Wandering Through Nothingness

Well…I think I hit it…the motherlode…the thing I was supposed to HIT.

Without spending anytime in any space that is anything but right where I am…let me get to THE point.

Yesterday on my Facebook page, I posted the following:

I’m seeing a pattern developing within the content of the feedback around the Naked Face Project and…I’d love…like really love…to hear from you right here on this page…where you think YOUR beliefs around ‘beauty” come/came from. There is no right or wrong answer…just something of interest to me and I believe this project. Will you help me with a response?

I have a very active Facebook community and love the dialogue that occurs on my page.  People are honest there.

The responses were all over the map, but generally people indicated one of three things led them to their values around beauty:  mom, media, peers.

Tucked neatly in among all the comments was a post from my friend Rebecca.  Here is what she wrote:

Molly it was so ironic that you started this project the day i signed on the proverbial dotted line to have cosmetic surgery…  i have a lot of thoughts to share but my eyes are so swollen i can hardly see what i am typing.  so, i will type more when i am able but suffice to say i am so incredibly interested in how you feel and how it is going.  when i sat back and ready the “reveal” that Monday morning (after returning home from Dr. Graper’s office) i had some serious soul searching moments.  i didn’t doubt my decision but i did really examine why i made the decision.  so, more (hopefully) tomorrow when i can see better   it is as though you and I are on two totally opposite ends of the spectrum at this moment in time and yet, i think we have very similar beliefs about beauty.  that it truly does come from within.  I love you and am so proud of you.  And I am proud to say I am not ashamed of having a little work done even though some see it as vain.  can’t wait to talk with you about it.  ok – back to my bag of peas across my eyeballs…  LOVE

I know Rebecca.  She has coached for Girls on the Run.  She is the mother to a whole gaggle of kids.  She is funny, She is as real as they come and she is, as she has indicated here quite honest, open and authentic with her search for wholeness.  I love her.

Shortly after her comment came another.  Here is what Laurel wrote:

Molly, what comes to mind is babies. Have you ever noticed how babies look right into your eyes when they first meet people? Right clear through to the back of the head? Has that ever happened to you? Babies are good judges of character/beauty, based on that initial look into a person. Society somehow removes the trust in that inital judgement and replaces it with how we look on the outside. How often, when you’re in the store, and you look at someone and smile and they completely avoid looking directly into your eyes… connecting with you in that way? MANY people won’t look into us like that. there’s some sort of force-field/shield or something that people keep in front of their eyes that keep the reality of “us” out and/or, perhaps, to keep the reality of “them” in… you know what i’m saying? The babies don’t do that tho.. too bad they can’t talk yet. Many people look at the smile I give and then do the double-take… looking back into my eyes and more often than not, they just sort of relax… or deflate, or something i can’t find a word for. then they usually genuinly smile back and often stop to say a real “hello” or shake a hand. Maybe we’re un-taught to look directly and unabashedly into the windows of other souls?  Is this a dumb concept? lol…?

I had a breakthrough right then and there.

I found photos of the following people and lined them up.   Rebecca,  my daughter Helen, me (sans makeup), me (with make up), Mother Teresa (that really famous photo of her all wrinkly and old) and Demi Moore.  (I know adding Demi to the mix brought a smile to your face.  That’s okay.  For some reason she’s been on my mind a lot lately.).

I laid them in front of me…and examined them all…like really took some time to look at them.  I looked at the intricate way the folds of age draped across Mother Theresa’s face.  I marveled at the dimples on my daughter’s face, the wisps of hair that delicately fell upon her cheeks.  I looked at Rebecca’s bright smile and eyes, the smoothness of her skin, the lack of wrinkles there, my own face…the two ”intensity lines” above my eyes, my thin lips and lopsided smile, Demi’s dark hair, the color of her skin.

It was as if I was seeing them for the first time.  I spent a good fifteen minutes just looking, seeing, observing.

About seven minutes into this, the smile came…tickling its way up from the inside.  Another minute into the smile, the chuckle started…and then the loud laugh.  Loud enough that one of my kids came down to see what all the joy was about.

