The Woman in the Red Dress

An excerpt adapted from Remembering Myself: A Journey Through the Threads of Time

I saw a woman once that I will never forget. She wore a red dress that blew in the wind as the boat we were on sailed into the sunset. She was older, like me, and larger than most women would call acceptable. Her dress was made of gauze, barely covering her form underneath.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I felt the sense of freedom she relished as the wind lifted her dress and revealed her full, round body. Her breasts moved with the boat, unrestrained, oblivious to any impropriety. She held her head high into the wind, her long blond hair flying behind her, loose and wild, a cocktail in her hand and her adoring husband at her side.

She was the epitome of woman to me. A woman unashamed of her body. Celebrating life.

I came back from that boat ride with a new ideal, a new vision of woman. I saw the possibility of being larger and fuller, of not fitting the ideal our culture fed us, of dancing my own dance in my own way and still being OK. Still safe.

I wanted to let loose. To allow myself to expand. To enjoy my womanly body instead of constantly trying to reduce it. I wanted to rid myself of the vision I had been given as a child of what a woman should be. I didn’t want it anymore, but it still whispered in my ear.

I had no examples growing up. No women to show me another way. Men criticized my body. Magazines and television stars offered the same thin ideal over and over. I thought that was simply what a woman was supposed to be.

The woman in the red dress shifted something in me.

She didn’t fit, and she seemed not to care. She loved herself exactly as she was, and out of that she was captivating.

What if I let myself fill my body with more of me? More life. More pleasure. More celebration.

Something changed in me that day, something old and deeply rooted. My eyes opened to a way of being that made room for more life, more pleasure, and more of myself.

This piece is part of Stories from Remembering Myself and is adapted from the book Remembering Myself: A Journey Through the Threads of Time.

Learn more about Remembering Myself.