We parents are all aware of, or at least should be aware of, the impact that our lives have on our children. Not just our words, though those matter more than you know, but our actions. Because even if our words are good and right, our actions can tell a different story.
One of the most convicting things for me has been the idea that my acceptance of my own body will impact how my daughters perceive their bodies. As someone who has spent a lifetime wrestling with body image, it is terrifying to think that my own pathology could be passed down to my daughters. That my inability to love my body might somehow communicate to my daughters that theirs aren't good enough. When they are. They are beautiful.
But this isn't about that. I'm not going to speak to mothers right now. I want to speak to fathers. I understand that hardly a man out there might read this, but but I'm going to say this anyway. In the words of Jackson Grimm, "I'm throwing all my words into the wind."
I'll start with a story. It was almost 20 years ago when we lived in town. I was in the front yard raking leaves when a neighbor walked past and struck up a conversation. He was a single man, several years older than I was, and also a father of some older teen/young adult age children. He began telling me about his excitement to finally reconnect with a female friend from high school and how they met for dinner and how disappointed he was to see that she had gained a considerable amount of weight since he had last seen her. He then sheepishly admitted that he was just no longer interested in her, explaining, as he gestured my direction, "I mean, I want somebody that looks like you."
I won't lie. For a few seconds...well...maybe a few minutes I was flattered that somebody out there saw me as attractive. What woman in her late 30s whose body has created, carried, and shoved out 4 kids and is worn to a frazzle doesn't want to know that there is still something about her that is pleasing to the eye (especially in a culture that emphasizes physical beauty above all else)? But it was all quite momentary and whatever warm fuzzy emotions I had morphed into two very different emotions: anger and terror.
Anger. I was angry. I was angry on behalf of this woman. I was angry that her weight gain was seen as an obstacle to companionship. I was angry that women have to deal with this. That any of us have to deal with this.
And then terror. Did this mean that if I couldn't keep a handle on my own body I would one day be viewed as unworthy of relationship? And where is that line? 10 pounds? 20 pounds? Or is it years? Or both? What happens if I can't maintain myself? What happens if...or when...I slide down that slippery slope of middle age with its slowing metabolism and saggy skin. Will that mean that I am no longer worthy of affection and love?
For those who know us know that I have an incredible husband who loves me completely and without condition and yet I still struggled with this. I understand that my personal experience may have made me oversensitive to this message. After all, my own father left my 56 year-old mother for a 39 year-old woman with blonde hair, perky boobs, and stylish clothes.
It is a tale as old as time, these older men going for younger women. I'm sure evolution biology has the explanation that a man looks for women to carry his seed and populate the earth. But I still think it sucks.
We've all seen it. Husbands trading Wife #1 for a younger, prettier Wife #2. And sometimes moving on to yet an even younger, prettier Wife #3. And so on.
Dads, have you ever thought about what are you telling your daughters?
You are telling them that at some point it is totally OK to trade in last year's (or the last 30 years') model for an upgrade. You are telling them that at some point THEY might be traded in. You are telling them that at some point youth and beauty and fitness will trump history and life experience and wisdom. You are telling them that one day they, like their mothers, may no longer be enough. You are telling them that at some point they won't matter any more.
Is this a message you want to send to your daughters?
I understand it may be more complex than that. It may have less to do with the attractiveness of the old model and more to do with your own withering self-esteem. It may boost your ego to know that a hot young thing wants to be with you. It may make you feel less "old," less powerless in a world that exalts youth and puts even the middle-aged out to pasture as irrelevant and has-beens. It may feel oh, so good to be back in the saddle, so to speak, to be looked up to and admired by someone younger and less experienced.
But if you are struggling with those issues, please, please PLEASE, before you trade in someone closer to your age for a young hottie who will worship you and grace your right arm as your trophy wife, get some therapy. Get some therapy, if not for you, for your wife, for your children. Especially for your daughters. So that they do not grow up believing that one day they will no longer be of value because time has washed away the shine.
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