The realization occurred…right there in my kitchen…my three dogs on the floor next to me, my son upstairs, my daughter in the den, you at your home or out…that these women were all beautiful.  None moreso than the other.  They were equally beautiful.

I’m telling you…its like all the pieces came together.  Not a single image was more beautiful or less beautiful than another.  They were all beautiful…down to every last detail.  Uniquely beautiful…just as they were.

I’ve had all day to meander through this new found knowledge…had time to ponder the ramifications of it in my life. The revelation is real for me.  The word most or more or less no longer applies to the word beautiful.  We are all beautiful…at least through the eyes I have now.  Rebeccas is beautiful just the way she is right now, Helen is beautiful the way she is right now, I am beautiful just the way I am right now, You are beautiful just the way you are right now.

Tomorrow  you will be beautiful, right then and there.  Rebecca will be too.  So will Helen.  I will too.

I tried sharing this new view with some friends this morning.  They were struggling to understand.

“You see them as beautiful Molly because you know them. You are still seeing the beauty they emit from within.”

“No,” I replied.  “I truly see their physical beings as beautiful,  as they present themselves to me in the moment .  It’s like trying to say a rose is more beautiful than a daisy.  Their bodies, their faces are equally beautiful.  How they are, how they present, how I see them…all beautiful.  Equally.”

I am reminded of a story that I’ve never quite understood…but I seem to be grasping now.

The Buddha held up a flower in front of an assembly of monks, and said nothing. As the story goes, while most monks wondered why he was holding up a flower for seemingly no reason, one monk simply smiled.  The Buddha explained that this monk truly understood.

You are the flower and so am I.

So many fabulous men have emailed, commented…just been engaged in the whole conversation around  the Naked Face Project.  We’ve joked about what the male equivalent would be.

I am the mother to a son.  He is a musician.  He  writes frequently about protecting those who are underserved…often angrily about the disparity of this world.  I remember being his age…trying to come to grips with what felt like an unfair world…why some had it and others didn’t.

I love how he is so free with his emotions…his ability to feel so deeply allows him to also identify with others…be empathic.

This whole Naked Face exercise has me questioning many of our social and cultural constructs around gender.  I think deeply rooted in much of this conversation is something connected to vulnerability…and how often…whether we are male or female, we consider vulnerability to be a sign of weakness rather than strength.

I am reminded of Paul.

He is 39 years old. A handsome professional man, Paul drives a BMW and wears custom suits with starched crisp white button-down shirts. He is respected and reserved. Yet little known to his friends is the hell in which he has lived. You see, 8 years ago his wife, his life partner and best friend died. She died giving birth to their daughter Shelby.
Shelby’s entrance into this world wasn’t easy. For hours, over 20 innocent and vulnerable hours, Shelby and her mom worked tirelessly to take her from the warm safe waters of her mother’s womb to this world. So when Shelby was finally lifted into this world, her mother went on to the next.

 
Paul’s world isn’t what he had expected: the crisp starch of his collar, the million-dollar home and a daughter, who looked like every other 8-year old, but had the intellectual and conceptual understanding of a 4-year old.

 
His life felt like hell. It’s hard work being a single Daddy with a developmentally delayed little girl. Every morning as he would gently brush her hair, Shelby would tell him stories–stories that break a father’s heart. Stories of how she is afraid to speak sometimes, because the other students at her school make fun of her. Stories of how they call her dummy or generally disregard her as anything, but a nuisance. Paul didn’t know what else to do and so when the Girls on the Run brochure floated home in her book bag, he enrolled her. Shelby’s spirit soared at Girls on the Run. Her teammates understood her uniqueness and accepted her not in spite of it, but because of it.

 
Over the program-weeks, Shelby had come to trust her teammates. They weren’t like the other girls at school. They didn’t make fun of her. They wrapped their little souls around her and walked her through the Girls on the Run games and activities. The Girls on the Run girls were different. They listened to her when she had something to say and they saw the humanness of her. They valued her for who she was.

