Owen and Meera made this sandcastle together on the beach today. It is rare for them to ask me to take their picture. So when they asked, I happily took it for them. It turned out so cute. This is so them.
If they ask me what the most challenging part of living with my family on campus is, people are often surprised with my answer. They expect me to talk about the “exposure” my kids have to the “evil influences” that they presume are all around us in campus life (drugs, alcohol, Animal-House-esque-insanity). Or, if they are asking me personally about my own challenges with living on campus, they expect me to talk about having to “deal with students” 24×7 or never “getting away” from my work. At least, this is what they usually tell me they expect. What they hear from me, though, is unexpected.
It has been unexpected for me too. I hadn’t anticipated it before moving on. But the thing that has been most difficult for me personally, and most concerning for me as a parent, are the body image issues that are rippling right at the surface of the predominantly upper-class, historically white, northeast, private, well-endowed, relatively-elite college campus.
The college I attended (Colby College), and the university at which we now live (Lehigh University), have many things in common. One of those things is the prevalence of eating disorders and the pressure for a specific “look,” including thinness-to-an-extreme, which is very rigidly defined on these campuses — and many like them — as the cultural standard for female beauty. At Colby I was shocked by the number of my female peers who were bulimic and anorexic. I was even more shocked by how many of my female friends there were obsessed with their appearance — specifically, their body shape, size, and weight. When I arrived at Lehigh as a new professor I was similarly shocked once again by the body image issues that I saw in the students I taught. At Lehigh, I believe, it is even worse than it had been at Colby. I don’t know if that is a manifestation of the geographic location of the place, the demographics of the students who attend there, or if it is simply the result of it being twenty years later in our American Beauty Ideal. Regardless of all of the (many) root causes, the fact remains: being on a campus like Lehigh makes body image issues, and issues related to female “beauty,” impossible to ignore. To say that they dominate the culture of the place is not an understatement.
As a “normal” professor, it was somewhat easy to avoid it, turn a blind eye, or just push it out of my mind. In my first ten years at Lehigh I had several students come out to me as anorexic and/or bulimic, and I confronted many others when I was seriously concerned about their health or well-being. It was pretty common for me to deal with these things in my interactions with students. However, it was’t a major issue for me personally; I could always keep it at an arm’s-length-distance and put it out of my mind when need be; I rarely discussed these issues with other faculty/staff; and I could manage it more as a mentor/counselor/“normal”-professor. But when I crossed the line into “abnormal,” and moved onto campus, and started to actually live with the students, and have my life and my family’s life mesh with students… it became impossible to not have the body image issues of the campus seep into my deep-and-surface-level day-to-day consciousness.
Growing up, I was the perfect candidate for a serious eating disorder. To this day, I am truly amazed (and a little bit mind-boggled) as to why I did not develop an eating disorder or struggle in a significant way with body image issues. The caveat to all of this is the acknowledgement that — of course — you cannot be a woman in contemporary American culture — let alone live for any period of time on a predominantly upper-class, historically white, northeast, private, well-endowed, relatively-elite university campus — without having these issues effect you. So, like most all women, I am affected. But I haven’t ever battled, in any serious or significant way, an eating disorder or a body image disorder. I have some loose theories as to why this is (mostly related to my own mother’s parenting of me and the approaches to these issues that she employed), but I can’t really explain why I did not fall victim to the body-beauty-‘stuff’ that so many of my bracket-of-peers did. I have always been grateful for that, but I am especially grateful now. Because…
At age 40, when I moved onto Lehigh’s campus, with my then 4-year-old daughter, the body-beauty-‘stuff’ that dominates the campus smacked me right in the face good and hard. Suddenly, just as I was turning 40 (a notoriously tough milestone for American women), I was completely surrounded by 19 and 20 year olds at the prime of their lives, fully immersed in a world of toned and sculpted people who are working out daily (many of them obsessively), and who are incredibly fixated (many of them compulsively) on their image. It is intense, and it is overwhelming, and it is sad. It also results in a campus full of absolutely drop-dead gorgeous modelesque people who look strangely similar and strangely beautiful — granted, within in a very “typical”/status-quo/conformist defined standard of “beauty.” You can easily critique it (“they are so victimized by materialist culture!”), you can write it off (“they all look the same!”), and you can degrade it (“how pathetic are they?!?!”). But, none of that really does anyone any good. And it definitely doesn’t make it go away. When you live there, it is all around you, and you can’t explain it away, think it away, or ignore it away. It seeps in, and that is — I’m pretty sure — unavoidable. Unavoidable whether you are 40, 4, or 18.
