Do you use hairspray?
When it is announced that “The Corny Collins Show”, Baltimore’s coolest dance party, will be holding auditions for a new dancer, Tracy Turnblad can’t wait to skip school and show the TV producers her amazing dance moves. Tracy and her friend Peggy are obsessed with “The Corny Collins Show”–and Tracy just knows that dancing is her destiny!
But Tracy’s mother, Edna is nervous about Tracy trying out for the show. She knows that her daughter has skills, but she also knows that Tracy is….well, bigger than the other girls. Edna herself hasn’t left the house in years because she is so ashamed of her size, and she fears that a mockery will be made of Tracy if she tries out for the show.
But Tracy tries out for the show anyways, and Corny Collins is amazed by her talent. She becomes the newest and coolest dancing star on the show. Despite the show producer’s attempts to get rid of her, Tracy sticks around and becomes part of a very valuable lesson–confidence and “coolness” is not about what others think, it’s about how you feel about yourself.
You may feel like you’ve heard this lesson many times before. I know I have. Since I was little I was told that I “could do anything I set my mind to” and that I need to “stay true to myself” and “not worry about the outside, it’s the inside that counts”. And yet there are still days that I feel ugly or stupid or like a geek. I’m not the only one. More and more people deal with eating disorders and suicide because they feel like they don’t fit in or will never make the cut. So what is it about the message we’re not getting?
What give us our confidence? Is it about the way we style our hair, what we wear, or what we can do? Is it about what others say or think about us? For Tracy, it was all about the hairspray. If she could hairspray her hair to be as high as the girls on “The Corny Collins Show” then she felt better about herself. What’s that one thing that you obsess over in order to feel like you fit in?
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This is going to sound funny, but the thing that gave me confidence was my body. I was always a tiny person and could eat anything I wanted without gaining a pound. That all ended right after high school and since then I have noticed I have become increasingly self-conscious. I’ve never been allowed to say that because apparently, if you’re small and not overweight, you love your body just the way it is, you can eat anything you want and you never think twice before slipping into your bikini and heading down to the pool. It’s not true, folks. I may be small but as I get older my body gains weight more easily, and on my little body it doesn’t have too many places to go! It has been hard for me at times to accept that I’m not the skinny little girl with the metabolism of a humming bird anymore; that I’m a woman with a God-given softness that our culture rejects in favor of looking like an olympic sprinter. In the movie Spanglish the narator talks about women fighting against their curves, their warmth, their uniqueness as a woman. So I’m working on my perspective and not finding my confidence in my body, which will always let me down, but rather in who I am time Jesus. But I’ll probably be wearing one-pieces from now on.
Great topic! I too struggle in this area, to the point where I don’t feel good about going out if I’m having what I perceive to be a ‘bad hair day’. Very shallow, I know, and an area I’m really working on lately. Tonight we will be discussing a chat topic, “Beauty Inside Out”. Ladies do join us in the chat room at 10:30 p.m. Eastern if you can. http://womentodaymagazine.com/chat/
Interesting review of “Hairspray” Erin….nice! I was wondering what in the world that movie was all about.
But you do ask a very interesting question, ‘What’s that one thing that you obsess over in order to feel like you fit in?’ This may sound very shallow but it’s my hair!!!! Who would have thought? But it’s true…my mother and sister have beautiful thick curly hair and mine was always straight and fine. Now that I am a grandmother myself I have learned to use lots of expensive product so I feel better about myself but if I am honest, it’s still there underneath the product….the niggling thought that if I had thick curly hair people would think I was beautiful!
Is this too being too honest? You asked….