 
On this particular day, Shelby was running in her first Girls on the Run 5k and her father was there to see her. I stood at the finish line cheering clapping and high-fiving girls as they crossed that finish line. One hour later every girl had finished. “No wait,” the police escort informed us. There is one more little girl. And so while most folks had moved on to the after-party in the nearby park a handful of us waited.

 
When off in the distance I saw a little figure walking, as if on a mission. Her arms pumping beside her like pistons. Her blonde pigtails flopped on either side. Her coaches were beside her, smiling and crying. Slowly word spread that Shelby was finishing and one by one folks returned to the finish line. As Shelby made her way up that last stretch of road, hundreds of people ran to take their place roadside.

 
The momentum was building and then as if directed to do so I looked to my right and there dead center in the finish line stood Paul. His starched shirt, khaki pants and polished loafers. His hair was perfectly placed. Shelby’s jacket was neatly draped across his left arm.

 
The man was stoic, reserved, empty eyed… and alone.

 
And then without warning, this man, this brave, brave man dropped to his knees…Shelby’s coat falling to the asphalt below…and with wild abandon, he lifted his arms to the heavens above and wept from the depths of his soul. Tears were flowing down his cheeks to the earth below, like small blessings on the path of his daughter’s approaching feet.

I won’t ever be able to shake the image of this man as he fell to his knees, surrendering his pain, revealing his willingness to shed the external armor of a man trapped in the box of cultural success and apathy, to expose his soul, his core, his vulnerabilities. To welcome his little girl, Shelby, as she ran to him, there at the finish line. Welcome her with his arms around her small body. Welcome her to this new life, this new heaven, the one in which they could inhabit peacefully together.

I love how children so unabashedly share their fears, their strengths, their vulnerabilities fearlessly with the people around them.  I wonder if adults like Paul…heck like me…don’t have a lot we can learn from them.

What has a young person in your life taught you about being true, real, strong?

I’m a bit overwhelmed by it…the change in perception I’m experiencing.

I’m somewhere between wanting to cry (for reasons I don’t know) and bubbling over with joy.

I’ve got to first thank my Girls on the Run family.  You all know me.  We know each other.  When I started Girls on the Run 16 years ago, I knew deep in my heart that one day the program would impact millions of girls.  I also believed that changing the world was possible.  I’d changed my own small piece of it when I experienced a shift in my perspective when I got sober in 1993.

There was something very humbling about sharing my past.  It took me a long time to feel safe enough within my own thoughts, to share my story.   The fear of not being accepted, loved or valued was overwhelming…enough to keep me safe within my life-secrets.  But one of our core values at Girls on the Run is to lead with an open heart…and while I don’t believe it is necessary to air all our, what some might term as “dirty laundry” in public, I think there is a power in sharing our humanity, with those close to us.  So when I shared with my Girls on the Run family the story of my life, you received me with open arms, open hearts and a love like I had never known existed.

It is this sharing of our humanness that has struck me to my core, with this project.  To admit that something as seemingly unimportant as leaving the house withour curling our eyelashes or putting on red lipstick,. hits right to the core of our vulnerability.  I’ll admit that for some people, this seems laughable, but for many women (including myself) it’s embarrassing to admit that these things are hard to give up.

Being “pretty” has been an important part of my identity.  I’m well aware that dressing a certain way and doing it up has made my life easier in some ways.  As Jane, a woman I have known for years, said to me yesterday, “This is easy for you.  You’ve got nice features.   You are young.  I know I am not attractive and so I have to use make up to give my face some help.”

Jane is in her 70′s.   We talked for quite some time.  She talked a lot.  I got the sense that she wanted to be heard.  She talked about the men in her life and how “putting herself together” showed a level of respect for them.  “I think it’s important for a woman to be her prettiest.”

I heard her.

While at first the conversation may have been about make-up, it slowly evolved into something else.  It became an experience…a tender, loving series of flowing moments through which she could, for once, talk about being a single woman in her 70′s…talk about her fears around growing older, losing her “beauty,” fears of being alone and becoming invisible.

We got underneath all the BS, and saw something else in each other.  Something that has been there all along, but that is hard to find when we are trying so hard to prove our worth or look like we have it so together.

