That Girl’s Dilemma

Your mom, or maybe your grandmother, remembers her. Marlo Thomas, the attractive older woman from the St Jude Children’s Hospital infomercials, in the late 1960s was a progressive television star. She was That Girl. That Girl moved to New York alone to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. That Girl took her fiancé to a women’s liberation meeting. That Girl laughed off all her mistakes. Who is That Girl now? 

Recently for me, That Girl has had a thousand different faces, each bursting in and fading quickly out from my iPhone screen as I scroll. Women teaching me requisite components of an eye-catching outfit. Women promoting strengthening the deep core with pilates. Women offering checklists for achieving everything from healthy hair to a healthy investment portfolio. And I want to be All These Girls. I want to have style. I want abs and toned arms. I want to feel beautiful and live a rich life in every sense of the word. I want to be All These Girls so badly that I’m losing This Girl. I’m losing myself.  

My dilemma reached its peak a few weeks ago when I was on vacation with my husband. While packing for the trip I complained about how my old jeans no longer fit. He, being both a smart and sensible man, told me it’s because my butt’s gotten bigger. He advised purchasing new pants. One night during our travels we decided to dress up for dinner. My husband always dresses up, button-ups are part of his everyday wear. I always dress down, picking one of those many pairs of old jeans and some sneakers for my daily uniform. Tonight I couldn’t get away with this if he was wearing a suit, so I put on a merigold ankle-length cocktail dress I’d ordered a year ago for a wedding we never actually attended. The dinner was unremarkable, but I wanted some photos of us to remember this night when we both looked presentable. I positioned us in front of the full-length mirror in our hotel room, held up my phone and attempted a slimming pose. After multiple counts of choreography: inhaling, dipping the hips forward, tugging the dress, contorting the arms, the results in my view were not art, but ugliness. My stomach was bulging, my chest was too flat, my shoulders too wide. And how uncomfortable I looked. You could see it in the smile I had chosen which I hoped would mask my crooked bottom teeth. The photos were a disaster. At that moment they were a disaster because I wasn’t pretty enough. Because I was too awkward to ever be able to pose right. Because I’d let myself go. Because I was too old for this.

So I got upset. Upset I hadn’t achieved a “post-worthy” snap of the two of us. And then I got more upset about being upset over something like this. Why the heck did I hate my body so much? Where had my confidence gone? When did I become so superficial? A glass of wine later I was still upset, but had at least arrived at my first epiphany with the help of my ever-wise spouse. The photos were a disaster because they weren’t natural. I wasn’t being myself, I wasn’t loving myself, so of course I didn’t look like myself. And no they weren’t even a disaster, I was just hyper-critical. I got out of the merigold dress and into bed and our vacation continued. 

The next day we took a train to a cozy rental in a tiny ski town. I’d survived a somewhat harrowing first day of learning how to snowboard as a full blown adult. My whole being seemed in pain, including my mind. I already knew how to surf and skateboard and thought another board would be no different. The first impact with ice changed that. My Instagram feed that evening was unsurprisingly consumed with extreme sports clips. Masked faces mouthing, “Leave saving the world to the men? I don’t think so.” Pan to girl losing both skis bombing bunny slope. Then I landed on a post from the brand Roxy where the phrase O.M.G repeats over snowboarder Chloe Kim landing a 720. Kinda cool. I steadied my thumb. Half way through the video I was in tears. O.M.G. morphed into “Oh My Goddess” as a skier takes round after round of spills and then lands her jump flawlessly. A pregnant woman coasts down a wave on a longboard. The caption read, “Make waves. Move mountains.” 

It all came together for me over the course of a two minute video. An eye-catching add campaign had made everything click. Make waves. Fricking move mountains. Those Girls were doing something. They were embracing life. They were failing. They were succeeding. They were friends. They were mothers. Those Girls focused on where their bodies could take them. What their bodies could do for them. Not how they looked doing it. Not who else was watching. 

My husband appeared concerned. I had already been in a touchy mood after two ibuprofen to numb my aching legs. Now I was wrapped under a blanket sobbing. Between big breaths I tried to explain to him my sudden onslaught of emotion. There were a few expletives and a bit of snot, but the summary was – I felt inspired, I didn’t feel bad. Somehow, sadly, revolutionary. I had been influenced to remember what women were capable of instead of what we lacked. And yeah, he probably thought that was a little pathetic, but he didn’t say so. He was happy for me. I pulled myself together enough to make it off the couch, but I couldn’t turn this tide of thought. It had further to go. 

I continued on from being inspired by Those Girls to considering my own accomplishments. I’m 27. I’ve been married to the love of my life for 3.5 years. I’m in great health. I’m financially stable. I have a job I succeed in. I have family and friends who love me. In my twenties I’ve achieved effectively everything a sane person could want out of life. I kept going. I have a college degree, from Harvard no less. My job is a Submarine Officer, a position that wasn’t even open to American women 15 years ago. I can write and sing and play guitar and do pull-ups and read Arabic and solve calculus problems (if I study a little). I kept going. I kept listing in my mind and even out loud all the things I had done and could do. All the gifts I had. All the blessings in my life. And by the end of the night I was not just acquainted with, but best friends with That Girl now. That Girl is me. 

If you’ve made it this far in the essay, thank you. But I hope to God you don’t think that my epiphany of self-love is just a means of convincing you to be impressed by me. I’m not influencing you to get married at 23, or join the Navy, or learn an instrument. If you do none of the things I’ve done ever, that’s wonderful. You’re wonderful. You’re not me. You’re you. You have an entirely different story and different set of abilities and accessibilities and hopes and dreams. Now I’m sounding cliché.

The point is That Girl is you- if you let yourself be her. Or him. Or them. 

Remind yourself of this once in a while. It feels good. 

The husband and the marigold dress.