Love Yer Face

Darlings,
What a week!
Oy!

Thanksgibbins comes apace (anon? I can never remember those Shakespearean phrases) and PB is not at all ready. It’s a good thing that I’ve hosted seven or eight times before and have a grip on the meal, because the house is just not going to be as clean and tidy as I want it to be. I flew in and out of Washington, DC last weekend (prepared and delivered an ordination sermon in those few days, visited friends, enjoyed a few beautiful autumn days), led a Church Council on Tuesday night, got caught up in the office on Wednesday, gave myself a bit of time to mourn two beloved parishioners’ deaths (memorial services forthcoming), attended a 3-hour board meeting in the city on Thursday, guest lectured at a seminary Thursday night, and hosted a clergy Communion and Bible study from noon to 3:00 pm today at a friend’s house (preparing & leading the Communion liturgy).

Tomorrow is our Holiday Fair at church and I have to find 5-6 loaves of pumpkin bread (my own fault as I forgot to alert my wonderful worship committee in time & wouldn’t spring that on them last minute: I am firmly of the belief that one person’s crisis — of their own making, that is — should never be inflicted on others). I will attend a matinee of “Sunday In the Park With George” tomorrow afternoon an hour away to support a friend who has a featured role.

I … also… have… a… Thanksgiving….worship… to…. prepare….(yes, including a sermon).

So that’s the answer to your question, young R. Christian who asked me last weekend what ministers do during the week! The darling child told his mother, a dear college pal of mine, that he thought being a minister would be a cool job because they only work on Sundays. Ha ha! Get Auntie PeaceBang a cold compress, would you dear?

I really, really need to get my hair colored. BADLY. If all goes well tonight and I find a source for pumpkin bread maybe I can sneak off to MasterCuts tomorrow and have it done.

Anyway, cupcakes, the point of this post is my sadness about a comment a friend of mine made yesterday. I suggested that she needed to get some headshots taken for a project she’s working on and publicizing and she said she didn’t want to do that because she hated her face.

This makes me quite distraught. How can you hate your face!?

I mean, we all have features that we’d love to be able to magically (or surgically) improve, and certainly many of us are critical of our skin or puffy eyes or over-plucked or scraggly eyebrows or stubbly chins or whatever, but hate your face!!??

Your face is YOU.

I wish for you, every time you look in the mirror, to love what you see. Love that person not for what that person can do for others, just love that person. Love what you are going through together. Appreciate the hell out of all that history, because it’s fleeting. And all of it will be etched into that face, which becomes the living record of your life experience — so why, PeaceBang wonders, are so many people eager to erase the evidence of all that experience?

That face is your ancestry. I see my mother’s round-cheeked smile in my own, my father’s straight and prominent schnoz, the same tiny forehead that my sister has (we call it a three-head), the chocolate chip eyes of my father’s mother, my maternal grandmother’s silver hair growing in at the roots. The pink skin belongs to my mother’s Slavic side of the family.

My face is ME. And therefore I treasure it as it is, the unique expression of features that closely resembles many other faces that have come before and that shall come after I’m gone, but none exactly like it (identical twins out there, this is true even for you!). The laugh lines are well-earned, and I even hold a grudging affection for the marionette lines that are starting to come in around my mouth — etched by concentration and study, I like to think. Sure, I hate my multiple chins as any vain woman would, but they certainly represent an appetite and voracious passion for life I would have no other way. I take responsibility for them, and for the big smile that reveals slightly coffee-stained teeth by now. That chip in the lower front tooth is probably there courtesy of a pistachio shell. Earned that, too, and the sun spots on my right and left cheeks.

Please don’t hate your face. If you hate your face or body then you cannot truly inhabit them, you cannot be fully, vibrantly, joyfully, confidently incarnate in the world that needs your energy, your talent and your unique Spirit. Honey, let me tell you — you’ve got to love that punim more than anyone else has ever loved it, and claim it. I don’t think this is a matter of simple affirmations, although those can certainly help. What I’m telling you is to stare into the mirror every day and just groove on your fascinating self. Don’t avoid your reflection. Look for it. Be a teenager again: study it. Get a facial or give yourself one (yes boys, you too!). Spend extra time shaving or applying make-up. Enjoy that person in the mirror. Look at you, Preacher! What do you look like? It doesn’t matter what others see: what do YOU see? Find the beauty.
Tell the critical committee in your head to shut up and get lost and take stock. How about your warm eyes, or that scar next to your eye that you got when a dog bit you in the face that gives you a kind of dangerous edge? How about that pretty mouth? Or your great brow in profile? Find your good angles. Smile at yourself. Try your hair a new way. Trim your ear hairs. Get your brows shaped. Try a red lipstick. Pull your hair back in a way that accentuates your big nose like the women do in France.

Your face is one of your major modes of communication with the world. Before people hear your words they SEE YOUR FACE. And it is your face that reveals whether or not you really believe your own words.

