Michelle Anya Anjirbag is a first year PhD student at the Children’s Literature Centre at Cambridge University.
I don’t remember why it happened, but about a week ago, I ended up sitting on the carpet in my living room while my roommate read to me sections as she browsed the last chapter of a critical text on touch. Now, this has nothing to do with what I think I’m researching, and beyond a mild fascination in everything, I have no basis for wanting to learn about this. However, it did not change the fact that I was on the carpet with a blanket, hugging my knees, and listening, enraptured. There is something that remains absolutely pleasurable — no matter how old we get — in being read to.
I was very lucky; I had a patient mom who filled my early world with books (though I think half the urge to have me reading early was so I would stop pestering her with requests for her to read to me). I remember reading Dr. Seuss books to friends, or to my younger sister who couldn’t get away from me, and Disney picture books to captive audiences of stuffed toys (but we skipped the scary parts of The Fox and the Hound and Bambi, the bears didn’t like those). There was such joy in being able to share the books that I was learning to love with other people, to read them with the voices I thought characters should have, to point out favorite bits of illustration. Reading to other people when young lends one a sense of power, confidence, and pride.
It wasn’t until that I was in fifth grade — so about ten years old — that I learned to appreciate being read to again. My teacher, Mr. Muzer, emphasized using his classroom to build a community where students felt nurtured and cared for. As part of this, he made a point of reading his favorite books to us, chapter by chapter, right before the end of the school day a few days a week. We were in general a rowdy class, but every time the well-worn chapter books came out – usually so faded and with bindings so cracked we couldn’t see the covers — we sat at our desks, curled up on backpacks or coats, the spellbound into silence. He read us The Green Book by Jill Patton Walsh, The Enchanted Mountain by Eliza Orne White, and, every once in a while, a short story by O. Henry. He was our teacher, not our parent, but it was an act that communicated to us just how cared for we were. In an education community that pushed us to grow constantly, ever more quickly and independently, at the end of the school day he cherished our childhoods.
The experience stuck with me. Years later, I found myself the one in charge of educating children, and bringing favorite picture books with me to camp in case of a rainy day. Even on a sunny day, sitting with campers in the shade of a big tree where they can feel the grass and the wind, smell the bark, hear the birds and bugs, and reading The Lorax. This wasn’t just with the five year olds, but also with the high schoolers who participated in the counselor-in-training program, and all ages in between; I’d watch good kids with big dreams and heady futures facing them melt away and relax for half an hour. When I lived with extended family for a couple months, I read all of the Roald Dahl books to my younger cousins, and passages from The Wind in the Willows. Every character had his or her own voice — down to each giant and every witch. I have no idea how much they will remember this when they get older, but it was an amazing way to bond with family much younger than I, who I had not been able to spend much time with previously.
Sharing books, the experience of reading to someone else or being read to, sticks with us. We know there is a community building and service aspect; there are plenty of programs that have volunteers read with the chronically ill or with the elderly. But it makes me wonder what we could change about the way we work, the way we communicate, the way we live, if we shared books a little more — not just discussing them, but taking the time to read to each other. I for one, plan to spend a little more time stealing soft chairs in cozy places and reading with others to see me through this degree.
What are your favorite memories of being read to, or reading to others? What made it memorable? Was it the book? The person? The experience? If I gave you a room to read to, what would you choose?
Things most frequently heard when working at a specialty running store: “You look like a runner — how much do you do a week?” and “I’m not a real runner, I just… ” In the eight years I spent on and off as a staffer at a shop that specialized in fitting people for the right shoes and helping them get moving in whatever way worked best for them, I lost track of how many times I heard those comments. The answers I provided, especially toward the end of my time there, were always “I run to the fridge and back” and “Do you run? Walk? Move? Are you happy with what you can do? Then you’re a ‘real’ runner, athlete, etc.”
It was my favorite part of the job — breaking down the idea that there is one type of athletic body type (or even that there had to be an “athletic” side to everyone — sometimes people just wanted their feet to be comfortable in their daily lives and weren’t looking for a change or an epiphany), speaking with children about what a “runner” looks like, and helping people of all activity levels start moving in the ways they want to.
The ethos of the store itself had been that everyone could be an athlete and that there was no shame in embracing where you were at the moment. I loved that, but I always felt like a fraud because how can you work in the world of endurance sports and try to teach others to love their bodies for what they can do when you hate the sight of your own? Even as I was telling people that bodies are built to be strong in their own ways, I couldn’t stand looking at my own body in the mirror.
Though I no longer work at the running store and am no longer surrounded by people aiming to cut time from their runs, PR every race, and build their best, strongest selves, I still feel the same: Every time I breathe or move I can feel the bits that are too much — the ones that I haven’t been able to get “under control” yet. Some days, my body feels like it’s too much mass to move, while others it feels like it takes up too much space. It feels like a weight. It feels sluggish and slow. It feels like something I need to be ashamed of. It feels like something I’m never going to feel in control of.
