I bought myself a new shoe rack that accommodates thirty-six pairs of shoes. The bottom of my closet was covered in piles of shoes, and the scaredy-cat part of me didn't like digging through the shoes searching for pairs because of the possibility of crazy spider creatures and what not. I already have a hanging shoe organizer inside of my closet, but it only seems to work for my flats and other skinny shoes. So anyway, something else was in order for my chunkier shoes, such as heels and boots.
After all was sorted, I saw how motherhood has affected my shoe rack: my hanging organizer was full of sensible flats in all varieties of black, brown, and navy. The new rack was home to ten more pairs of shoes: two more pairs of flats (brown, black), three pairs of tennis shoes, one pair of clunky brown rubber-soled things, one pair of (flat, brown) boots, and three pairs of heels (black, brown, and fire-engine red). Seeing my shoe collection displayed in front of me, I was forced to think about a couple of very obvious truths. First of all, that pile o' shoes at the bottom of the closet made me think I had a much more sizable collection of shoes than I really had. I had forgotten at some point I had weeded out my heels from high school and early college. Second of all, out of the whole lot, I had exactly one pair of shoes that had any kind of sex appeal. I bought them three months ago, and I've never worn them before.
I say that motherhood changed my shoe rack because I'm not sure what else in my life has quite made me go from feeling sexy to frumpy in about eight hours as childbirth has. Let me tell you, the frump hung on both physically and emotionally. My body, well it was sagging after having my first baby. Skin was looser, posture was slumpy. I had a C-section, so my abs were shot. I was also just larger all-around; my feet were a whole size larger, and my waist and hips were two sizes larger. I thought, "This is it. This is the beginning of my motherhood body." I was twenty-five, and I had settled for fifty-five.
I went through my pre-pregnancy clothes and purged all of my size eights, all of my "going out" tops, and all of the sassy heels that would no longer fit my clumsy feet. I watched a lot of What Not to Wear to figure out how to dress this new body in a way that would conceal the curves modestly. I must not have followed their Rules very well, because I ended up dressing very matronly in clothes from the women's department. Curves were covered, but so was any hint of sex appeal, or femininity, or happiness.
It wasn't just the body. My mind was telling me that I wasn't sexy anymore, nor did I have any reason to be. Date nights with my husband switched from staying out past midnight exploring new venues in the city to going somewhere close by, checking our phones and the time for baby-related news--was it almost time to get back for nursing? Was the babysitter (grandparent) having any trouble getting the baby to sleep? Would we pay for this little disruption in baby's schedule for the next three nights? When you have a baby, no matter what parenting philosophy you align yourself with, the baby will never leave you. Not even on dates. Under such conditions, I had a hard time being fun and flirty and attractive. Also, I only felt like I was one dimension of desirable. The baby wanted me for food and comfort all day and all night. All. Night. Was I good for anything else? I didn't have time to find out. How could I reconcile the "old days," pre-pregnancy, when I could feel hot, with the new standard of living that included my baby bouncing around in my brain 24/7? It wasn't happening. I didn't realize that having a baby necessitated creating a new kind of sexy for myself. Not a quasi-sex appeal, either. A new kind of sexy.
For me, this was starting to be a desperate situation by the time my second child was born. If you spend enough time not loving yourself, enough time pouring all of your energy into someone or something else, and spending most of your time trying to get used to the unfortunate idea that you are not and cannot be attractive anymore, it begins to be the norm that exudes through your every day actions, words, and general mood. I was starting to become a teacher, mother, and wife who had given up on feeling good about herself. Trust me, my students, children, and husband could tell. Neglecting myself was a lifestyle, which meant that I neglected them, too.
The first step in reinventing sexiness and virtually everything else is to figure out what can be changed and what cannot. My needed changes came in two categories: physical and emotional. If you're as impatient as I am, you also have to determine of the things that can change, which can change the fastest with the least amount of disruption to your life.
