The other day I was checking out at the grocery store when I happened across a photo of the lovely Jennifer Lopez looking even more lovely on the beach in a tiny red bikini. The headline read, “How J.Lo Got Her Body Back.” J.Lo, you see, is also the mother of boy and girl twins born roughly a week apart from mine. As I admired her perfectly taunt abdominals, I couldn’t help but think of my own midsection. My belly was barely keeping it together underneath a pair of too-tight-but-used-to-fit jeans and a baggy shirt.
While I’m smart enough to know that:
1)most photos of celebrities are doctored;
2)celebrities like J.Lo have access to the best bodies money can buy (i.e. plastic surgery);
3)celebrities like J.Lo often have people who cook them healthy, low cal meals; and
4)celebrities like J.Lo have the time and money to hire a personal trainer and work out for hours everyday,
I still couldn’t help but compare my post pregnancy muffin top to her sexy bronzed belly…
Martha Beck, in Finding Your Own North Star points out that, as social creatures, we take the ascribed thoughts and opinions of a handful of people and combine them with the ascribed thoughts and opinions of various social groups (e.g. our family, peers, the media, etc.) and create what psychologists call “the generalized other” or what Martha calls “The Everybody.” Our brain does this as a quick and dirty way to access what we consider the thoughts and opinions of The Entire Known Universe.
Why?
Russel Harris in The Happiness Trap says we do this because, as early humans (I think he means when we were cave dwellers), belonging to a group was essential for our survival. He writes:
“If your clan boots you out, it won’t be long before the wolves find you. So how does the mind protect you from rejection by the group? By comparing you with other members of the clan: Am I fitting in? Am I doing the right thing? Am I contributing enough? Am I as good as the others? Am I doing anything that might make me seem strange?”
Even though my rational mind realizes it to be completely irrational to compare my belly to J.Lo’s, I still do it because the media, and celebrity gossip magazines in particular, occupy a key spot in my very own version of The Everybody. As a mother of twins on the cover of a magazine, she is, to my mind, the very picture of what a mother of boy and girl twins SHOULD look like after 17 months.
The fact that celebrity gossip magazines are taking up space in my Everybody has helped me realize that I have some work to do. Task number one: Take a close look at who I’m letting into my Everybody and ask myself if their ascribed views and opinions serve me. Task number two: Put together a new Everybody made up of members that reinforce a more positive image of myself.
By the way, as a mother of twins, I think I look pretty damned good! If I look this good after 17 months, just think how good I’m going to look in another year!
(My new Everybody helped me realize that.)
P.S. I’m teaching the tools and techniques I learned from Martha Beck’s The Four Day Win and Brook Castillo’s If I’m So Smart, Why Can’t I Lose Weight? If you too are a busy mom with a little more baby weight to lose, sign up for my telecourse. Http://www.bloomlifedesign.com/events/index.cfm.
