Accepting and Altering Our Appearance

Who owns our bodies?

Today for the first time in a long time I went to church. I even wore pretty new clothes and a pretty bracelet.

These are things that really pleased my mother. She had always been a very girly girl. Then she had me, her oldest child and only daughter. I was the furthest thing from a girly girl.

My uniform was jeans, the older the better, and t-shirts. In cold weather, I wore sweaters and coats as well.

Every once in a while Mom would buy me a dress. I might wear it once or twice for a special occasion, but then it was never worn again.

In junior high, while all my friends were crushing on various guys and deliberately doing slightly less well in school (so as not to bruise the egos of said crushes) I excelled. While at the beginning of the year there were a few guys trying to flirt with me, after I got 110 on the first science test, they all avoided eye contact.

I went on to MIT, worked as an engineer, got married, and then got cancer.

Well, that’s life.

Now, in my 50s, I have discovered I like wearing jewelry sometimes, dressing up in bright, pretty colors, and wearing hats. Originally I wore them to hide my bald scalp which I acquired during chemo. But then I realized I really liked wearing pretty hats.

Its like, it took cancer to bring out my girly side. My mom loves it.