This is something I just hadn’t really thought about, and that definitely nobody had mentioned to me: the body-image-beauty-issues challenges that would come with living on a college campus as a family.
Two years later, about to turn 42, with Meera now 6, we have spent two years living on campus amongst the “campus bodies.” I’m sure this has impacted Kyle, Owen, and Braydon in many ways, but there is no denying that — primarily in terms of Meera and me — it has been my biggest challenge and my biggest concern related to being a Faculty in Residence Family. And this is just not something I had predicted or anticipated.
For me, it is just more exercise in the life-long exercise (granted a pretty extreme phase of this exercise) of practicing my own self-sovereignty and refusal to cave in to the body-beauty-ridiculousness. I am a sociologist, I know all about this stuff, I’m well-educated in gender and all the related issues, and I’m confident to hold my own. I see it, and feel it, all around me when I’m at home (i.e., on campus at Lehigh), and it is a challenge. What 40-something woman wouldn’t be at least mildly challenged by spending the vast majority of her time — day and night — immersed in a world of incredibly, albeit stereotypically, extremely-beautiful-and-extremely-thin 20-year-olds? Just picture it: in cold weather— the skinny jeans, in warm weather— the skimpy sundresses, in every season— gorgeous, meticulous faces with perfect, shiny hair. But, really, I’m alright. I really (amazingly), actually, am.
But it is Meera I am most worried about. What will come of this where she is concerned? Not only is she immersed in this unrealistic, mini-world, campus microcosm that is our home, but she’s immersed at a very young and impressionable and foundational age.
I spend quite a lot of time discussing this openly and overtly (even in front of Meera at times) with Lehigh students. They tend to share my concern once I raise it, although — like me, and like most people — they really hadn’t thought of it before I brought it to their attention. I regularly ask them, gently, to be careful with what they say and how they say it (“What should I wear to the party? I feel soooo fat today!” and “Oh my God you look soooo awesome, you are soooo thin!” and “I can’t eat for the next week because I ate soooo much pizza last night!” are typical sorts of expressions). And they appreciate, so much, when I raise this. Seeing Meera there will usually make them quickly change direction and re-phrase, and re-frame the entire interaction. They want better for Meera, and they do better for the sake of her. That has been a pretty incredible experience for me to be a part of: to see the students see how dysfunctional this all is for real life. And I can only help that all of this helps, and will help, Meera navigate the rough terrain of body-image-beauty-issues now and in the future.
As with the other social problems we confront as the result of living on campus (for example, the drugs, alcohol, Animal-House-esque-insanity that first come to mind when people think about raising a family on a college campus), with the body-beauty-‘stuff’ I tend to try to use our experience as a way to confront it directly and head-on within our family. Despite the fact that she’s only 6, I have been talking about these issues — pretty openly — with my daughter. Just like the rest of it, it is slow-going, and we tread carefully into this territory with tiny baby steps. But we are going into these conversations young, because we have to. And it is very, very challenging. It is, for me, like I said at the start here, the most challenging aspect of living on campus.
It has been such a great respite and retreat to spend time on the beach these past couple of weeks. Whereas for most women, the beach is an insecurity-trigger, for Meera and me it seems to be a confidence builder. I suppose it is like many things, right?— everything is relative. When you live on a college campus, the beach is easy-peesy-lemon-squeezey where all things body-image-beauty-issues are concerned. It is such a breath of fresh air for me to be around body shapes and sizes of all ages and varieties, letting it all hang out, donned only in bathing suits. It is a treat to be around all sorts of ladies from all walks of life with their hair not done and their make-up either ruined (from sweat or water), or — as in most cases — not done in the first place. How refreshing! What a pleasure!
I can see the impact on Meera too. It is good for her to get a break from the unrealistic-reality that is her life back home. Here she sees that girls’ bodies, and women’s bodies, are all over the spectrum, and that hair isn’t always perfect, and that bathing suits come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and colors and patterns and nobody really cares much about what you’re wearing. On the beach she gets to see that female people — all sorts of female people — can rock the bathing suit and strut their stuff walking down the beach or riding a wave or floating on their back. It is ironic that the beach bodies can be so soothing. But soothing it is, at least for me and my girl.
And so, our southern summer continues, and we find some relief, and some healing, in the beautiful beach bodies that surround us during our important (important in so many ways) July get-away.