That’s the face that God hath made. Don’t you go being mean to it, now.

8 Replies to “Love Yer Face”

  1. “…need to get my hair colored. BADLY.”

    I hesitate to think what the results would be if you went into the shop and said that you needed it colored badly – and they obliged. [Former English Teacher PeaceBang is BUSTED! Ya got me! 🙂 – PB]

    You are a treasure to many of us out here in cyberland. [And you to me, babe. – PB]

  2. I’ve had two babies, and my stomach tells the tale of carrying my two children, children I loved before they were born. Thanks for the reminder to love and respect the story that my stretched-out tummy tells – it tells the story of creation and birth and how my body was made a vessel to carry my precious children. I’ve been avoiding looking at it in the mirror since my son was born 4 years ago, as if I should be ashamed of it, instead of being amazed at what my body has done. I’ll try to do better by it. Thanks. [YEAH. You LOVE on that body. Damn. I think every woman who has given birth should do a jiggly belly dance frequently to celebrate her awesome strength. – PB]

  3. Preach, PB! Preach! I can tell all of you how precious and gorgeous and irreplaceable your faces are, no matter what you may think of them, because mine is gone. Gone. Many years ago, I succumbed to the Critical Committee in my head and to my dermatologist’s suggestion and decided I needed a blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery). I went to one of the best plastic surgeons in the world — someone to whom people come from all over the globe when they need botched surgery repaired or extremely difficult reconstructive surgery done — for this relatively simple procedure; but things went horribly, horribly wrong. That was the start of years and years and years of surgeries and rehab that only made things progressively worse rather than better. In the process, my face was repeatedly hacked up, and I was left with residual nerve damage that paralyzed the entire left side of my face. I am legally blind in one eye and have reduced vision in the other. I can no longer blink, smile or even speak normally. I cannot drive. I read only with significant magnification, but even then, not for any extended periods of time. I went bankrupt in search of recovery. My poor husband finally left because he couldn’t take any more of the suffering I had inadvertently brought into our lives. Fortunately, our children are grown, but they understandably keep their distance; I ruined their lives too. Of course, I also had to leave ministry, which I loved more than I can say. Even if I were functionally able to return to ministry now, I never could. I wear my hypocrisy and the consequences of that single vain choice on my face. I am, literally and figuratively, unable to look people in the eye, a fact that robs me, literally and figuratively, of the only “tool of the trade.” You do not know me. You never will. I live in almost complete seclusion now. With the exception of a handful of acquaintances and my therapist, I interact with almost no one any more because it’s just too painful for me — and too painful for others to look at me. (Trust me. Michael Jackson looked more normal than I do now.) If you can find it in your hearts, please do pray for me — your foolish, selfish and scarred sister– who lives alone and in shame with the results of her own stupid choice. And please, please, please look into the mirror and love every last thing you find in your face that you “hate.” Love that face. It IS you. I know. I no longer have mine — and never will again.

  4. Hi Wendy. I was thinking you would probably chime in on this! And I was also thinking about a young man I saw on the streets of Chicago many years ago whose face had been almost entirely burnt away. His entire visage was one of pink scar tissue except for the suggestion of lips, two holes where his nose had been and animated eyes surrounded by puffy lids (no lashes or eyebrows, of course). His did not look like a human face, but he had obviously decided to live life fully anyway, and was out with his friends, laughing and chatting. He instantly became my hero and exemplar for fully inhabiting the body and face that we have — not hiding away so that others will be spared or that we might not have to deal with the discomfort of dealing with their shock –so I wrote that post in his spirit. I have every sympathy for sufferers of Bells Palsy and other disfigurements and would never accuse them of being vain for grieving the loss of their facial mobility and symmetry. I didn’t use the word “beautiful” in my post on purpose. I spoke, rather, of the face being US, and I still believe that the face never deserves to be hated or reviled. I hope our sister who wrote in about her seclusion will get out there and reclaim her life after the botched surgeries. Our faces show our histories, and some show traumatic histories. I think I’m developing a sermon here! Good luck with the interview!

  5. PB and Wendy, thank you so much for elaborating on this conversation. I am with Wendy on this. Please don’t preach on this yet. Severe facial damage is an enormously complex and painful terrain. The young man you saw in Chicago. PB, is indeed heroic, but who knows what he is and long has been negotiating internally? His suffering is incalculable. I am unspeakably fortunate not to have suffered such a terrible, life altering injury as a facial burn or Bell’s Palsy, and I pray that I never will. I would never compare myself to such people. That said, I cannot ever be measured as “heroic” even if I can summon the courage to tell the full story of what happened to me. I can only and ever be seen for the characteristic that prompted my election of the initial surgery: vain…and so, deserving of what I got.

