Minibabble: Extraordinary creatures: women looking at themselves === [00:00:00] [00:00:37] Suki Wessling: What do women see when we look at our culture looking at women? This sounds circular, but it is the way that many mature women see ourselves. When we look in a mirror, we don't see light bouncing off our faces and bodies and reflecting back from a smooth surface. We see the cultural experience of seeing ourselves as women. Cultural views of women --- [00:01:06] Sharon DeJong: I had a pretty low self esteem and really bought into that. patriarchal narrative that, you know, women are supposed to be looking a certain way. And I never could, at least I felt like I could never achieve that. [00:01:23] Suki Wessling: We grew up with glossy magazines that promoted impossible beauty. Unlike boys, whose developing bodies were celebrated, girls suffered whether they were early or late bloomers. [00:01:34] Kristi Melani: I was bullied heavily in seventh and eighth grade . That's when I started to realize that this world wasn't as kind as I thought it was, especially to females. I was a late bloomer and the boys would tease me and actually called me the, the great plains. [00:01:54] Suki Wessling: Some of us practiced dissociation. [00:01:56] Shannon Murray: Along the way, the way I've seen myself in the world is is just kind of bobbing along. Like I'm in the ocean, like a buoy, kind of floating through and experiencing things as they rotate towards me. [00:02:07] Suki Wessling: The standards of feminine beauty were created to exclude almost all of us. Unlike in past cultures where healthy features of women's bodies were celebrated, our culture taught us to dislike many of the features of our healthy bodies. [00:02:21] Kimberly Blake Nixon: I have worked in show business from about three until my late twenties, early thirties. I just sort of went from job to job and my job was to sing and to dance. And so it was always about, you know, keep your weight down, stay in shape. Smile pretty, always look happy. [00:02:38] Suki Wessling: And in a diverse country like the United States, women of color suffer doubly. [00:02:43] Gail T. Borkowski: I feel like my body was great and strong but I think the inside of me couldn't really see my own perfection at that time. Because the messages that I was getting from the outside in, most certainly from the media and what was being reflected back in television, which was big then and radio was that I wasn't enough and being an African American woman too, definitely at that time, we were not so visible and didn't even really know, I think, in a sense, how to make ourselves more visible without being vulnerable because of the intrinsic racism and the, the perspectives or the views about Black women could and couldn't be, could and couldn't do. Aging --- [00:03:38] Suki Wessling: And then we aged. Male signs of aging were once again celebrated. A man with graying hair looks distinguished or serious. Women with gray hair are, at best, ignored. At worst, criticized to our faces. [00:03:59] Jacqueline Morgan: When I let my hair go gray, when I stopped coloring my hair and, oh my Lord, people took enormous offense. Like I have never, I had more men comment to me on, what are you doing with your hair? Are you trying to be blonde? Why would you do that? [00:04:17] Gail T. Borkowski: You know, a man may look distinguished with gray temples, but I definitely didn't think I looked distinguished with gray temples. A new narrative about beauty --- [00:04:30] Suki Wessling: But then something happened. Many young women are refusing to fall for the narrative that we grew up with. So mature women started to take a frank look at ourselves. It's hard. [00:04:41] Jacqueline Morgan: I'm one of those people that I've spent my entire life avoiding being photographed. I despise having my photo taken because I just, I, I, I quote unquote don't photograph well. So this was really super uncomfortable for me. It was like somebody was turning my skin inside out, being flayed alive. [00:05:02] Kristi Melani: I've never been in a position where I looked at a picture of myself or looked at a video or, you know, I do a lot of webcasts and things for work. [00:05:11] I never like, damn, I look good. Women l ooking at photographs --- [00:05:15] Suki Wessling: Photographer Jana Marcus started her series of glamour portraits of mature women during the pandemic, when most of us were sitting around in our sweatpants. She had no idea that seeing their photos would affect the women so deeply. [00:05:34] Kristi Melani: And the way I was looking straight into the camera. It was like I was staring into the soul of somebody who was looking at the picture. As my mom said, Wow, you look fierce. And that is the type of leader I want to be looked at as a, as a fierce woman in a pretty male dominated tech space that I'm in. [00:05:58] Gail T. Borkowski: I showed it to my son, who's in his early 20s, mid 20s now, and he looked at it and he went, wow, mom, wow, because he's never seen that. [00:06:09] And then he wound up posting it on his Instagram. And then he tells me the next day when I saw him, he said, yeah, mom, you blew up Instagram. [00:06:17] Kimberly Scott: Oh my gosh, what do I see when I look at the photographs? I, I see my essence. And I smile. I think that Jana really captured who I believe I am. It's extraordinary to see myself in this way because so often, we tend to be hard on ourselves and how we appear, and I think that's a great disservice that we do to ourselves. [00:06:45] Sharon DeJong: Oh, I see beauty. I see courage. I see fuck the patriarchy. I see love. I see my inner child. I see a hippie. Yeah, she brought out my peace. I feel more empowered as a female, as an older female. I feel like standing stronger in who I am. [00:07:09] Suki Wessling: Seeing ourselves through a new lens, a lens that recognizes our beauty and strength, helps us come to terms with those internalized messages that many of us denied we had. [00:07:18] Sharon DeJong: For me, it was just like, I was not going to have a six pack abs. I was not going to have, you know, big boobs. [00:07:25] I was not going to do all, you know, perfect thighs or whatever. I just, I was okay with that. [00:07:30] Gail T. Borkowski: It's been a real journey personally for me to come to accept and love myself for my amazing self that I am and that I was then, that I just didn't know, I've come into a greater acceptance of me. Finding the, the joy and the gratitude and just being able to take a walk and feeling the strength of my body as it is. I'm finding ways to appreciate where I am. Normalizing womanhood --- [00:08:00] Jacqueline Morgan: It's time to really normalize just being a woman and that that includes a variety of different phases. [00:08:07] We don't have to define it as being in our 20s or our 50s or our 80s. It's just who you are at that very specific moment in time. [00:08:16] Kimberly Blake Nixon: And when the photos, were done. I, I just cried. I mean, I couldn't believe how beautiful they look compared to how not very beautiful I felt at the time. Comparing yourself to the very best version of any woman ever is really a hard, that's a hard place to get to for most people. It's just not realistic. And the truth is that the more comfortable you are in your own skin, the more beautiful you look to yourself. [00:08:49] Shannon Murray: When I first saw the picture that went into that magazine, I was like, holy cow, look at her. Look at that lady. Look at that boss lady. You the pose is just like badass disco boss is what it looks like. And I'm like, yes, you know, I was just so tickled over that and it was so empowering. I've become more of that person than I felt I've been in my heart the whole time. [00:09:11] Sharon DeJong: What I love is that I see younger women that are not buying into the crap that women that were born in the 60s 50s and 60s and 70s were buying into. I, I do see a more empowered force on this planet today where, where women are concerned and that makes me really happy. [00:09:33] Suki Wessling: Jana Marcus, who took these women's portraits, wants mature women to reclaim their beauty and their power. [00:09:39] Jana: I think is so important to be shared and to listen to, and to not be tossed away or forgotten as is so often seen in our culture, which celebrates youth. whether there's lines or gray hair or extra pounds, it doesn't take away from how important you are as a human being and what you have to contribute back to the world. [00:10:02] Kimberly Scott: We are so, so hard on ourselves and we are extraordinary creatures. We really are. We are so powerful. [00:10:11] Suki Wessling: This is your host, Suki Wessling, and this has been a Minibabble. You can access the full episode, Women in Photographs, and a list of the speakers at Babblery. com. The music is courtesy of Unwoman. Find her at unwoman. com. [00:10:32]