Since I was young a mean girl has viciously bullied me.  She criticizes my appearance; she is condescending, rude, and terribly cruel.  The mean girl tells me that I’m stupid, I should give up, and that my ass is too fat and my legs are too bumpy.  She’s criticized my ability to parent, to be a wife, a friend, and a daughter.  She has even chastised me endlessly on the days that I don’t get my dog out for a walk.  The mean girl, however, is at her most wicked when I go bathing suit shopping.  It’s a feeding frenzy for her in which she throws out one horrid criticism after another.

The mean girl of course is me.  Yet she feels oddly like another person because I’m not really a mean girl.  I don’t criticize others, particularly not on their appearance.  I’m generally and genuinely kind and compassionate except when it comes to me.  The mean girl has bullied me my whole life and she was there even in the days when I was looking young, thin, and sans cellulite.  There is no pleasing her and thus she has held me back in more ways than I’d like to admit.   I’m afraid of her and I’m afraid of what she will say to me and how I will feel when she’s done.

Because of the mean girl, I have avoided doing things that I love, been fearful of saying and asking for what I want, played small when I really wanted to play big, and put a nice hard shell around myself that kept me from loving more freely and with less fear.  A few years ago I hit the limit with the mean girl.   It was time for her to go or at least to shut up.  I got more assertive with her and walked past her when she was spewing her nastiness.  All aspects of my life started to improve as I stood up to my bully.

All aspects that is, except for my appearance.  The mean girl sent me flying out of an exercise class because of her relentless judgment and comparison to the other women in the class.  She had me in tears in countless dressing rooms as I tried on clothes but left empty handed and emotionally drained.  I just couldn’t seem to get a handle on holding her off when it came to my weight and body image.

Recently I had to do the dreaded bathing suit shopping because my previous suit had gone threadbare after far too many outings.  It was that oddly decent bathing suit that hid an assortment of flaws yet didn’t feel as if I was wearing a girdle.  I cried when I had to get rid of it.   The mean girl has never let me shop for bathing suits without her and therefore most of these outings end with me in tears, calling myself names, and vowing to lose 20 pounds within the next hour.

I desperately wanted this trip to be different so I decided that I was going to drown out mean girl’s voice with nicer words of my own.  Entering the bathing suit store I began the internal mantra of, “Be kind, be kind, be kind.”  As I picked out a few suits I started to mutter the mantra quietly to myself.  I went into the dressing room and as I started to try on the first suit I could feel mean girl headed my way.  “Be kind, be kind, be kind,” I said in a louder and louder voice.  The sales girl knocked on the dressing room door to check on me but I just continued with my mantra, which at this point was near yelling.

The first couple of bathing suits were rather dreadful and mean girl was circling me ready to give me the, “Hey fatty, you can’t wear a bathing suit.  Do they sell tents in this place?”  Yet I wouldn’t let her in and by the last suit I tried on (in black of course) I was able to look at myself in the mirror and say, “That looks nice.”  Still in shock that I had even complimented myself in a bathing suit, I was sure at that point that I had won; I beat the mean girl off and was never to be bathing suit bullied again.  I carried my rather high priced new swimsuit to the cash register feeling relatively proud and confident.

Just as I put my suit on the counter I felt mean girl’s presence.  This had always been her favorite moment in the past to make nasty comments about me to the salesperson and to point out the size of my new swimsuit to the other size 0 customers.  I started to sweat just waiting for her to say, “Yep I’m buying the baby elephant size again.”  Or, “I’m just a good lunch away from having to shop at the muumuu store.”

I steeled myself for the worst when the cashier asked if my nice black bathing suit would be all.   I could feel the mean girl near me, could sense her desire to tear me down but I wasn’t going to lose to her this time.  I kept thinking, “Be kind.  Be compassionate.  Love me no matter how I look.  Accept me as flawed yet beautiful.”  The mean girl seemed to hesitate and then she looked at the cashier with a diva look, tipped her head back, flipped her hair and with the most confident voice I’ve ever heard said,

“No, I’ll take it in hot pink too.”

Love,

Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC

http://momastery.com/carry-on-warrior 

This essay and I are part of the Messy, Beautiful Warrior Project — To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! And to learn about the New York Times Bestselling Memoir Carry On Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, just released in paperback, CLICK HERE!