wouldn't get her fathers African nose. Television exists in majority of Grenadian households and therefor American ideals of beauty is seeping into the culture. Thinness is becoming more and more fashionable for the younger girls and so I now watch Maya being teased and chastised by some of the Village kids for putting on size as she grows into her per-adolescent natural self. I give praise that she has many strong women in her life and a mom who works hard at spreading messages of self love through music, dance, paintings, poetry and youth peace programs.

I recall a memory from this summer while swimming at Cribbon's Point, Nova Scotia: Maya and i watching a full bodied, curvy Canadian woman in a bikini moving her body to the twirl of her hoola
hoop; making the hoop dance around and around her belly in the middle of a sunny afternoon; feet sunk into sand and sea, moving to the rhythms of her hips. We watched mesmerized, hypnotized by her beauty, her confidence,her freedom to be her natural earth loving self. I thanked her over and over in my head for providing my daughter an image of real beauty; a beauty that holds no labels, conditions, rules or laws, a beauty that radiates Freedom!

Today women continue to be underneath the microscope of a male dominated view that continues to dictate and define how women should look. These definitions and dictations reach deep into our psyches and thus we find ourselves becoming the biggest critic of one another; robbing us our ability to be who we are meant to be, unique diverse earth giving souls. Our boys too are victims to this madness and develop 'lookist' attitudes from a very young age contributing to the vicious cycle we all find ourselves in. As long as we have men like Micheal Franti and women who are shaking their beautiful natural selves like Lady Saw and hoola hoop Sistren then perhaps the world's limited view of human beings will change one song, one dance, one lyric at a time.

You are perfect just the way you are!”