Last summer, when we were here at Harbor Island for July, we took the bambinos for dinner one night at one of our favorite restaurants on the planet: Saltus River Grill, in Beaufort, South Carolina. It was a dreamy, magical kind of night (post is here). For the past year our family has dreamed together of going back to Saltus. This is a real splurge of a place, and a real treat, for us. The pressure was on for this dinner to be just so lovely, and — once we got there — it really was.
There was a day last summer when Meera met a girl named Brianne on the beach at Hunting Island. They were fast friends and ended up playing together all day. Brianne is a few years older than Meera, but they played so well together and it was clear that they had a real connection. At the end of that day, as they sadly said their goodbyes, their parents suggested to them that they say, “See ya next year!” as they hugged farewell. They did, but nobody really thought they’d ever see each other again. (Brianna lives in Indiana; Meera lives in Pennsylvania; they each vacation in the area with their families for a short time each summer, spending just some of their time at Hunting Island Beach.)
Guess who — amazingly! — found each other today at Hunting Island Beach??!?
Today Meera and Brianne had a second annual fabulous day playing together all day long. They played in the waves, built sandcastles, shared snacks, and collected rocks and shells together. When they hugged goodbye at the end of the day they said, “See ya next year!”
If you had told me five years ago (or even one year ago) that my son, at age 10, would choose to relax by the pool in a chaise lounge reading a book… well… I would have told you that you’re nuts and that you don’t know my kid! But, there he is — Kyle — at age 10, chillaxing at the pool with his book. And it isn’t just a fluke. It is day after day after day. Dreamy!
Afternoon at the pool, ice cream break, boogying down to his own music. Owen is in his happy place. I’m taking his picture, through a reflection in the window, on the balcony of the pool snack bar. I’m in my happy place. Summer is short and life is too sweet to forget these moments.
Every once in a while we see somebody cast netting on Harbor Island. Kyle and Owen have been fascinated by it, and have really wanted to try it. Hunting Island’s Nature Center offers all sorts of classes for people of all ages, and I noticed that they offer a cast netting class for kids as young as six years old. I signed the bambinos up for it, and we had such a great time! The teacher was a kind and patient guy named Jim. It was an hour-long class, and Jim taught us all about cast netting at the Hunting Island lagoon. He was also an expert naturalist, able to teach us all sorts of stuff about all the things the kids caught (and they caught a lot!).
Cast netting is such a fun activity because it doesn’t require too much skill to catch all sorts of stuff. Meera was super excited that even she pretty quickly caught on and was able to catch shrimp and crabs and little fish. She even caught a baby flounder.
The boys, of course, picked it up ridiculously quickly and within 10 minutes looked like cast netting pro’s.
Many people use cast netting to catch fishing bait. But for the bambinos the fun is just to see what you can catch (we threw everything back in). In addition to shrimp and crabs, and all sorts of little fish, the big surprise was that Owen caught a Burrfish (a type of blowfish/puffer fish)!!! I think we’re going to be cast netting a lot in the next couple of weeks!
Owen, Jack, Kyle, Belinda, Meera
Braydon and I met our senior year of college. We went to Colby College, and as our class was planning to graduate in 1994, it seemed that everyone we knew was either: 1) going straight to Wall Street/big-time-right-out-of-college-jobs, or 2) going “out west” to become ski bums until they could figure their lives out. Neither was appealing to me, nor to Braydon; we both knew we’d be applying to graduate school but needed at least a year to do that; and we found ourselves — as sort of the two oddballs out — planning to find something to do, almost by default, together. As I look back on that, I can’t believe that we moved in together right after college. It was very unlike me. But he was my best friend, and we went for it.
We wanted to go someplace completely different than Maine, where we had spent the past four years of college. We were looking for the antithesis of where we were — someplace warm and sweet and right on the beach. We found a map of the eastern seaboard of the U.S., looked at the cities along the coast, and literally — like, literally — picked Charleston (pretty much randomly) off the map. And that was that — it was determined — we’d go spend a year in Charleston, South Carolina. Our plan was to get jobs and spend the year having some fun in a new place and applying to graduate school.
