At least as important as anything you have ever wanted.

 “Come at me as if I were worth your life - the life we make together. Take me like a turtle whose shell must be cracked, whose heart is ice, who needs your heat. Love me like a warrior, sweat up to your earlobes and all your hope between your teeth. Love me so I know I am at least as important as anything you have ever wanted.” 

― Dorothy Allison, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure

I think maybe one of the biggest detriments to any sort of success—whether it is a successful relationship or a successful career—is low self-esteem.  I also think “self-esteem” is a loose term for how one feels about oneself, how much one values oneself.  I think a better term might be self-respect.  But then again maybe not, because what does self-respect have to do with waking up in the morning and looking down at your hips and thighs and then over at your sleeping partner and not wondering if they’d love you more if you were thinner?  What does self-respect have to do with avoiding mirrors throughout the day because you hate seeing the acne scars on your cheeks when they aren’t concealed beneath makeup?  Maybe self-respecting women know better than to reduce themselves to their looks but I for one do it anyways.  And how can I not? 

I have a friend who is quick to tell off any man on the street that shouts or whistles at her as she walks by.  My friend shares stories of such encounters while picking at a plate of steamed vegetables and worrying that she shouldn’t be eating so much.  And I completely understand.  I don’t want strange men on the street to reduce me to my looks but even though I reduce myself to my looks all the time.  And I honestly believe that it’s necessary because I find that people are nicer to me if I have gone through the effort to blow-dry my hair and put on makeup.  It’s easier to ask my co-workers for help around the office.  Baristas are friendlier.  Strangers hold the subway doors for me.  And I have a pervasive sense that if I want to say something intelligent, I better look good while doing it in order to soften the blow it might have to whomever I am speaking.  Of course, the reverse is also true.  If I put in an effort to wear a nice dress to work, braid my hair and put on lipstick, more men will whistle and shout at me as I walk to the subway.

 

I don’t own a TV and I don’t buy women’s magazines, so I rarely encounter the kind of ads and media propaganda that gender studies courses talk about in which women are portrayed as airbrushed objects and I am left to feel inferior.  However, I do work in Midtown Manhattan.  I wake up every morning, throw on my clothes, tie my wet hair in a bun, and ride the subway red-faced and without makeup.  When I get off the train at 59^th street, the first thing I see is Bloomingdales.  Then I see beautiful women in high heels that don’t seem to be cutting into their feet the way mine are, women who managed to line their eyes and blow dry their hair, women who wear dresses that look similar to the ones the Bloomingdales mannequins are sporting.  I go out on the weekends and I see women in stilettos and tiny dresses while I’m wearing beat-up old sandals and shorts and sometimes I wonder if I should try harder, while other times I pride myself on knowing that self-respect means not feeling like you have to try so hard.  And I wouldn’t really feel sexy anyways if I dressed up like that because I can’t walk in heels like those and I don’t like the feeling of being two inches away from flashing my vagina on the sidewalk if I wear a short dress. 

I have a red dress that remains hanging in my closet most of the year, except for the couple days when I need to feel invincible.  The dress is nothing fancy, just a simple cotton wrap-dress that knee-length and form fitting.  It feels daring to wear red.  Sexy, maybe, but mostly bold.  As if when I put it on I’m daring the world to look at me and deny me some sense of power.  Of course, I know it’s silly to feel empowered by a dress, but is it any sillier than business men who wear suits as a symbol of their power and success?  When I wear my red dress, I do not question my attractiveness.  The dress is magic.  It hugs all the right curves while smoothing over the wrong ones.  And perhaps, most of all, when I wear it I feel relieved of some sort of worry or guilt over not being appealing enough.  Free from worry and guilt, I feel happier.  

  

I once had a boyfriend who frequently praised my body and the constant praise made me feel empowered—as if I had the right to ask for sex or withhold it, to say what I wanted and receive it.  And it made me feel confident that no matter how late he was out or how infrequently he texted me back, he was not going to stray.  Of course, he praised my brain too but no man ever asks to have sex in a position that accentuates a woman’s brain.  Men don’t watch porn of women reading from their graduate thesis. 

The trouble is that it is impossible to trust that the person you love values you the way they say they do, if you don’t value yourself.  If you look in the mirror and see someone who could be better, then you are bound to hear your partner’s proclamations of fidelity as lies because why wouldn’t he want something better?  Even you want to be better.  And when you feel like this, every woman is a threat.  Every unanswered text is a warning sign of the implosion you believe is coming.

I could analyze why I suffer from low self-esteem.  I could tell you that it is possible to go through things like abuse and rape and see yourself as ruined, as inherently less valuable than other people.  I could tell you that after being raped, I am constantly conscious of being a person inside a body.  I could tell you that I don’t see love as being some sort of fated thing.  I think it’s largely a choice we make.  And so sometimes I look at the world and wonder why someone would pick me.  And I know I’m not supposed to say that.

But what I don’t know is how to fix it.  I like who I am, I just wonder if maybe anyone who chooses to be with me is making a bad choice because I wouldn’t choose to be with myself.  I live with myself.  I know the bad deal that anyone else would be getting with me.  Not only do I see my acne scars, fresh and purple after a shower, but I see the potato chips I eat in bed when I’m stressed.  And I hear all my damn stories every time I sit down the write.  I hear my writer’s voice talking about abuse and rape and loss and I wonder if I would choose to be with someone like me.  I don’t have a choice.  I am stuck in my own body.  No one else is stuck with me.  They can leave.  And the truth is that I don’t think there’s any amount of beautiful I could be that would change that. 

And so here I am.  I am surprised every time someone is there for me—for a birthday or a bad day.  And I am confused every morning when I wake up to find the body sleeping next to me in bed isn’t gone yet.