The fact that I attempt to control what my body looks like and what it is physically capable of to cope with not controlling more than a thousand other things in life is something that I struggled to come to terms with while trying to encourage other people to accept themselves. In other words, the joy I felt doing that job and bringing a sense of positivity to others did not outweigh the negativity I felt and still feel toward myself.
I didn’t always feel this way. I grew up swimming every weekend, biking with my family in the local state park, playing soccer, horseback riding, rock climbing, hiking, and being generally active. I liked learning how to do things — learning to be active in different ways was like reading different genres with my body. I wasn’t really ever a competitive sports person — though always on teams, I ran for myself because it felt good and it made me strong. I was also a competitive ballroom dancer in college, and that was the only time I wanted to push myself to compete with others and not just perfect a skill.
When I was still dancing, I was confident in my movements and with my presence. I felt in control. I had no problem running around a city in my Latin ballroom costumes without hesitation or shame. When I was running daily, I had no problem being in just cropped tights and a sports bra on hot days. But now? Now I buy clothing I can hide in because I feel larger than I logically know I am. I hate having my skin show. I know by how many inches I would tone up my body in every single spot. I know how weak I feel in comparison to how much physical strength I used to have. I might talk the talk of empowering other people, but I don’t feel strong. I don’t feel empowered. I feel uncomfortable.
At the same time, given how society views wellness and the image of “health,” I also know I don’t look like I should feel this way. And it is something we don’t think about or talk about — how deeply personal body image is. Not only that, but in many cases, “body positivity” has become aligned not with actual acceptance of one’s self as they are but with the #fitspo community and the push to obtain a certain body type to satisfy others’ descriptions of health and wellness. It no longer protects people, but it has become another tool to project the image of perfection.
Sometimes, in a society so obsessed with comparisons, a mutual validation complex, and an almost evangelical approach to working out and being “fit,” we don’t realize that it is impossible to know how anyone else feels about themselves and it is how they feel in their own skin that matters most. British Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington called attention to the pressure to project a certain body image placed on female athletes while on the British reality show I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here. Network BT Sport sent out a body image survey to 110 elite female athletes, with 80% responding that they felt pressure to conform to certain looks and body types and 97% blaming it on a wider problem in society, not just in women’s sports. And while many national teams, college athletic boards, Olympic committees, the NCAA, and the IOC have started to address the prevalence of eating disorders and the effects of negative body image in athletics, especially for women, we are still not having a conversation about how this rolls out into society at large. We still aren’t talking about how we project our thoughts about how other people look and therefore how they should feel about themselves.
The act of projecting a healthy life (or so-called body positivity) and constant improvement can feel like an assault, both against those who don’t want to change themselves because they are genuinely happy with themselves (which is something I would like to eventually strive for) and people who find themselves where I sit right now. We know we are technically fine, but we’ve internalized feeling like we’re somehow not enough because we’re not able to strive in the same ways that we used to athletically. In some ways, we feel like it was the way we looked that gave us value to others. We ask ourselves questions like: Why don’t I like myself if I know nothing is truly wrong with me? Is it because I know I’m supposed to be better, that I was better, or that I should want to be better?
I honestly don’t know when the balance tipped from a sense of knowing there was room for improvement but genuinely being happy with myself and only being able to see imperfections. But I do know that it got worse when I had to stop running and (in a way) give up a part of my identity as an “athletic” human being. About one year ago, I tweaked an old injury and had to give up the things that made me feel fit and strong, and move to yoga and light barre work and started trying to live all the things I was telling everyone who walked into my shop. I was angry and frustrated with a body that just wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do, at a body that refused to heal fast enough and become strong enough.
In this process of trying to find a shortcut, I stumbled upon something called soma yoga, sometimes called somatics or kinetic relaxation. It forced me to slow down and pay attention to my body and how it moved and felt, and it helped me work through that awareness instead of my default revulsion and need to find a way to fix it, whatever “it” was. I got back some of the lightness of movement I felt while I was dancing. I was forced to look at myself harder and become more appreciative of what I could do rather than what I could not. It lifted some of the weight from my mind, if not from my frame. For better or worse, it made me face the fact that my body is mine — I will get no other. It will do what it will do, and I can change that gradually, but I will no longer be able to force it to do what I want by sheer willpower. It will take time and slow growth and there is no guarantee that I will ever have the sense of control over it that I once had.
Someone said you can never go back, and for me, that much is true when it comes down to my relationship with myself and with my body. I don’t work at the running store anymore, I moved to a new country, and I started a different branch of my life. I can’t hide behind hours of dance practice or 90-mile weeks or lie to myself that this is just a snapshot of a longer process of transformation or transition to a body my mind will find more acceptable. I’ve had to look hard at myself and not project a sense that everything is fine or will be fine with time. I don’t like my body or how it feels to inhabit it, and this is where I am now. And that has to be okay, regardless of what anyone else thinks about what I look like or how I should feel because of that.