I really wanted to work in a flower shop. I wanted to do something totally different than academia, and I had this romantic notion of the loveliness of being surrounded by flowers, arranging bouquets all day long. This was before the internet really hit, so job-hunting was done via newspaper “Help Wanted” ads. Braydon quickly found a job in IT (which was just hitting as a booming field then)— but I had a lot of trouble with the flower shop idea. There were plenty of flower shop job openings, and I applied to every single one of them, and was rejected from every one. Over and over I was told that as a person with a college degree from an elite northern school I was “overqualified for the job.” Eventually I gave up on that idea. In the “Help Wanted” section there were a few law office openings for paralegal-type-work. I didn’t know anything about legal work, but I had done quite a bit of very abstract studying of law-related stuff in college (because for most of my college career, before I decided I’d pursue a PhD in sociology, I had planned to go to law school). So, I applied to two of these law jobs — both law firms in downtown Charleston. And, much to my shock, got job offers at both. One was a larger firm, and one was a private practice with just one lawyer. I said no to the larger firm, but the private practice guy seemed interesting. His name was Jack Cordray, and he took a chance on me, and I took a chance on him. He offered me his job as a legal-assistant-paralegal, and I took it.
It was one of the best things I’ve ever done.
He taught me how to bring in cases, work the cases, and — quite often — get the cases settled out of court. As it turned out, we were a pretty awesome team. And before I knew it we were racking up the cases and the settlements and things were really clicking at The Law Offices of Jack Cordray.
But then, after about a year of pretty extreme success for our little team-of-two, I had to tell Jack that I had gotten into grad school and I was leaving. You know, there are moments in life when you find yourself standing right at a fork in the road. And this was one of those moments. He did something pretty incredible: he suggested a plan to me — he’d put me through law school, and we’d continue our operation, and I’d work for him/with him for the long-term. He painted a pretty clear picture for me of what my life would be like: a warm breezy beautiful Charlestonian life with all the trimmings. I could see it and I knew he was right about it. I had a good sense of what it would be — and it was extremely appealing. I mean, extremely appealing. Or, I could go back up to the cold hard north, go through many years of grueling drudgery as a PhD student in sociology, and pursue a career the dry colorless cut-throat world of academe.
For better or for worse, I chose the road to academe. But I’ve always known that it so easily could have gone the other way. I don’t have regrets, but I do often imagine the life that Braydon and I would have if we had stayed in Charleston. And I know it would have been a very good life.
Over the past twenty years I’ve stayed in touch with Jack and I’ve always thought of him as a far-off, but very real, pillar in my life. I learned so much from him. I learned so much about working legal cases (of course), but I learned so much about the South, and about life, and about me, from Jack. He’s one of those people who will always be in my heart and mind.
Although we’ve come back to the Charleston area a whole bunch of times, Braydon and I never got together with Jack. This is mainly because when we’ve been in the area it has been very explicitly and very purposefully to be on a vacation/break-from-reality, and we are people who very much do not want to socialize — at all — when we’re trying to get away from our very social life.
But, after twenty years, it was time to see Jack. And it was definitely time to have him meet my bambinos, and have my bambinos meet him.
And so, on Sunday, we J-Ms went to visit Jack and his smart-and-beautiful wife, Belinda.
Jack and Belinda were such a pure joy to spend the day with, and they gave us such a very special day. And more than anything, I remembered the feeling of what a special treat it is to be around people who really “get you” and know you in an unusual and true way.
We visited them at their house on Kiawah Island. Jack and Belinda were so generous to us as they hosted us at Kiawah — which is such an exquisite place to visit.
They took us to lunch at the clubhouse at The Ocean Course at Kiawah. We sat on the veranda (photo at top of post), and had a lovely lunch, and this was our view overlooking the 18th hole~
Kyle and Owen and Meera, at ages 10 and 6, really have no idea what it means that they had lunch there, at that place, with Jack and Belinda. They don’t understand how famous that golf course is, or how exclusive of a world they had entered when they were brought there by the Cordrays. All they knew was that they were instantaneously embraced by Jack and Belinda, and they instantaneously adored Jack and Belinda. But someday something will click and they’ll “get it” and they’ll think to themselves, “Oh! Yeah! Wow, so one time we had lunch at The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island with my mom’s old boss!”
Jack really wanted the boys to have Ocean Course hats, so he treated them. And Meera picked out a stuffed sea turtle, who she named Pearl, and who she’s been carrying around non-stop ever since Jack bought her for her.
We spent the afternoon at the ocean and the pool being spoiled by Jack and Belinda. It was sweetness.
Kiawah is gorgeous, and there is wildlife everywhere. The kids were thrilled when we spotted a dear in Jack and Belinda’s yard~
They were even more thrilled when they spotted a snake in the woods and Jack went after it, trying to catch it for them. He told them that if he caught it for them he’d let them keep it as a pet. Jack got big points from the bambinos for that move! He got big points from me for not catching it after-all (phew!!!).
It was a very special day.
Thank you so much Jack and Belinda. You are loved and appreciated by five J-Ms. xoxo
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