Ceramic Girl
When I was seventeen years old, I was told to decide what type of cup I want to be: styrofoam, ceramic, or fine china. Along with the other girls in our book meeting, I scribbled down answers to a variety of questions on a small piece of paper, rating myself in each one.
I wish I was kidding.
I’d almost forgotten that I’d done that until I found the slip of paper I’d almost – but not quite - forgotten about. I shook my head as I read. It’s a list ranging in categories from “the way I dress” to “the places I’m willing to go on dates” and “how eager I appear to guys”.
I was told to rate myself in each category and I did: styrofoam, ceramic, or china. No one needed to tell me what we were supposed to be: fine china. The message was unspoken but clear; be the type of woman a man handles with care and treats well. Not styrofoam. Not trash.
Here’s the problem, you can’t teach a person to label herself without teaching her to label everyone around her at the same time. And I did. I slapped that invisible “ceramic” label on my chest and started figuring out where everyone else fell too.
The sad part is that I couldn’t even see the lie I was being fed. After all, I was pretty close to being china! (which begs the question, could ceramic even become china or were these identities immutable?) We were taught to compare ourselves to objects. Objects made to be used by another person and then put away until they needed to be used again.
I wish I could go back. I imagine myself slapping the book shut; fire in my gut working it’s way up into my eyes. “This is wrong,” I’d say and my voice would tremble a little. “We’re not things. And no one’s disposable. No one.”
I close my eyes.
I can see myself in my friend’s pool when she pulls up my bathing suit top because her brothers have joined us and, apparently, I’m showing more than I should. Or the moment where I wanted to kiss the boy I thought I might love but I don’t because that’s one step closer to styrofoam. When it came to my body, I was caught in a constant, unhealthy tug of war between pride and shame. Shame usually won. Instead of making choices because they aligned with my beliefs, I made choices based on how others would perceive me and react. Instead of knowing that my body should be treated with respect no matter how it was clothed, I thought that the way I dressed determined how much respect my body deserved.
If I could, I’d go back, round up every self proclaimed styrofoam sister who found her value questioned on a second hand couch and tell her not to listen to a second of that nonsense.
Then I’d find some thrift store china cups and together we’d smash them all to pieces.
Challenges/Points:
It’s easy to place your value in the opinions and approval of others. Even if they are harmful we tend to like rules or ways of judging others that make us feel better about ourselves or control the behavior of others.
Your value as a human being has nothing to do with the way you look or how many times you’ve been physically intimate with someone. Your value is permanent and unchanging no matter what anybody says.
You can’t learn to label yourself without learning to label everybody else too. Labels aren’t helpful.
Questions:
How much of your value do you think you place in external things like how you dress or what your grades in school are?
What would it feel like to know that you are priceless no matter what?
Imagine that the labels you’ve been taught don’t exist any more. How does that change the way you see others? How does it change the way you see yourself?
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