Stop slamming the part of you that wants to look good. Be beautiful. There’s nothing ‘spiritually noble’ in punishing that part of you. This part needs a lot of tenderness. It’s the part that was bombarded with you’re not pretty enough. Well-dressed enough. It was battered with shame for not looking a certain way. Not being ‘presentable’.
It was shamed, ridiculed, ignored, alienated, put down, left out, neglected, forgotten and blamed even for not looking the part. It was the target of a lot of abuse from both within the family and from the outside world.
Of course she wants to look good. Get that nice jacket or those nice shoes. It’s not all “bad”. If that’s the word even to describe it. But your psyche is describing it in that way. It’s not all twisted. But it’s also not all “clean” either. But not in a punishable, falling short kind of way. In a I need love here kind of way. Love and acceptance. Not a trying to wipe out it’s very existence because there’s an idea that spiritual people don’t care about how they look. This is bullshit.
In this culture, in this society, how you look meant survival. This is what you’re dealing with. The desperation of trying to survive. It differentiated on a racial and socio-economic level between those who live in squalor (who don’t get basic human respect) and those who had it all (authority, power, respect, social status aka safety). And this conditioning is so intense here. It’s rabid.
It’s nothing to sneeze at. Nothing to spiritually bypass as superficial ego stuff. No. This was survival stuff. It’s embedded in the psyche as this is how I can survive here. This is how I can get people not to prey on me here. I need to look good. I need to present myself in a certain way so that I am not preyed on. It was a survival mechanism. And in a way it became your research project. It shaped your interests, hobbies and ambitions. Both healthy ones and unhealthy ones.
And even so, you were still a target of abuse within your own family – who saw this as mere vanity not as survival. And they hid behind the veil of religiousness – that was their survival mechanism. And in that mechanism, your inclinations were seen as vain, superficial, egotistical even. You were judged for it. Made wrong for it. Alienated within your own family for it. And outside the family, you were loved for it, liked for it, recognized for it – that contradiction is super confusing.
Super challenging to wrangle with both extremes within yourself. And of course you chose to go for the love, for looking good, for the attention – so natural, who wouldn’t? Even if it came at great cost to you because it did. It was no picnic either. Genuine suffering there too. Believing that looking good meant survival, love, attention. The desperation of it. The agony of that struggle, that my life depends on this! So hard. So challenging. So filled with conditioning on each and every level; cultural, sexual, female, racial, socio-economic and probably more you can’t even see. It’s not just a small thing. ‘Shopping’.
Mercy on this part of you. This intelligent, savvy, extreme, self-protective, to-the-death part of you.