11/06/2025
This week, I finished an “end-of-season” project: harvesting the last of the carrots. As I pulled each carrot, I discovered a tiny world wriggling beneath my hands. worms, spiders, slugs, each creature busy doing its thing. Some carrots bore chew marks; others short, stout, or delightfully tripod-shaped.
And it hit me: how often are we told to be a “perfect” shape? As women, Western culture has promoted a narrow, unrealistic ideal for generations, starting from childhood. In the early 1900s, the “Gibson Girl” a drawing by artist Charles Dana Gibson became one of the first widely accepted beauty standards in North America. She symbolized the “ideal woman” of that time: tall, slender, with a cinched waist (achieved through painfully tight corsets), broad shoulders, and full hair piled elegantly on her head. She appeared graceful, refined, and always composed but she was also fictional. No real woman could naturally embody that image without discomfort or self-imposed restrictions.
A few decades later, that ideal was replaced by another symbol of “perfection” — Barbie. Introduced in 1959, Barbie embodied the post-war dream of beauty, fashion, and success. Yet her body proportions, if translated into human form, would be physically impossible. Research has shown she wouldn’t have enough body fat to menstruate, and her neck couldn’t even support her head. Still, millions of girls grew up absorbing that image: long legs, tiny waist, flawless skin, a smiling face that never changes.
These cultural icons may appear harmless. just art, just toys but they quietly influenced how generations of women viewed themselves. They told us, “This is what beautiful looks like.” And when we didn’t match it, we learned to question or fix ourselves instead of celebrating our individuality. So, when I held those carrots, twisted, blemished, each growing its own direction. I thought, this is the truth of nature. Nothing in the forest or garden is identical, yet everything belongs. The crooked carrot nourishes just as profoundly as the straight one. Maybe it’s time we also return to the soil. To remember that we are part of nature’s design. Perfectly imperfect. Rooted. Real. Enough.
