Review of The Velveteen Principles For Women: How to Shatter the Myth of Perfection and Embrace All That You Really Are
By Toni Raiten-D'Antonio, author of the best selling, The Velveteen Principles
(HCI, 2007)
Review by D. Prince
Read the review of The Velveteen Principles for Women
Real Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors
H
ow we feel about ourselves, our work, our relationships, our lives depends entirely on our beliefs. How are these beliefs developed? They are acquired in a variety of ways. As children we get our beliefs from adults who teach us that we will be rewarded for compliance and punished for disobedience. When we are grown, the wider world takes over this job. We play office politics and receive a raise in pay. We dress seductively and get attention. We strive for the generic ideal, and learn how to reduce the gossip, abuse, and judgment—OPO (Other People's Opinion)—that people heap on nonconformists.
Women who accept the perfection myth believe with all their hearts that they must have a perfect home, the best children, and the ideal husband. Their
belief—that they must achieve perfection—guarantees that they will
feel unhappy, dissatisfied, and worse. These feelings will lead to
behaviors—more striving and struggling and self-criticism that—only make matters worse.
Those behaviors make things worse for everyone around you, too. If we believe in perfection, then we may expect perfection from other people, friends, family, partners—and push them to meet our expectations. A woman who believes she must maintain the perfect home, for example, has every reason in the world to expect consistent cooperation from everyone else who lives there. This is exactly what happened in the family of two children I have seen for counseling. They are literally terrorized by their mother’s anxious approach to homemaking. She’s so nervous about OPO that she and her husband and children have long to do lists every weekend. She gets a clean, well-maintained home, but her family dreads Saturdays and resents her all week long. Because of her belief system, her focus is on her home, and she scarcely makes time available for her children or herself as Real people.
What if this mother stopped believing in the race to be perfect and just dropped out of the competition? For one thing she would
feel a whole lot more relaxed. She would also
behave differently toward her children. No doubt, some of that time she once devoted to weekend cleaning would be used to connect with her Real self and the people in her family in a more positive and happy way.
The effects of a change in belief can ripple out in many ways. If that super cleaning mom chose to value relationships more, she and her children would feel better about themselves. They would feel more connected and gradually become more open, relaxed, and committed to their own interests and passions. In short, they would be more Real.
The same process can begin for you if you just examine your beliefs and start making adjustments. Wouldn’t you express yourself more openly, engage in life more fully, if you stopped being afraid that your clothes, your skin, and your home were ugly or defective, or that your main purpose in life is to satisfy the expectations of those around you? How much have you given up? How many times have you not spoken up because you were afraid you didn’t measure up to some superficial standard? How many of life’s rewards have you lost because you believe you are not smart enough, not important enough, or otherwise not worthy?
What if you developed
your own set of beliefs that defined your purpose in life and allowed yourself to be guided by them instead? The possibilities are almost dizzying. You could believe . . .
you are beautiful just the way you are.
you already have enough stuff.
you have a right to speak up.
your creative energies deserve an outlet.
you are worthy of love and respect.
no one else can define you.
These are the types of beliefs we can adopt as a starting point on the road to being Real. But they are only examples. In the Real world, there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. Every one of us is born with the right to set aside the strict dictates of the Object Culture, to discover what we believe, and to live according to those beliefs. Of course, we are bound by laws and physical limits. (I won’t ever be a champion figure skater no matter how much I believe I could be.) But beyond these limits lies a truly exciting range of possibilities.
To be Real is to be your complete, whole, idiosyncratic self. It is our purpose in life, and when women understand that it’s possible, they can feel both excited and eager about their own potential. At one talk I gave to discus this idea, a young woman expressed these feelings directly, asking in a near-whisper, “How do I start?”
I believe you must start by recognizing that so many of the problems you experience are caused by merely living in an Object Culture, which perpetuates destructive myths about women and demands we deny our individuality and conform to a single prescription for happiness. This explains why so many of us are constantly tired, anxious, and downhearted. Denying who you are is exhausting and dispiriting. It also explains why we seek psychotherapy twice as often as men, and it is why 90 percent of the visitors to the Velveteen Principles website are female. Together their comments and stories reveal feelings of anguish, frustration, and a deep desire to revolt against the impossible, soul-chilling standards of the Object Culture.
If we understand the forces allied against our Real selves and have some basic principles for fighting against them, we can, one by one, wage a sort of Velveteen Revolution. This revolution would transform us with a different, more Realistic set of standards, values, and practices. We can create a new vocabulary of success, and pursue happiness and fulfillment as we define them. We can each make a declaration—I’m Real, and I’m not going to fake it anymore!—that women can rally around.
The Velveteen Principles for Women is written for the girl photographed on that boulder and every other girl who was taught to strive for an impossible ideal and thereby came to doubt herself when she fell short. I intend this book to serve as both an inspiration and a source of techniques and values that can be adopted in whatever measure you choose. Some of you may find yourself focusing on the sections about courage. Others might be more partial to the principles of gratitude and honesty. But for every one of us, the starting point is to know that it is possible to be a Real woman.
Reprinted with permission of the publishers. © HCI, 2007
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