Did you hear the one about the mermaid and the whale?

Autumn is, without a doubt, my favorite season and it was a beautiful fall morning in Seattle – gray, slightly misty and chilly enough for a cozy sweater and boots.  My morning was great.  Pandora treated me well during my trip to the gym. (I’ve long suspected that a great Led Zeppelin song has near magical capabilities and now I know that it can specifically take a treadmill run from “meh” to amazing.) I got lots of hugs and kisses from my sweet son, and there is really nothing better than that, and my commute was “easy, peasy, lemon squeezy” as Chester would say.

I parked my car and had a brief “driveway moment” as I finished listening to the ever-fabulous Dolly Parton beg Jolene not to steal her man, even though she can. After obtaining my beloved morning chai latte, I contentedly settled in at my desk. When I logged in for my routine pre-work Facebook check-in, I saw something that bothered me – the Mermaid versus Whale story – on several friends’ pages. I’ve seen it, in various iterations and settings, a number of times over the past year or so.  In case you haven’t read it, or need a reminder, here it is: 

Recently, in a large city, a poster featuring a young, thin and tanned woman appeared in the window of a gym. It said: THIS SUMMER DO YOU WANT TO BE A MERMAID OR A WHALE? A middle aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym.

To Whom It May Concern:

Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious
humans). They have active sex lives, get pregnant and have adorable baby whales that they raise with great tenderness. They have a wonderful time with dolphins, stuffing themselves with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Barren Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia. Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and have virtually no predators other than humans. They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world. Mermaids don’t exist. If they did, they would be lining up outside the offices of psychoanalysts due to identity crisis: Fish or human? They don’t have sex lives because they kill men who get close to them, not to mention how could they have sex? They cannot bear children. And who wants to get close to a girl who smells like a fish store? Yes, they would be lovely, but lonely and sad. The choice is perfectly clear to me; I want to be a whale.

P.S. We are in an age when media puts into our heads the idea that only
skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my
kids, a good dinner with my husband and a coffee with my friends. With time we gain weight because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room it distributes out to the rest of our bodies.  So we aren’t fat, we are enormously cultured, educated and happy.

So there you have it, Mermaid versus Whale.  Every time I see this piece, it is inevitably followed by innumerable comments agreeing that it would be far better to be a whale than a mermaid, proclaiming what a beautiful sentiment it is and thanking whoever posted it for sharing. And every time I see this piece, it irritates me.  Here’s why:

“Whale” is the wrong answer.  So is “mermaid.”  The right answer to the question “Who would you rather be?” is “Me.”  I don’t want to be a whale, I don’t want to be a mermaid, and I’m tired of the false dichotomy that this story and others like it creates.  Yes, we are in an age where our brutally pervasive media heavily influences standards of beauty.  People come in all shapes and colors and sizes, and there are many variations of beauty.  We should celebrate that without putting down any of those shapes and sizes of people, including the skinny ones.

I’m thin.  It’s partially my genes, but it’s also because I am thoughtful about what I eat and I exercise regularly.  I do those things not because I’m obsessed with obtaining a mass-media-defined ideal of beauty, but because I want to feel good and be healthy.  And guess what?  I enjoy every second of all of it.  I love eating reasonable quantities of healthy foods because they taste good and make me feel energetic and well.  Exercise is at the very heart of my existence – physical activity is where I clear my mind, release stress, give thanks for everything good in my life, refocus and have a plain, old good, entertaining time.

Why do pieces like Mermaid versus Whale imply that being thin means being miserable? Mermaids may not exist, but happy, healthy, thin women do. I’m not lonely and sad. I don’t have identity issues. I have wonderful dinners with my husband and coffee with great friends. I have a beautiful son and I eat ice cream with him plenty. We also do lots of other fun things together like take walks, ride bikes and play tag. Eating ice cream isn’t the only way to have fun for heaven’s sake. I don’t eat ice cream every night and I don’t eat a gallon of it at a time, because I don’t need to do that to have fun and it wouldn’t be healthy.  Sure, eating ice cream is enjoyable. The same could be said of smoking. I don’t smoke because it isn’t healthy for my body and I don’t eat ice cream in great quantities because it isn’t healthy either.

