Finally, by the first of October, I'd had enough of feeling like crap all the time. I realized that refined, added sugar was causing all kinds of problems for me. So I quit, cold turkey, just like when I quit smoking in 1999. It was hard as hell for the first few days, but eventually the sugar worked its way out of my system. I also started working out a lot. Not obsessively, mind you, but at least five days a week. For Christmas, I got a gym membership, and I started with a personal trainer two days a week. I've lost thirty pounds and feel unbelievably better, at least physically, than I did three months ago. I know I'm healthier and happier.
But I still hate my ass.
So, of course, I go looking to Alice for some explanation and inspiration. I love all different versions of Alice, but I went back to the 2010 Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland, which I think is a remarkably beautiful adaptation and extension of the Lewis Carroll stories. She's also the burgeoning adult Alice, and it creeps me out to think of a 7- or 9-year-old Alice in the same terms of body image consciousness, though I'm well aware that it's already an issue for some little girls of that age.
Burton's 19-year-old Alice is first seen in the carriage with her mother, on the way to Lady Ascot's garden party (where the unremarkable and boring Hamish will propose to her). Her mother is fussing at her because she isn't wearing a corset or stockings, because her hair won't stay pinned back. Helen Kingsleigh is appalled at what everyone else will think of Alice not being properly dressed.
"Who's to say what is proper?" Alice said, with that maddening streak of impossible logic she'd inherited from her father. "What if it was agreed that 'proper' was wearing a codfish on your head? Would you wear it?"
Helen closed her eyes. "Alice."
"To me a corset is like a codfish," Alice said.
At the garden party Lady Ascot immediately looks Alice up and down, noticing her fashion faux pas. Alice notices that everyone who is immaculately dressed looks horribly bored and acts generally bored, as well. Alice's sister, Margaret, reminds her that her pretty face won't last forever, that she needs a man to marry her to be fulfilled. (Unbeknownst to Margaret, of course, her own husband is kissing another woman in the bushes.) Alice panics at the thought of marrying Hamish, and she chases after the White Rabbit, right down the hole.
As soon as she lands, her issues with growing and shrinking begin. While she's trying to adjust her size to get through the door, she hears the Dormouse and the White Rabbit, watching her from the other side, discussing whether or not she looks like she's the right or wrong Alice. She manages to shrink herself to the proper size for the door and steps into Underland, dragging her skirts behind her.
The Dormouse, the White Rabbit, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and even the flowers with human faces argue over whether or not she's the right Alice. The White Rabbit insists he spent weeks looking for her and that this is the right one, but no one is convinced, even Absolem, until she gets to the tea party:
But the man, who was called the Mad Hatter, had another reaction entirely. At the sight of Alice, he bolted upright. His whole being seemed to brighten; even his clothes perked up. Transfixed, he moved toward her, stepping directly up onto and over the table, as that was the shortest route to reach her. Alice shiver a little as he came closer, staring at her intently. There was something in his face that made her anxious for him. She knew she couldn't possibly deserve the delighted look he was giving her.
"It's you," said the Mad Hatter. He reached toward her golden hair, then pulled his hand back before touching her.
"No, it's not," the Dormouse snapped. "McTwisp brought us the wrong Alice."
The Mad Hatter shook his head. "It's absolutely Alice! You're absolutely Alice! I'd know you anywhere. I'd know him anywhere."
When Stayne the Knave interrupts the party in search of the Alice who's rumored to be in Underland, the Mad Hatter quickly has her drink the tea to shrink herself. He hides her in a teapot until Stayne leaves. Before he releases her to a moment of safety, the Hatter makes a new dress, "a miniature ensemble for Alice out of the tea cozy, a doily, and a swatch of her old dress." Alice finds herself more comfortable in the dress made by a mad man from a land of strange impossibilities, than in the dress her mother had chosen for her to wear to her own surprise engagement party.
She eventually makes her way to the palace of Iracebeth, the Red Queen, who has an enormous head, both literally and figuratively. The Red Queen surrounds herself with courtiers who adorn themselves with falsely large ears and noses and stomachs so they will be admired and liked by the Queen. They do their best to be like her, although they (like everyone else) plainly loathe her. In her hurried attempt to grow to a normal size, Alice eats too much cake and is suddenly an enormous girl, naked before the court of the Red Queen--you know, the place where everyone is overly obsessed with how they look. The Red Queen immediately adores Alice, alias Um, because of her largeness, and tells her, "You'll be my new favorite."
Alice goes through some adventures, a bit of this and a lot of that, before getting back to her normal size at the castle of the White Queen, Mirana. Alice finally proves to herself and everyone else that she is the absolute right Alice when she dons the armor of the champion of the White Queen, to face her own doubts and slay the Jabberwocky. In the end, Alice chooses to return to her regular world, rather than stay in Underland.
Alice found herself clinging to the edge of a rabbit hole. She pulled herself up and out of the hole. Grass was tangled in her long hair, and her clothes were wrinkled and torn. She shook her head, trying to remember what had happened. How odd. Had she fallen asleep?
She stood and brushed off her skirts.
She returns to the garden party a disheveled mess, looking "as if she'd been through a great battle."
"You look a frightful mess," Lady Ascot sniffed.
Alice turned to Hamish. Her adventures in Underland were gone from her memory, but the self-confidence remained. And there was a lot she needed to say.
Alice goes on to tell everyone why she can't be who or what they demand that she be. She realizes that to be the right Alice doesn't mean she fulfill anyone else's expectations; she simply has look at her true, inner self and be that person on the outside.
I had a blogging rant just a few days ago about how I'm all about this Verisimilitude of Self. I really don't care if you like me or not, though of course it feels great to be liked. Even though I am confident in my talents and abilities, admittedly with days when I question myself, I am often plagued by self doubt surrounding my body images issues. How I see myself, my ass, will often change how I approach the world around me. More often than not, I assume that it affects how other people see me.
I try to remind myself of all the amazing things this body has done for me. It has brought me through thirty-eight years, all the good and bad. It has borne and nursed two amazing children and stayed strong enough to begin the process of raising those two amazing young men. It has laughed and loved and loathed and gone from point A to point ME, and I should be thankful for that.
Even when I'm told that I'm beautiful or fabulous or full of muchness, I can't help but doubt the veracity of those claims when I look in the mirror. I see so many flaws, a mountain of imperfections, that it can be staggering. If there is a niggling little fear that I have, it's that I'm not good enough because of my body. It's been an issue since my teens, certainly, though no one knew that metabolic issues were combined with my general Amazonian build until my mid-20's. By that point, I believed everything I'd heard from everyone else. That I just wasn't good enough because I had a big ass.
Then, sometimes, I see the Mad Hatter looking at me, and I get a little anxious. It seems impossible that he could be so delighted that I'm absolutely me. There is always, always the lingering doubt in my own mind that I am the right Alice, that I really do need the corset and the stockings to make people accept me.
It's times like this when I need Absolem to blow a little smoke in my face and remind me that I ought to know who I am.
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