It's Showtime!

I spent the last weekend cleaning corners, dusting woodwork, organizing a billion tiny lego pieces, clearing countertops, hiding chotzkies in drawers, using my magic eraser on walls, and taking trips to the dump. I went room by room and left no stone unturned so that our house would be ready to sell. 

Having a clean house and having your house ready to show for sale aren’t the same thing. There’s constant effort behind maintaining this showtime look with six kids. While cleaning, I discovered that the youngest now knows how to twist off conditioner bottle tops and pour the contents onto rugs thirty minutes before a showing. Needless to say, it’s constant and exhausting to maintain the “show ready” look. 

These showings didn’t showcase our real life with all its messiness and dirt and chaos. Instead, the house became a picture of near perfection. 

This got me thinking about all the media images that are thrown at us constantly with near perfect humans displayed. Whether we’re driving, at a doctor’s office, reading a magazine, watching tv or scrolling through social media, we’re absorbing the thin, able-bodied, young beauty ideal. 

Guess what? Nobody looks like that without an army of effort. Just like it took me hours of cleaning to make our house show ready, it takes models hours to get ready. It’s easy to look at these images and think, wow, I need to look more like that. And the truth is, you probably would with hair, makeup, wardrobe help and some airbrushing assistance. 

Watch this video to see a woman transformed into her “show ready” look. 

It’s easy to feel like we don’t compare to media images we see, especially since what we see is a digitally enhanced version of a person. We’re comparing ourselves to the impossible. 

Working towards perfection is exhausting. The endless loop of dieting is exhausting. You’re never enough nor will never be enough according to our cultural standards. Maybe you have a thin body, but hey, your hair is too thin, your “11” forehead wrinkles are too much and you don’t have visible six pack abs! It’s like someone’s constantly dumping out the conditioner bottle at your feet pointing out another mess you need to clean up, another problem you need to solve. 

While I liked our clean house, it wasn’t the real us. It didn’t show scattered art work and clothes from sports and magnatile houses and all the little signs of life and love. 

Remember that your body isn’t a showpiece. Show all your messy parts and get out your chotzkies, because every human has them and has a story to share that’s far more beautiful than any show ready look. 

xoxo,