Confessions of a Feminist Housewife

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June 06, 2005

The Great Short Debate

This is a bit silly- but I actually had a dilemma about whether or not I should wear shorts to work the other day. I’ve been wearing short-pants, or capris as they’re more popularly called. The short-pants have resulted in undesirable tan lines, but the trickier part is that I only have two pair and can usually only wear them once before needing to wash them. Watering plants is a hot and dirty job and I hate doing laundry. The obvious solution would be to get a few more pair of short-pants, but the budget doesn’t allow for it. The other options are to wear jeans (so hot! so hot!), or to wear shorts. Until recently the shorts weren’t an option because I thought all mine were too small. Then I rediscovered a pair that has always been too big for me. I tried them on, and they fit perfectly!

Now the dilemma: the rediscovered shorts are short. They’re not daisy dukes or anything, just average length shorts that seem shorter than average on my longish legs. Additionally, a recent trip to the dressing room with a bathing suit in hand has made me extremely self conscious of how the back of my legs appear. Cellulite city. While I know fluorescent lighting is no one’s friend, I still came away from the experience feeling scary and sad. So I continued doing a lot of laundry, wearing the occasional pair of jeans, and looking at other women I work with.

Comparing yourself to other people is heading very quickly down a slippery slope. I know this. But I can’t help it, I never have. Sometimes I’m better about it than others, and lately I haven’t been very good. Usually comparing myself to other people leads to increased feelings of inferiority; hence the slippery slope. My female co-workers, however, made for a healthier comparison: they all have cellulite on the back of their thighs. At least those that wear shorts do. There are a few others, like me, whose choice of bottoms never rises above the knee. I wonder if they’re as self-conscious as I am or if they just have a higher tolerance for heat.

This discovery lead me to the conclusion that most women have bumpy thighs and asses, a fact I was abstractly aware of but had never managed to really absorb. Furthermore, until I actually began checking out my co-workers I never noticed whether they had cellulite or not. Suddenly I realized that hardly anyone notices or cares about the backs of ladies’ legs, and the few who do are petty and hateful.

This new knowledge gave me the courage to wear my shorts to work and in a gesture of poetic irony, nature offered up a day that was cloudy and cool. In addition to feeling chilly I was still slightly uncomfortable about showing so much skin. My new confidence was still on the intellectual rather than the emotional level. As the day continued, however, I began to feel more self-conscious about the paleness of my upper legs—rather than their heft. Pigmentation is such an easier thing to deal than cellulite (which is mostly genetic) I was virtually cured of insecurity altogether by the end of the day.

The entire ordeal has reminded me how important and never-ending the struggle for complete self-acceptance is. Everyone wishes they were more this or less that. Not everyone has the body image hang-ups I do, but there are those who wish they were more outgoing, or had more money, or a better education, or job, or whatever. And there are people like me who wish they had all of these things, and more. The point is that few people besides the Dali Lama are perfectly content with themselves and their lives. This is kind of sad, but it only makes me feel better about my own struggle to reconcile my desire to be at peace with who I am right now with my desire to continue growing and improving as a person. As far as the shorts are concerned, they’ve found their way into my wardrobe rotation. It’s my way of being more self-accepting while still acknowledging that I need to get to the gym.

Posted by April at June 6, 2005 12:10 PM

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