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Imperfect or I'm Perfect?

Men and women will only be equal when a woman can walk down the street scratch her crotch, burp, fart and still think she is the sexiest thing on two legs. 

So says my husband, who should know.

The truth is that if a woman exists who thinks she is perfect I haven’t met her. I doubt anyone has. I’m sure Kate Moss has issues. Body dysmorphia isn't an anomaly, we all have it to some extent. Maybe it goes with oestrogen.

Fat women want to be thin.

Thin women want to be thinner with more curves.

Old women want to be young.

Young women want to look more mature.

If you have brown hair you want blonde.

If you’re blonde you want to be a red head.

I want my daughter’s curls.

She wants straight hair like me.

All of which is why gyms, Estee Lauder, plastic surgeons, hair salons and Jimmy Choo make so much money.

This is also why I am about to be a part of the Imperfect Project.

It is all about realizing the perfection in imperfection. In seeing your body as representing who you are, where you’ve come from and the strength it took to get this far.

The Imperfect Project takes woman of all shapes and sizes, with scars and stretch marks and orange peel thighs. Real women like us. Women who have given birth, lost their boobs to cancer or gravity. Women who live, love and need to celebrate the woman within.

Remember that movie, Shirley Valentine? 

Every woman, she is beautiful in her own way. 

Quite often we forget to see the beauty in the curve of our hips and instead see that we can’t wiggle into a pair of skinny jeans. Or we focus on unsightly stretch marks and cringe, instead of seeing them as marks of motherhood and fertility. 

What the Imperfect Project aims to do is strip off all the artifice and help a woman find her courage, acknowledge it and worship it.

One woman has just come out of an abusive marriage. One after years of marriage had never been naked in front of her husband. One as lost her breasts to cancer. 

All of them used the project as a way to reclaim themselves, to see themselves as heroes, to see the beauty in who they are.

Does the thought of stripping off for the camera with no protection, no armour to hide behind scare me? Absolutely. It scares me silly. But it also fills me with excitement. And an urgent need to go the spa get preened, plucked and manicured.

By the time I arrived at the Rosebank Life Day Spa for an emergency massage my head was spinning with the implications. 

For many women going to the spa is traumatic. Taking off their clothes and allowing another person, a stranger, to touch them can do the exact opposite of relaxing them and instead drive them head on into a panic attack.

I love going to this spa. I love that they have thought about this and made sure that there is a curtained change room so you don’t have to strip off in front everyone else. I love they don’t see the imperfections and I never feel judged and found wanting. I feel like a goddess.

From the time I walked in the door on Friday afternoon I began to shed all the stress and tension I was carrying around like Atlas. So I shrugged it all off and wandered into the change rooms. 

I eased my aching feet out of the killer (but very sexy) heels and cuddled into an enormous toweling dressing gown. On me it was voluminous, but as I ambled up the stairs I passed a very tall man on whom it was a micro-mini. One size almost fits all.

I looked down at the heated pool with ill disguised desire and popped my head into the steam room and sauna and promised myself next time. Lerato was busy with a client and so Ivy ushered me into the room of tranquility. I had warm oil massaged into my hair, strong hands sweep away my worries and wondered how anyone could deny themselves this because of fear.

We need to be touched. Have our hair brushed by someone else. Feel human contact. That is part of the healing of massage. 

The simple touch of someone else who cares enough to try and help you through the stress of everyday life.

 

I promise you, by the time you’re done with a treatment, you won’t feel imperfect at all. 

You feel as perfect as the Venus de Milo rising on a shell surrounded by men worshipping your beauty.

You don’t need to burn your La Senza lingerie to feel empowered. 

Just go get a massage.

I work. Sue me.

I am a working mother of three. Please don’t judge me. Don’t look down your nose at me when I wear exhaustion like a cloak, when my children are asleep on the floor of my office, when I didn’t manage to complete all their homework on time.

There is a reason the Hindu goddess Durga is always shown as having multiple arms. It is because she was a working mother too. It also why she had such a short temper.

Despite what you think, I don’t work because I am selfish (or as my 6 year old says “Shellfish”). I work because like most mothers I have to. Of course I’d like to stay home, watch every cricket match (okay maybe not the cricket, but soccer for sure), go to karate and spend 2 hours every day revising homework. I’d love to go to the gym, meet some friends for lunch and maybe do some filing. But, in case you hadn’t noticed we are in a recession.

If I could, I would help in the tuckshop, cover books in the library and chaperone the school disco. The truth is I don’t put my career in front of my family. If I did, I’d still be working in South Africa’s top ad agency, coming home after 12 and have a string of awards to my name. I work because I put them first. Because without it, they couldn’t go to your school.

My school, back in the day, had an hour of supervised prep every day, so that our parents could get on with parenting. 

My experience so far has been that teachers expect me to get home at 6pm, feed them, bath them, read to them, do an hour of homework and have tem in bed at 7:30. 

I am not Hermione Granger and I don't have a fancy little eggtimer.

That was how my Friday started, with me apologizing that I hadn’t managed to do all my seven year old’s spelling and promising we’d do it over the weekend. Coming on the heels of a work week from hell, it pushed me over the edge of the abyss. I went to work almost in tears. And then I bought a Lotto ticket.

I was weighed down by all the things I couldn’t do, like a visit a friend who really needed me by her side, or be the kind of mother teachers used as an example of perfect parenting. 

Hah! There is no perfect parent. 

We all muddle along the best we can and hope our kids don’t hate us for it later.

Inside a toddler's brain

A friend posted this on Facebook this morning and... well... it resonated. 

Say Cheese Shoot

Blindfolded and giggling...

That was how the day started as we collected Lexi's Best Friend Forever for a professional photoshoot with Vanessa Lewis at Nina Say Cheese.

As birthday surprises went it took the cake. 

Suddenly, these gorgeous scruffy tomboys morphed into little ladies. 
Although the shoes didn't last long and nothing could hide that glint in their eyes. 

 I felt like an oracle getting a small glimpse of what Lexi will look like at eighteen.

After a bit of a stiff start the girls relaxed into having fun and being the center of attention. The balloon was irresistible. As balloons are.