I’m all for broader definitions of beauty, especially since so much of what makes someone beautiful is who they are and not what they look like. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. Haven’t we all had the experience of thinking someone was gorgeous and then, after having gotten to know them, found ourselves wondering why we ever thought they were attractive? Or, conversely, meeting someone who didn’t catch our eye at first, but who became absolutely breathtaking after getting to know them?

Some years ago I attended a conference where performer/inspirational humorist David Roche spoke during a plenary luncheon. Because I served on the board of the organization at the time, I sat at the board table with our speaker throughout lunch. Mr. Roche was born with a severe facial disfigurement – the kind of disfigurement that is difficult to handle because you don’t quite know how to look at him without noticing it and being afraid that you are obviously noticing it and either over or under-compensating for noticing it. Lunch felt somewhat awkward as a result. As the meal wrapped up, Mr. Roche took to the stage and began telling his story – and what an amazing and touching story it was. A half-hour later, several hundred people were on their feet, with tears in their eyes, giving Mr. Roche a standing ovation. When he returned to our table, I noticed something strange – it wasn’t awkward to look at him anymore. After discovering how beautiful he is on the inside, it was almost impossible to pay any attention at all to his external disfigurement. Mr. Roche’s message was that we all have elements of darkness or ugliness to deal with. That ugliness can be hidden when it’s on the inside. He considers his disfigured face a gift, because his challenge is on the outside where he is forced to deal with it.

So no, you don’t have to be skinny to be beautiful, or tall or tan or without deformities for that matter. Beauty isn’t narrow; it’s broad and it should be defined more broadly by society, but we shouldn’t use that as an excuse to be unhealthy. Let’s not kid ourselves. The fact is that many people in our modern society eat terribly unhealthy foods in ridiculously large quantities and exercise very little.  Obesity is a health issue of epidemic proportions in our country. So while it’s great to embrace diversity in our definition of beauty, let’s not confuse that with celebrating and perpetuating unhealthy habits. Women don’t “gain weight because they accumulate so much information and wisdom in their heads that it distributes to the rest of their bodies.” Please. We all know perfectly well that isn’t the way it works, and while a fat person can certainly be cultured, educated, happy, and even beautiful, sometimes we need to call a spade a spade.

A lot of people seem to think the Mermaid versus Whale piece is about celebrating beauty in all its forms. I don’t think so. If you have to put one form down to elevate another, you’re not celebrating beauty at all. In fact, putting others down to make yourself feel or appear better is actually pretty ugly.

When I returned to my job after three and a half months of maternity leave, I weighed less than I did before I was pregnant. I didn’t do anything unusual to make that happen – I ate and exercised sensibly both during and after my pregnancy. On my first day back at the office, a woman who had begun working for my organization while I was gone saw me for the first time. Before even introducing herself, she loudly proclaimed, “Oh, you must be Ronda. I HATE you!” and walked away. I had no clue who she was or what she was talking about. Some other co-workers witnessed the scene and explained that she knew I had recently had a baby and was referring to the fact that I was so thin after just a few months. Something similar happened at a friend’s wedding when my son was five weeks old, and it continues to happen in dressing rooms, grocery stores and coffee shops. I think these people have the strange notion that they are paying me some sort of bizarre compliment. Note to all of them: proclaiming you “hate” someone with a tone of disgust and an eye roll does not make them feel good. The same goes for insinuating that someone is obsessed with being thin over having a healthy, happy life and taking care of their children with “great tenderness.” I’m pretty sure I’d be thought of as an awful person if I approached an acquaintance or a stranger and announced, “Oh my God, you’re SO fat. You must eat everything in sight. I HATE you!” So why is it okay for someone I barely know to say to me, “Oh my God, you’re SO skinny. I HATE you!”?         

We shouldn’t buy into the very narrow definitions of beauty that the media perpetuates.  We also shouldn’t combat those definitions by attacking and putting down the body types that the media seems to hold up as the standard of beauty.  By doing that, we’re being just as judgmental as the media we’re complaining about. So please, stop setting up dichotomies between fat and thin, tall and short, pale and dark, young and old, mermaid and whale.  We should all just choose to be ourselves – our best, healthiest, happiest selves.  That would be truly beautiful.