Your Belly Button Is Special

At my school, for grades one through three, the teachers (foreign and Thai) are expected to alternate weeks swimming with the class.  Included in this package deal along with swimming and making sure none of your brats drown, you are also required to help your kids get changed into and out of their swim wear.  Being in a room with twelve six year old girls is potentially my least favorite part of the job.

Apart from the fact that they're running around with their lady bits out for the world to see and you never quite know where to look; you've got the high pitched squeals and giggles, lost underpants, and (because we're in Thailand) the occasional puff of baby powder in your face.  Last week was my worst locker room visit.

One of my girls pointed to her belly button and said, "Teacher, look."

Guys in high school used to play this game where they would make the number three sign or asshole sign by touching their index finger tip to their thumb tip and the other three fingers sticking straight out together.  They would then try to call someone's attention to their hand.  If they were successful, the sucker got punched.  Maybe in the nuts?  I might be mixing up adolescent boys games.

Anyway, I was the sucker.

I saw that she wanted me to see her outtie belly button, "Wow," I said, "you've got an outtie!  That's awesome."

"Awesome?  My mom told me not to show it to people because it's not beautiful."

Wow.  Perfect grammar, I thought.  No, no, focus.

Keeping my jaw off the floor and the rage out of my voice was next to impossible.  So I did the only thing I knew to do.  I turned to face her square on so all of the other girls in the room could hear me and I calmly and slowly said, "Not everyone gets to have an outtie.  Your belly button is special because it is different.  That makes your belly button and you beautiful."

Everyone took pause and then carried on like nothing had even happened.  Like a commercial where everyone is in a diner and the frying pans and the dinging bells and clanking coffee cups pause for a split second before they go back to serving their purpose as background noise for an Advil commercial.  Dramatic effect I believe is what I learned in college.

Six years old.  Six years old.  The woman who should be instilling strength and planting seeds of self esteem is doing the opposite by teaching her daughter to be ashamed of the very parts of her that will make her unique, that assist her in developing her view of herself; parts that will bother her through her teen years and probably well into her 20's because she knows not everyone has one.  And her mom told her to and we all know moms know everything.  One day, though, hopefully she'll overcome it.

She'll quiet the sound of her mother's voice of disapproval, having not even realized that her own voice of disapproval sounds eerily similar.  Something will shift and suddenly the perceived flaw will be seen as beautiful and special.

Hopefully, she'll be able to turn and face herself square on so all of the other girls in the room can hear her, and she'll calmly and slowly say, "Not everyone gets to have an outtie.  Your belly button is special because it is different.  That makes your belly button and YOU beautiful."