Feb

Leadership Lessons: I’d Rather Be a Whale

Part of leadership, especially women, is to be a voice for separating the wheat from the chaff. It is time for all of us as women leaders to put a halt to the binding messages we are bombarded with about image. No, I don’t mean we should all state that overweight is better, I mean we need to begin to question what is being fed to us (sorry for the pun) about what is the standard for the acceptable and attractive woman. It is a legacy issue that if addressed now will have a vast impact on our daughters (and they are all our daughters regardless of who birthed them) of the future.

Nancy Pennebaker, a senior consultant with our organization, Creative Energy Options, Inc. (CEO) sent this to me for both the humor and the depth of the message. Our company motto, “we are all connected and no one wins unless we all do”, is embedded in the following short article. It shows that this issue of image is one that is a world issue.

Notice that the sign in the window of an exercise studio and the answer are from France, where the image of gorgeous models in clothes by Yves St. Laurent, Chanel et a.l became the standard of beauty.

This is a time for us to say what really matters and stand for changes, so that the future is not trapped in the girdles of the past.

Recently, in a large city in France,
a poster featuring a young, thin and tan woman appeared in the window of a gym.
It said,

“This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?”

A middle-aged woman,
whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster,
responded publicly to the question
posed by the gym.

To Whom It May Concern,
Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans.)
They have an active sex life,
get pregnant and have adorable baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins, stuffing themselves with shrimp.
They play and swim in the seas,
seeing wonderful places like  Patagonia ,
the   Bering Sea
and the coral reefs of  Polynesia .
Whales are wonderful singers
and have even recorded CDs.
They are incredible creatures
and virtually have no predators,
other than humans.
They are loved, protected and admired
by almost everyone in the world.

Mermaids don’t exist.
If they did exist,
they would be lining up outside the offices
of Argentinean psychoanalysts
due to identity crisis. Fish or human?
They don’t have a sex life
because they kill men who get close to them, not to mention how could they have sex?
Just look at them … where is IT?
Therefore, they don’t have kids either.
Not to mention,
who wants to get close to a girl who smells
like a fish store?

The choice is perfectly clear to me:
I want to be a whale.

P.S. We are in an age
when media puts into our heads
the idea that only skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my kids, a good dinner with a man who makes me shiver, and a piece of chocolate with my friends.
With time, we gain weight
because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads
that when there is no more room,
it distributes out to the rest of our bodies.
So we aren’t heavy,
we are enormously cultured,
educated and happy.
Beginning today,
when I look at my butt in the mirror I will think, ‘Good gosh, look how smart I am!”

Sylvia Lafair

Sylvia Lafair, PhD, is President of CEO – Creative Energy Options, Inc., a global consulting company focused on optimizing workplace relationships through her exclusive PatternAware™ Leadership Model. Dr. Lafair is the author of Don’t Bring It to Work: Breaking the Family Patterns That Limit Success published by Jossey-Bass. As an executive coach and leadership educator, she has more than 30 years of experience with all levels of management from leading corporate officers of global companies to executives of non-profits and owners of leading family-owned businesses. She is now offering GUTSY Women Weekends, giving women the opportunity to dialogue and clarify next steps.

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Categories : Career Development, Communications, decision-making, Equality, Ethics, Female Entrepreneurs, Female Executives, Finance, Human Resources Issues, Leadership, personal development, Women On Business, Women On Business News, Women On Business Roundtable, Work-Home Life

3 Comments

Sue
February 15th, 2010 at 4:08 pm

We need to teach our daughters to be healthy women, neither Kate Moss nor a ‘whale’. This article simply advocates accepting our culture of obesity for people too lazy to eat healthy and exercise.

http://www.cdc.gov/pdf/facts_about_obesity_in_the_united_states.pdf

Maxwell Pinto
February 16th, 2010 at 11:27 am

We need balance, instead of swinging from one extreme to another and fooling ourselves that all shapes and sizes are okay. Health is important if we are to function optimally or almost so.

I have a policy of distributing free abridged versions of my books on leadership, ethics, teamwork, motivation, women, bullying and sexual harassment, trade unions, etc., to anyone who sends a request to crespin79@hotmail.com.

Maxwell Pinto, Business Author
http://www.strategicbookpublishing.com/Management-TidbitsForTheNewMillenium.html

Casey Dawes
February 16th, 2010 at 11:54 am

Oh, I love this.

As someone who has a Balkin peasant-stock body, I can appreciate the idea that I will never be a thin Parisian model. But people have been telling me I am “too fat” all my life. I’ve recently looked at pictures of me when I was 14, when my parents were putting me on a diet. Nope. Not too fat.

The pressure to be thin is awful. People who I don’t know very well feel that it’s okay to comment on my weight. People I’ve never met, make judgements about my energy, eating habits and exercise.

Yes…I’d like to weigh a lot less and I work on it. I exercise, eat organic veggies, etc. No sugar, ice cream, chips, etc. in the house. It’s still here, folks.

Can we really, truly, stop judging other people? It would be really nice. Then, we actually might make a difference.