April 14, 2012
-
What My Immodesty Might Mean to Me
A few posts ago, I talked about the woman in a white bikini who inspired such despair in my heart. But did I tell you the follow-up?
On her secretish blog, she talked specifically about wearing her white bikini. About her eating disorder issues and about her hatred of her body. And about how being able to wear that white bikini was a landmark moment to her. About how it meant that she accepted her body.
And I bowed my head and felt oddly sad for us all. To her, that bikini was a love letter to herself, an opportunity to say she finally loved herself. To me, that bikini was a symbol of all the beautiful things I will never have. Same thing, different message to us both. And that's why it is so difficult to really know what an immodest person means.
Her exhibitionism could be because of her daddy issues, being adopted and mistreated. His constant bragging is because he really doesn't communicate well and has a hard time expressing himself. The teen girl who wears a short skirt is merely trying to become a woman, to be like her mom and those ladies she sees in the magazines. She doesn't mean any harm to those watching. The man who writes all that sensual poetry may be trying to finally come to grip with his feelings he hid for years, and first he must write like this in order to reach his true heart, broken and hidden for too many years.
And so, here we are as an audience, confused as we watch, knowing that those glamor photographs she took might be the key to her feeling like a lovable woman, like someone who other people might care about. Then again: Booooooooobs. Is it really our fault for not deciphering the complexity of a sledgehammer? Maybe.
Comments (2)
You aught to post these as a Double Feature.
I think that is a very important point, realizing that quite often, what one person puts forth, or even simply does and others happen to be watching, is very seldom what the audience sees. We each tend to assume that other people's motivations are the same as our own, and that their actions are directed at an audience.
Just as her beauty might bring you despair, so your despair, had she known of it, would have sullied her delight in her achievement. Certainly, we should care what effects our actions have on others, but those effects are just as certainly not within our power to control.
We must simply "be" and be who we are, and know that each of us has within ourselves the potential for many good things which are ours to share as fully as we have the strength to do.
Comments are closed.