You’ve read my stories, you’ve seen the metaphoric masks and costumes I covered myself with. Now let’s look at yours! Even though you know your stories, because you lived them, I challenge you to make each of them into a burlesque routine!
Say what, Lora?
Okay, here’s how it works. Remember that burlesque is a parody! Dissociate from the emotion of what happened and focus on the lesson each story taught, the beliefs created, and the elaborate costumes and masks that were generated. See each memory, each story, as an episode in a miniseries, as a succession of interconnected burlesque routines that are the individual building blocks that helped create the woman you are today.
Creating a burlesque routine begins with a song, so strive to find one that personifies your story or sets the requisite mood. Hear that song as the background track to that memory and see if it reframes things. Next, move on to costuming. Since you are the star of your story, what are you wearing? Maybe not literally but symbolically. And what are the layers of this costume? What’s being shown, and what’s underneath, hidden? Are things being layered on or taken off? Again, reframe your memories and stories as routines, and see how the understanding surrounding that memory changes. Don’t forget that jewelry, makeup, hair, and props are all part of costuming as well! What accessories are you wearing, and what do they symbolize? Last, what is the choreography, the order of action? How are you the star of your own routine?
Think of my stories, hear the ZZ Top song “Legs,” and see me pom-pom-dancing around in a denim miniskirt, ruffle ankle socks, heels, and a Flashdance-inspired sweatshirt. But as I remove my sexy sweatshirt, notice the tightly laced corset, signifying my need for approval, that I reveal underneath. See how I trade a mask of bold, “can’t hurt me” confidence for my lavender smart-girl glasses? As I unlace the corset, do you see my tender heart, which may be represented by soft-pink heart-shaped pasties? You get the idea! Have fun with this!
As you burlesque your own life, your own stories, recognize the constraints and inhibitions present there and in your way of thinking. See the impact society, family, friends, culture, religion, or your career had on you and your beliefs. Then turn those beliefs or constraints into a physical object that you can remove as you would a jacket, revealing the kind of woman you are underneath. The kind of woman you are in your heart, the woman you’ve always been. The woman you’ve always wanted others to really see.
It’s like stepping into a virtual dressing room where you can try on — or take off — a wide variety of options and beliefs to see how they might look and feel before deciding to buy.
Don’t be nervous — this is more like playing dress-up than shopping for jeans! This is not about bashing everything valuable and meaningful, throwing away advice from everyone who has ever loved you or had your best interest at heart. These exercises and practices are to increase your level of awareness around who you are and why you do what you do. They help you recognize where your beliefs may have originated and give you the opportunity to try something new, to flaunt and expose yourself in ways you may never have dreamed!
Creating Your Costumes & Masks
For many of us, the story of our life begins long before we are even aware it’s being written. And although this prewritten story is one that is appropriate for the beliefs of our culture and community, it may not be appropriate for us. From the moment we are born, we are labeled as a boy or a girl; taught how boys and girls should look, act, and feel; and judged as either capable or not. We are told what religion we are; what we should believe, value, and accept in life; and what we should expect from others. We form an identity based on what others tell us we should be, not necessarily on who we really are.
If we are smart, our families and teachers plot out a life of academic success, culminating in a prominent career. If we cry easily, we may be presented with a script that casts us as overly emotional, weak, or in need of protection. If we are a certain race or religion, we are handed scripts that include a lineage of persecution, limitation, privilege, or success.
We are taught what to expect from people of various cultures, religions, classes, genders, and political affiliations based on their label or stereotype, rather than our own firsthand knowledge or experience. While learning generalities about groups presents us with potentially useful information that guides our interactions, it also sets us up for misinterpretation and a tendency to judge others. Perhaps you can remember a time when you judged someone incorrectly, based on their label or stereotype? Uh-huh. I certainly can!
When the world, or the people in it, look different from the way we think they should, we become anxious, experiencing what is known as cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort that occurs when our beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. Whether this discomfort is major or minor, personal or impersonal, it is resolved in one of three ways. We either reject, explain away, or avoid information, in an attempt to persuade ourselves that no conflict really exists.
Growing up with an accountant for a father and a mother who worked part-time so she could stay at home with me meant that I was raised with some pretty conservative beliefs around money. Namely, that we did not spend what we did not have, and the only debt that was justifiable was a home mortgage. Period. For right or for wrong, that was my belief, and it served me well. Until law school.
There was no way I could ever save enough to pay for law school up front, and the only way that I could go was to take out student loans. Which, according to my childhood belief, was not justifiable debt. Cognitive dissonance! My assumption that only one kind of debt was valid failed to take into consideration that there could be a time and a place for debt, and that leveraging oneself in pursuit of an education could be a smart thing to do. Reject, explain away, or avoid. Those were my options.
Rejecting that belief would have made me stressed and scared, feeling like an irresponsible spendthrift. Avoiding the decision was not possible, since I desperately wanted to go to law school. So I explained it away in the most rationally irrational way possible. I took out student loans with the plan that a few years later when I bought a house, I would take out a larger loan and pay off my student loans with the extra mortgage-loan money! That way I would be left with only justifiable debt — a mortgage. And I did! See what I did there? That was a pretty sneaky way of fooling myself into being able to hold both my belief that all debt except mortgage debt is bad and still take out the student loans that I needed.
Cognitive dissonance has nothing to do with our level of education or intelligence. It’s a universal phenomenon everyone experiences, and it’s difficult to combat, because often we aren’t consciously aware that we’re engaging in it!
One Million and Fifty Shades of Glitter
Have you ever seen someone toss a handful of glitter into the air, either under bright stage lights or in sunlight? It’s beautiful, glorious — and distracting! Why? Because the glitter reflects and refracts the light, causing us to take our eyes off whatever is happening onstage and focus instead on the scintillating shimmer of distraction all around. Which is exactly what happens in our own lives. We get distracted by others, by our own thoughts, ideas, and personal histories. Pretty soon we don’t know what’s real and what’s the glittery distraction of cognitive dissonance.
The upcoming exercise, called “Living in the Glitter,” consists of eleven questions for you to use to uncover your own cognitive dissonance. They help you see if your beliefs are based on reality or if you are rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding new information in order to keep your assumptions intact.
Let me give you an example of what this might look like: I have a client who was raised with the belief that homosexuality is a sin. Unbeknownst to her, one of her best friends growing up was gay. As you might imagine, when he revealed that he was gay and asked her to attend his wedding, it was like a cloud of glitter had suddenly been tossed into her brain. How could she attend the wedding and support her