What Wonder Woman and I Have in Common: It’s Not What You Think

For those of you who somehow missed the news, last week Wonder Woman unveiled her new look.

When I saw her picture, two thoughts flashed across my mind in quick succession:  First, she dresses a whole lot like me.  Second — and this is the one that stuck, overcoming any embarrassment the first ought to impart — wow, her hips are as big as mine.

This discovery fascinated me, and not just because I’ve managed to not notice Wonder Woman’s big hips in the thirty-five years since I devoured her origin story in the book Julie and I found in her mother’s bedroom.  What I now can’t quite wrap my mind around is the idea that if Wonder Woman’s undoubtedly male artists — creating a character who is surely designed to appeal to male adolescent and wishful-adolescent readers — find big hips  attractive, then, by definition, men in general must as well.

I find this hard to swallow.  Sure, looking back, Lynda Carter had a pretty decent hourglass thing going on when I absorbed her television image as an impressionable, on-the-brink-of-adolescence girl.  But a whole lot more hipless actresses and models have crossed my retinas since then.  And all of them have conspired to make my own hips, let’s say, not my best friends.

Finding out — at forty-two and closing in on my next birthday — that what I thought were just an unattractive couple of appendages are, in fact, evidence of my superhero qualities turned out to be not so much a shock as, I am pleased to report, confirmation of a big, yogic step forward.

It started, I think, when I spent a week in my parents’ house last month.

There are things that happen when you stay in your parents’ house thirty years after moving out.  Things like forgetting that the last thirty years ever happened.

Adolescent insecurities surface.  Social graces evaporate.  The fact that you have two children of your own and the wisdom to take care of them eludes you.

I returned home absent my equilibrium.  Who exactly was I?  And what happened to that woman who was feeling pretty comfortable in her life in Asheville?

Barely had I had a chance to sleep on these questions than Mike went out of town for a weekend.  This is not an event that happens all that often.  Say, once since we have had children.  And though many might point out that it should not be a reason for undue anxiety — women have, after all, been raising children with minimal to no partner assistance for time immemorial — it made me anxious.  Especially in my state of fractured identity.

You can see the superhero theme emerging.

As it turns out, unknown superhero that I am, taking care of two small children by yourself for a long summer weekend is fun.  Exhausting, but fun.

There was the impromptu party at a neighbor’s on Friday night, when Jake was treated to the care of roughly fourteen neighborhood boys older than himself.  Maybe I shouldn’t have trusted them as much as I did, but it was kind of hot to go tromping up the stairs to check up on them, especially dragging along the twenty-two pound toddler who insisted she go with me.  And the worst thing that happened that night didn’t take place until I got home at 8:30 and fed my children a hasty dinner of frozen fish sticks, thanking my lucky stars that I had the wherewithal to come up with this brilliant concept of nourishment.

The party was followed the next morning by a lovely idyll along a creek in the UNC Asheville botanical garden courtesy of a friend with much better ideas of how to entertain a couple of three-year-olds than I ever can muster.  And, of course, there’s always the JCC pool.

In fact, by Sunday afternoon, as I took cookies out of the oven while my kids covered a “Welcome Home Dad” banner and themselves with colored markers I was feeling pretty June Cleaver-ish if I do say so myself.

And the secret?  Nothing.

Like my hips, my skills as a parent are there for me to accept or criticize.  I can look at them critically, fret about how I am going to keep my kids busy for a weekend alone and which yoga asana will whittle an inch or two off of my measurements — or I can embrace what is.  And do nothing.

It’s not quite about being in the moment, although it makes that much easier as well.  What I’m talking about is a bigger shift, a fundamental retooling of who I am.

It’s about true acceptance.  Not just of our imperfections.  But a step before that kind of specific embrace.  It’s about accepting what happens around us.

This is an idea I’ve understood for a long time.  Written about, even.  But what changed over the past couple of weeks is that I saw how I still avoid the things I don’t like.

Well, duh, you are probably saying.  Who doesn’t?

And that’s just the point.  Sometimes you get so caught up in avoiding the scary energy that you fool yourself into thinking you can insulate yourself from it.  When you can’t.  Say, imagining my hips sliding right into those size 4’s and then crying when I see the lumps of fat creeping over the top of my pants in the mirror.  Or telling myself that a good mother wouldn’t blink at the prospect of a weekend juggling two young kids on her own, especially all those parents I know who do it all the time.  And then ending up frazzled and teary because it turns out to be pretty darned tiring.

What I have somehow learned instead is to accept that I don’t love my hips and that it is not easy to take care of two kids and that I probably won’t get to watch those three movies I TiVo’d for the weekend because, after all, I didn’t have to share television watching with Mike.  I’m learning to meet the challenges head on, to swim out to the waves instead of cowering close to shore where I know I’ll get sand in my bikini but at least I can be assured I won’t break my neck getting tossed upside down in the heart of the action.

Why not, instead, swim out to meet the wave, move with it instead of fighting it, ride it — with some discomfort but probably less than the discomfort of a bikini full of sand — to shore?

The common Buddhist explanation of this concept is to visualize yourself as a piece of bamboo.  Bamboo bends with the wind, sometimes almost to the ground.  But it doesn’t break.  It is pliable; it accommodates the elements.

This is a very different idea from crouching down and weathering the storm.  The bamboo becomes a part of it, trusting that it won’t break.

And now, I know, I won’t either.  Whether I’m sleeping in the bed of my adolescent years for a week or being a single parent for a few days or even shopping for jeans that make me feel a little bit like Wonder Woman.

It’s Gotta Be Vrksasana (Tree Pose)

There is simply no better pose for being bamboo than vrksasana.  A balance-challenged sort of yogi, I am just now learning the key to balance — being right here, right now, and wobbling.  But now, when I wobble, I try not to think about going down.  “I’m wobbling,” I think.  “Keep right here with the wobble.”  And I discover that wobbling does not necessarily mean falling.

In fact, I ‘m going to offer you a whole wobbly practice — after warming up with a few sun salutes, try vrksasana followed by ardha chandrasana (half moon balance).  Maybe throw in a few transitions between ardha chandrasana and trikonasana (triangle pose) and back again, finding your rhythm.  And before you finish, move your sirsasana (headstand) away from the wall and see what it’s like to wobble upside down.