I’m beginning to see that for me and the Jane’s of the world,  make up (in addition to a number of other actions I take) has been like scotch tape…something to hold me together…to hold together the not yet wounded ego I’m afraid I might experience if I tell you the truth…that sometimes I’m scared or angry or not so together as I appear; that sometimes I yell at my children  when they don’t deserve it; that sometimes I want to sleep all day because I’m in a bad mood or someone has hurt my feelings; that sometimes I worry until I’m nearly sick about my teenaged children; that sometimes I’m afraid of not measuring up to the expectations I carry as the founder of an organization, an organization in the business of encouraging girls to be strong, empowered and real.

I know that I am not alone.  I know this because I’m human…and part of this human experience is, at one time or another in our lives, wrestling with our ego and finding balance between the human experience and the spiritual one.  It’s all beautiful…every minute of the process. 

I’m sitting in a Caribou coffe shop and amazed by how long it has taken me to write this post.

I’ve been amazed by a lot of things lately…and for that…I am immensely grateful.

Have you ever been aware of going through some kind of mindset-shift or transformation in perspective?  What was it?  What happened?

(My co-traveler Caitlin is going through some of the same (but different) things I am.  Read about it at www.healthytippingpoint.com.)

Okay…so go with me.  This whole thing has thrown me into a space of observing.  I am not reacting nor “proacting” to anything going on around me…just listening and watching.

Funny…everyone (I mean this literally) who has crossed my path today has made mention of “The Naked Face Project.”   Because I am a Charlotte native and because of my work with Girls on the Run, people GET it.  They understand that my intention is not to “pick sides” but to create (as we do at Girls on the Run) a safe space for dialogue around issues that matter.

Which leads me to an entirely different question.  As one fabulous woman wrote me yesterday (you can see her comment on the previous piece) Who cares?  Why does this matter?  Something about this seems ridiculous.

First of all…I know for sure that this won’t matter to everyone.  Women who don’t ever wear make up will probably not be interested in the conversation and that’s totally cool…but those of us who do…there is something weird and uncomfortable about this ”mattering.”

Let me share a quick story.  My son is 16 and has this propensity to wear his jeans pretty low on his hips.  So low in fact that his boxers are frequently peeking out from the top of them.  The other day we were heading to a doctor’s appointment and I kindly asked him to “Please pull up your pants.”

His response.  “It doesn’t matter if I wear my pants like this.”

My response back to him…”Well if it doesn’t matter then you won’t mind pulling them up will you?”

I feel the same way about this experience.  If make up didn’t matter then going without it wouldn’t be a big deal…the conversation wouldn’t matter and like I said…for those of you who don’t wear make up…this whole conversation probably DOESN’T matter…but for those of us that do…the ensuing dialogue on it mattering feels awkwardly important.

This morning at the gym I was approached by a well-known Charlotte business woman.  She quietly pulled me to the side, in the locker room.  ”This whole conversation has me totally on edge.  I’m successful in my career…accomplished in my field…and tied to my made-up face.  I can’t imagine walking into a professional setting without it.  How can that be?  I can conduct board meetings, stand before our employees, navigate any intellectual conversation within the area of my expertise, but the thought of going naked faced…terrifies me.  I worry that I will not be taken seriously…and worse yet…that I will be passed over for someone else.  Something as silly as whether I wear make-up or not shouldn’t matter that much.”

Today at lunch I went to our local Y to eat in their “home-cooking” cafeteria.  Charlotte’s business leaders congregate here for great food, good talk and lively dialogue at the “round table.”  The wooden round table sits  approximately 18 people, mostly men in their late 40′s to mid 70′s.  I sit at this table everytime I am there.  I love to participate in the debates that occur here.  The round table is safe…politics, religion, “family values,” nothing is off limits.  Respect for varying viewpoints lives here.

Today…all of the men were laughing with me about the project…doling out the much-deserved ribbing.  Many began their “take” on it by suggesting that the project had nothing to do with them.