Physically, things that could not change were stretch marks, foot size, and the happy little veins that had been steadily appearing on my legs. I had to start loving those things somehow. But I could easily change the clothes I wore, my hair, and how I wore make up. It didn't have to be expensive, either. I grew my hair long and used some product to pump up the waves. I bought some new make up and experimented with wearing it in different ways. I shopped at trendy resale shops so that I could feel better financially about buying pieces that were bright and bold and sassy and wouldn't be considered "classic." Enter: fire-engine red platform pumps. Back to those in a minute.
Emotional changes were going to be less easy and quick. I was overwhelmed majorly and could barely admit it to myself. There was the voice in my head that was saying, "Help! I need time to myself every single day! Uninterrupted! I need a date night at least twice a month (every weekend preferable)! I need to hang out with my girlfriends sans children! I need freedom to get out of the house at some point each day of the weekend!" Then there was the other voice that was telling me to be sensible and mature. It was telling me that I was craving my life before children, and I just couldn't have it. I needed to get used to life with children. I suppressed my real wants because I was afraid of seeming selfish. Really afraid.
After some serious postpartum anxiety/depression and counseling after my second baby, I learned that I needed to take care of myself any way I could, which included saying out loud what I had been previously desiring in secret. My husband and I learned to start planning time for freedom as a couple and as individuals. Free time had to be carved out of our schedule because if it wasn't, then it would get totally railroaded by the daily demands of our family. After weekly social workouts with a girlfriend, I found how calm I tended to feel back at home--and that was just once per week. I was parenting much more actively, and with more patience. Surprise, surprise--when I started to feel successful with parenting, I started to feel confidence in myself. Was I...was I a strong woman?
So back to those pumps. My husband and I were out of town for a weekend alone (!) for the first time since our kids were born to attend a wedding. I had a new dress, new chunky jewelry, and a new palette of sassy eye shadows (everything from pink to yellow to teal). During an afternoon of shopping, I saw some patent-leather fiery red platform heels for $5. I figured that God had put a little bit of crazy-cheap foxy footwear in front of a woman with a new-found confidence and a thrifty spirit for a reason. I put them on. I walked down the aisles. I asked Jon his opinion (I don't know why I do this. He will never disagree with me or utter a negative word about matters regarding how I look and my menstrual cycle). I hemmed and hawed. It's not like the price was holding me back. These shoes just seemed to be for someone who knows her sex appeal and likes to flaunt it. These shoes said, "I am fierce!" They said to others on the street, "I want you to look at me." I wasn't sure if I was ready to take on these shoes. I wasn't sure I had it yet. I was a mother, after all. Moms don't wear sex on their feet.
I bought them. I didn't wear them to the wedding. My excuse was they would hurt my feet, and my feet looked too "old and vein-y" in them. No one said that new confidence and new feelings of hotness never got diluted with mom brain. I wasn't quite hot enough for the shoes in my head.
It's funny how a pair of shoes can represent so much more to a woman than just footwear. Men don't understand why someone might need to buy a shoe rack with thirty-six-pair capacity, or why it's sad when only one pair of shoes in a twenty-something's shoe collection are sexy and vivacious. Shoes represent our various moods, and we wear them accordingly. My shoes had all become glum, a smattering of muted colors to match my muted feelings about myself. There was a reason I bought the red platforms. I suspect my most heartfelt reasons were similar to why a woman might save a bikini from college--a small reminder of what was once part of her womanly identity and confidence, and also a craving to reclaim a similar confidence and identity in a new way. I bought those shoes to begin to break the barrier of self-denial that the first couple of years of motherhood built smack on top of my feminine allure. To be blatantly unoriginal, I wanted my sexy back.
I haven't worn the shoes yet. But the first step has been taken--they are on display on a new shoe rack outside of my closet, rather than buried under a mound of black, brown, and navy. I'll see them every time I pick out an outfit. One of these days, the shoes will come out and take their first walk into the real world. I'll be self-conscious, I think, but I also think that the world will be extremely kind to me. I plan on reworking the whole notion that motherhood is not sexy. Not really for other people, but for myself. Who'll join me?
No comments:
Post a Comment