Some years ago I participated in a workshop at the Women´s Therapy Center Institute of Nova York, leaded by my friends and mentors Jane Hirschmann e Carol Munter. They are the authors of Overcoming Overeating, which I had the privilege of writing the preface for the Brazilian edition.
We were discussing the generalized feeling of discomfort with our bodies in this culture and how we feel the urge to reconstruct it every morning. As soon as we wake up, we put our hands on the belly, to measure it up: Are we fatter, did we loose weight, are we the same as yesterday?
Then we go to the mirror, for the first acts of reconstruction. One of the most successful Brazilian sites teaches us how to have an effect of plastic surgery through make up. Every day, millions of women follow these suggestions.
Then, we go for the day selection of what to wear.Something to modify, to tighten up, to cover, to elongate.
In that workshop, informed and well meaning women decided to come the next day in our most natural state, the way we wake up.
We wanted to try in that protected space, the sensation of being the way we really are.
You can imagine the frisson in the room, many participants saying thet they did not feel able to such an act of disclosure.
People asked why not just a little bit of lipstick or some hydrating cream.
Next day, Jane and Carol and some other women too were there with washed faces. The truth is that the majority including me did not managed. My internal dialogue that morning in the mirror was rationalizing about why the cream and the lipstick were absolutely necessary for health reasons in that cold weather!
I was there, defeated, searching for inspiration of those people, more courageous, ahead of their time.
The picture
Amedeo Modigliani. Young woman with blue eyes. 1917. Metropolitan Museum