One man in his late 60′s spoke up.  “I’ve always thought that women who were without make up were absolutely beautiful.  To me…the most beautiful woman pulls back her hair to reveal the complexities of her naturally beautiful face.”

(About 9 of the men at the table were listening in.)

Today there was one other woman at the table…and she was in her late 60′s…early 70′s.  “I don’t know.  Lipstick can really make a woman’s eyes pop.  I’ve told some of my friends that they really need to add lipstick to their daily beauty habits…to improve their appearance.”

I loved listening to the two of them talk.  They were actively engaged in a dialogue on our cultural views on beauty.  Even better, they eventually got into the conversation of relationships, sexuality and power.  The whole thing was absolutely fascinating.  I got pulled into a nother conversation before they finished.  I don’t know how it ended.

But I do know I’ll just keep listening, observing and being in the space.

I do have to report a couple of housekeeping items.  (These are absolutely of no specific interest to the bigger conversation, but just amusing outcomes of going without my daily “beauty habits.”)

Deodorant is back on my “have-to” list.  For me deodorant is a hygiene issue.  Go ahead and laugh…but I just didn’t know that I could “stink” so much! 

My eyelashes are almost invisible they are so light.  I had no idea that my eyelashes were so close to blonde.  They are also very thin.  I’m beginning to like the way my eyes look without the make up. My eyes look very kind and tender…I think.

And my legs itch…not because they are dry…but because of the stubble. The stubble bothers me the most when I’m trying to sleep.  Funny to become THAT aware of my legs.  I do have to admit though…that…just like a kid, I’m really loving this experience and delighting in all this new and entertaining information my body is giving me!

This is really hysterical…oh Lawd.  What have I gotten into… From stubble to power.

I am only a few days in…and am trying to determine a rhythm, if you will…a way to organize these posts in a way that makes sense.

Several things are becoming quite apparent:

The bigger question of WHY we wear make up is truly THE experiment.  This struck me yesterday in a very personal way.  I spoke at Converse College on the topic of Social Entrepreneurship and toward the end of my presentation briefly touched on the questions around beauty and gender being asked by the Naked Face Project.  I shared that this was the first time IN MY LIFE, I had every been in a professional setting without make up. The room went totally silent.  One young man in the back…Andrew…raised his hand and said, “So you’re tellin’ me…this is the first time you’ve ever stood up in front of a group of people in a professional setting without make up.  Ever.”

“Yes,” I responded. He paused…the entire room was looking at him and then he said.

“That says something.”

For several minutes after that…I lost my audience.  They were all mulling around in their own minds…what that said or meant.  Honestly, the further I get into this…I realize that it will take some time for me to figure out what that means.

I do know that it means I’ve been mindlessly applying make-up…without ever asking WHY?  I’ve just done it…and for someone “in the business” of teaching girls to follow their own hearts and minds and not give into peer pressure…I think maybe, I have been, inadvertently giving in to peer pressure when it comes to these beauty rituals…my whole life.  I’m not suggesting these are bad.  I’m just trying to determine whether I have done them by choice or “just because that’s what a woman does.”

Now understand…I’m not judging myself.  I’m just noticing.  My mother did it…my sisters did it.  I remember fondly one time when my sister “did my make up” and “did my hair Farrah Fawcett style” for a middle school dance I was going to…I didn’t like it and so removed it before I went.  It just didn’t feel like me…but the ritual of going through these motions…her tender touch and attention to my face…the laughs we shared as she gently rolled my hair up into the heated curlers…I do remember this as being something special.

I was always fascinated with my mom’s beauty rituals.  Mary was the most authentic woman I knew…and even though she has passed away…I consider her still to be the most authentic woman I’ve ever known. And funny…I have very strong memories of her in the bathroom, applying her make up.

I used to always marvel at how she would, in public, pull out her mirror compact and her bright red lipstick…and with what appeared to be a great deal of force and detail…paint her lips with the red stuff…particularly after a meal.  She was very public about this.  The waiter might walk over to the table…as she would be going through that process and I remember her hands moving from her mouth to either side, her wrists slightly bent, compact in one hand and lipstick in the other and her responding to his query…”Thank you, but no dessert.  We will just have the check now.”  And then she would return to the task at hand.  Liptstick to lips.