Here at Byrdie, we know that beauty is way more than braid tutorials and mascara reviews. Beauty is identity. Our hair, our facial features, and our bodies: They can reflect culture, sexuality, race, and even politics. We needed somewhere on Byrdie to talk about this stuff, so welcome to The Flipside (as in the flipside of beauty, of course!), a dedicated place for unique, personal, and unexpected stories that challenge our society’s definition of “beauty.” Here you’ll find cool interviews with LGBTQ+ celebrities, vulnerable essays about beauty standards and cultural identity, feminist meditations on everything from thigh brows to eyebrows, and more. The ideas our writers are exploring here are new, so we’d love for you, our savvy readers, to participate in the conversation too. Be sure to comment your thoughts (and share them on social media with the hashtag #TheFlipsideOfBeauty). Because here on The Flipside everybody gets to be heard.
Next up: How mothers can affect their daughters’ body image.
Michelle Anya Anjirbag is a first year PhD student at the Children’s Literature Centre at Cambridge University.
Can any of us imagine a children’s film without the soundtrack? I might read voraciously, but my true love, beyond words and their power to enchant, has always been music. I am addicted to my headphones and what comes through them – usually Broadway or Disney or other film soundtracks lately. Music has a particular capacity to communicate story to us, and to augment that which we otherwise see or hear. The sound becomes as indicative of the story as any visual expression or clip of dialogue — just think about how closely tied music is to Disney films, with not only the release of soundtracks and Broadway musical adaptations, but the release of favorite films in special sing-along versions such as has been done with Frozen and Moana. When it stands alone, a piece such as John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” or Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful Word” we hear a vignette shaped by emotion and relation to the different connotations both the name of the songs and the sound itself, or in the latter’s case, the lyrics evoke. But when sound is paired with a full story, there is something quite magical about it.
Layers of memory and meaning are what soundtracks add to film, especially, perhaps, children’s films; from the lullaby-theme that reprises itself throughout the score from Brave, to the pervasive undercurrent of “Lavender’s Blue” in the 2015 live-action Cinderella, to Jack Frost’s theme in Rise of the Guardians, hearing a repeated musical phrase can make us sit up and listen, remind us of plotlines, and help bring us further into the narrative. One of my favorite examples of this is in the film Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, a very underrated family narrative featuring Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman, which I tend to watch repeatedly when at my most low and most homesick. And when I am not watching it, I am listening to the soundtrack, which is at once evocative of the whimsy of the film itself while underscoring much deeper themes about life, love, finding oneself, and what it means to grow up. But what I love most about it is how it builds upon itself. There is a story in the music. It starts simply enough at the beginning but adds layers as the narrative does, and as the finale comes to its own conclusion, you realize you can trace every single one of the narrative threads through the songs, and that it is not really an ending, but an opportunity for a beginning. That, to me, is part of why we return to children’s literature; it’s not about “happily ever after” or the magic itself, but remembering that there are so many opportunities to start fresh if we just believe we can, and that we can always do more or become more than we think we are capable of. While the soundtrack carries the narrative if simply listened to, I don’t think that the film itself would be as powerful without the music woven into it.
Songs can also become symbolic of films, especially those we remember from our childhood. When I think about the first time I watched The Lion King, I don’t see a movie clip in my head, I hear the opening of the “Circle of Life.” Remembering Pocahontas recalls “Just Around the Riverbend” and I remember being at a ballroom dance competition where “Once Upon a Dream” was used as the song for my heat of the Viennese Waltz — I swear it was the best waltz I’ve ever danced thanks to years of pretending to dance to it in my living room. Even now, it doesn’t take much for me to burst out into songs from Moana, and one of my best school memories is my senior year AP Literature class spontaneously breaking out into “Be a Man” from Mulan. And that is the beauty of these songs; they are not just about the tie to a film, but a tie to what that film or story might have meant to us as children. They add layers and depths to our memories. It’s not just about remembering the sun rising over the pride lands, but remembering that this was the first film I watched with my mom and sister when we moved from Maryland to Connecticut when I was not yet five years old. It’s remembering being taken to a musical for my birthday by the first boy I dated, and being brought to tears listening to that rendition of “Shadowland” on stage because it reminded me of my grandfather who had passed just a couple years before. Above all, these songs remind us, I think, that in our journey to adulthood we carry our child-selves with us; our childhoods, though in the mundane everyday of our adult lives they seem quite removed, are not really that far away at all.
What are your go-to tracks, your earworms? What songs remind you of happier times, or of being home? What songs can’t you wait to pass on to others? Bonus — if you really want to play with your childhood memories, Disney remixed the Lana Del Rey cover of the original “Once Upon A Dream” to make it align with contemporary music and the aesthetic of Maleficent… It might be my favorite thing they’ve done yet to make it feel like my memories, too, have “grown up.”