    Before I was a minister, I worked as a clinical psychologist who specialized in body dysmorphia and trauma. As it happens, I worked on a burn unit of a hospital for many years and had a front row seat on incredible courage and unfathomable pain. I watched some of these patients finally gather the courage and self-esteem to face the world as they were, and despite the inevitable stares, they were uniformly received with admiration, respect and gratitude for their bravery….as well they should have been! I especially remember one beautiful young woman who had been horribly disfigured in a case of domestic violence when her husband threw battery acid on her face. After more than a dozen skin grafts, she ultimately managed to take off her surgical mask and became a strong spokesperson and advocate for other survivors of domestic violence. I do not have words to tell you how much I admire and respect such people.

    In my case, I do not really have that option. Shall I become a “brave advocate” for ministers who were shallow enough to have sought out minor plastic surgery and been left with consequences that devastated their whole lives? No, at most, I am a cautionary, tragic poster child for the wages of sin.

    I live in CA. Just two weeks ago, I had to go to Berkeley for a medical appointment. All trips into public are excruciatingly painful for me, but I summoned the requisite energy and made the trip. As I was walking down the street, fielding the stares and not-so-furtive sideways glances, a woman of my age crossed the street, obviously for the purpose of speaking with me. She seemed so full of need, so full of question, that I asked if I could help her. “No, you can’t,” she replied. Shaking her head in disgust, she simply said, “I hope you’re satisfied with what you’ve done to yourself. You deserve what you got. Yours is the worst case of plastic surgery I’ve ever seen. Go to LA to live with the other freaks.” I was temporarily speechless, astonished by her candor but not really surprised. She had only said aloud what others (and I) always think. As she walked away, I managed a reply, which wasn’t a total lie. “I was in a terrible accident and had to have multiple surgeries just to be able to speak and eat again. I hope you’re satisfied with yourself for doling out such violent cruelty to a suffering stranger.”

    Wendy, may God bless you with peace and strength as you continue to heal, inside and out, from a condition that, unlike me, you neither invited nor caused. May God bless and redeem us all, until we see God, “face to face.”

  6. This is clearly a sensitive issue that people feel strongly about. I’m seeing two different, but related, issues here. One, which I believe is PeaceBang’s orignal subject, is the dissatisfaction that many “average looking” people have with their faces for not living up to an impossible standard. The other one is a very real phychological and physical anguish that people with facial injuries/paralysis suffer. I believe that both are related to our culture’s over emphasis on external beauty.

  7. Wendy – you wrote two particularly BRILLIANT things among many other astute thoughts:

    “‘Loving your face’ is a great idea. But it is not an imperative. My main point is that it is really unhelpful to ‘command’ such a love, especially if one is not fully aware of why a person who says they don’t love their face feels that way,”

    and

    “The initial post…carried a judgment: I don’t understand how anybody can hate their face, and therefore you shouldn’t hate your face.”

    I agree with both. But I also think the original post was written from a loving source, one passionate about affirming what is good in each person. (I hope I am not being too presumptuous opining that). [Of course it was! Opine away! This is a fashion blog written for clergy by a self-proclaimed “stage mother” to all clergy. It’s not a psychological or academic or medical journal written for therapeutic value. It’s fun. It’s pink. The category is “Theological Reflections on Your Fabulousness!” – PB]

    I wholeheartedly agree that we are NOT our face, we are NOT our body; those are parts of WHAT we are and perhaps, for some, of who we are. Casually expressed dissatisfaction with any of those parts may not be a sign of lack of self-love at all, but rather a realistic recognition that indeed, few of us can approximate media standards, and it’s a pity our world is so intoxicated by them – but nothing more. Not every part of us has to be lovable or venerable or attractive or admirable or what-have-you in order for us to feel we are intrinsically lovable and loved.

  8. Good stuff, and valuable perspectives.

    HOWEVER.

    I struggle sometimes with commenters who feel the need to interpret every column as though I wrote it just for them, and show up to criticize and dominate the conversation while the many others for whom the post does resonate remain silent, cowed by the anger and negativity of the chronic critic. I get tired of that. I want to say to the perpetual bitcher, “Look, it’s not always about YOU. We do not always need to hear about how YOU look great in something I called frumpy or how YOU hate the photo of the garment that I love.” I am trying to write about things that apply to lots of people. It if doesn’t apply to you, then may I suggest that you occasionally let it pass? People who consistently participate in any community from a place of Terminal Uniqueness are exhausting and a drag. If you can look back over months of your own comments and find that 95% of them are finger-wagging corrections, I encourage you to take time away from this blog. Chronic dissatisfaction with my point of view probably means that you shouldn’t be reading. Why frustrate yourself and make showing up mostly about trying to show ME up?

    Also, please try to avoid making bizarre and insulting assumptions, like asking me not to preach on a topic that I’ve obviously just tossed off a little observation about. This column was OBVIOUSLY meant as a bit of cheerleading for an insecure person, and a love letter to your sweet faces. Did anyone think I was going to whip out a sermon on it for next week? Come on, gang. Please try to have a little more respect than that, even if a column pushes your buttons.

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