I do know that there have been a number of things that have come up for me and that ARE coming up for me that frankly…I’m embarrassed to write about.  I know I eventually will, but currently it’s hard for me to admit that I am vain in certain areas when it comes to my body, my face and my hair.  I worry that I will be seen as shallow somehow…but I also know that I’m not a shallow person…so again we circle back around to perception and being concerned with what others think.  This is how peer pressure works.

Social norms are necessary for a society to survive.  We can’t ALL be doing what we want ALL the time.  We must have rules and laws that determine many of our actions.  We also have many indirect social norms which determine how we navigate life…with the people around us.  I spoke yesterday at my speaking engagement with a woman who is VERY involved and connected in her community at a high professional level.  For her to fall outside the social norms for dress, make up and hair, would be a much larger statement than the one I am making and could potentially lead to her professional demise.  Women in television or in the entertainment industry…what would happen if they “opted out” of  participating in their make-up rituals.  Might they be passed over for someone who did wear it?

I’m just observing now…not coming to ANY conclusions.  Yesterday someone asked me what I hoped to create from or DO with “The Naked Face Project.”  I told him that I simply have no expectation.  This is just an experiment for me to see what comes up, when I buck the social norms…what might reveal itself…what “other side” is there waiting for me to find when I quesiton the status quo.

Maybe when this is all over, I will color my hair pink…I don’t know!  I just know that for now…I’m trying to stay very, very present.

Yesterday at my speaking engagement I told a poignant story about a little girl named Emily.  I realized yesterday AS I told the story that I think it was EMILY who got me thinking about all of the why’s when it comes to fashion, make-up and my other beauty rituals.  I recently shared it at a Charlotte TEDx Presentation…and will share it with you here now.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw8hnAq0wbQ

I hope you enjoy it…Thanks for stopping by.  (To hear where my friend Caitlin is in all of this please stop in at her blog at www.healthytippingpoint.com.)

Please feel free to leave your comments.  I enjoy spirited conversation on any topic.

Last night I posted a very simple question on my Facebook page and it was “What, in your opinion, is one of the most beautiful flowers and why?”

The answeres I got were well thought out and absolutely beautiful.  Everyone had not only a response to WHAT is one of the most beautiful floweres, but WHY?  Here…listen in.

Molly wrote:  “Tulips because they are the sign that spring has arrived. I love the smell of lilacs the most. But I’m pretty sure, if ever I have a child that dandelions will become my absolute favorite the first time he/she bursts through the backdoor with a bouquet of those yellow weeds.”

Christa wrote:  “Pansies. The first moment I laid eyes upon my firstborn upturned face, all I could think of was how fresh and tender she looked…for some reason, in that moment I was reminded of the smiling face in a pansy, and have always associated them with her “

Kristi wrote:  “I’ve always had a soft spot for dandelions. They just keep doing their thing, despite the fact that people spend all kinds of money, time and effort to keep them from having their time in the sun; and when they’ve had enough being a flower they transform themselves and take to the sky.   Who wouldn’t want to be a dandelion?”

Kim wrote:  “Oh! there are so many! But, dandelions are my favorite because they bring back simple memories of childhood. It’s one of the first flowers we pick and give lovingly to our mothers, friends or just for ourselves to delight in… next to clover, of course. They thrive in most soils, fertile or infertile, they will not be denied or discouraged. They persist, survive, and can teach us humans that no matter what conditions we face in life, if you establish deep and stable roots, you’ll be able to continue on. They represent the coming of spring and renewal of life. There is nothing more magical  and empowering than watching seeds being set free under our own breath, carried just a short distance, or if we blow harder, taking flight on a longer journey, to places unknown. No matter, where they land, they adapt and find a way to begin their cycle again. As a woman who has survived breast cancer and loved a child I did not bear within my own body, I see the simple dandelion as a metaphor of dreams, hope and life itself.”

I am moved, even now, as I read the responses. There were (and they keep coming in) over 64 of them.

And I wonder what I can gain from their