Skinny bitch, Fat cow – My inner/outer Venus dialogue

© March 2010 by Fabienne Lopez

What’s your New Year’s resolution? I always have one. Not a conscious thing, but more an awareness of a personal development I have to work on for that year. The resolution generally pops on my mind out of the blues. This year it really surprised me. “I want to be beautiful,” it screamed at me, really loudly in the middle of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. I had not a clue about what it meant for me. I knew it wasn’t just about physical beauty.

Then serendipity starts to happen, as defined by observing apparently innocuous facts and drawing a valuable conclusion from them.

While having coffee with my friend Ana, I ask myself, “What is the source of the beauty that emanates from her?” I realize that she is a woman who truly loves herself and accepts the good and the bad inside her. When you are in that state and stage of your life, your natural power shows up. Yes, it is a cliché, but it works for me, says me mumbling.

Then I realize that Venus is the astrological ruler of 2010, putting the emphasis on love, relationships and money. Three sectors of my life where I do not feel empowered. It seems that this is the year to change my status quo.

As coincidences tend to happen in threes, I stumble upon an article from Rob Breszny’s Free Will Astrology where he posits that “Your drive to experience pleasure isn’t a barrier to your spiritual growth, but is in fact essential to it. Proceed on the hypothesis that cultivating joy can make you a more ethical and compassionate person. Imagine that feeling good has something important to teach you every day.”

It seems that cosmic energies have provided me with guidance – I know what I need to work on – accepting my own internal and external beauty. The reason for making the effort – reclaim my own power and how do it. Great! Do it! – I am! Laughing Out Loud.

When I tell people about my 2010 project, the automatic response is, “But you are already beautiful!” That might be the case in their mind but not in my mind.

All my life I’ve had a difficult relationship with beauty and power. All my life I’ve had an ongoing inner dialogue between skinny bitch and fat cow. My mother is a beautiful woman. Picture Ava Gardner’s twin and the same personality. To put in mildly, my mother wanted unconditional admiration, not competition, so she undercut my girly-ness. Not an easy thing to grow up. I was raised to be a supporting mouse, not the beauty queen.  

This certainly impacted my self-confidence which, in turn, reflected on not knowing my own power, stunted the growth of my femininity, and, frankly, dimmed my joy in life.

To be honest, I am still not quite clear on what it means in terms of practical steps for me to take. It is all well and good to say, “I want to be beautiful,” and go the usual route of dieting. (Yes, I am trying to lose weight. But that’s a traditional New Year’s resolution, along with stopping smoking and learning to speak in public, getting plastic surgery, buying fancy clothes and make up – nothing wrong with that).

But I want something more powerful and permanent. I want to start a relationship with my Venus, get to know her, hang out together, and see what she has to say — which should be a lot since I’ve ignored her most of my life.

This discovery of my inner/outer beauty and the facing of my feminine daimons will be an interesting process to observe as Venus has always been a side of myself I have relegated to a closet. Never to come out, never to show off except in very rare occasions where it would it would go for a spin and go back to its dark place. I wanted to be as beautiful and as popular as my friends, but refused to work on developing my Venus – too afraid of it. As I was scared of my Venus, I would transfer the task of living my Venus side to my friends. They all would be beautiful, flirty, charming, joyful, popular with men. My big excuse was -I’ve got Venus in Aries, which is not a placement Venus is happy with – too much yang Martian energy. As a beginning astrologer I learned this meant I had a demonstrative and assertive femininity. I wouldn’t mind claiming this energy at all. I’d even make do with its shadow reputation as a cocky, flimsy lover, to say it nicely. Actually, most astrological descriptions of Venus in Aries are not particularly flattering. Yet the usual observations about Venus in Aries have never rung true for me. Probably because my Venus is retrograde, which only accentuates my tendency to internalize my venus function and keep it under wraps. Jeffrey Wolf Green in his book Pluto – volume  II, talks about how Venus retrograde people focus on establishing a internal relationship with themselves more than anything else. The external world be damned. This is really true for me. But then my Moon in Libra – who wants relationships – throws a tantrum. And I get back to square one. Maybe, for me – being beautiful means finding a way to be at the center of those opposing needs.

Venus is my unconscious, unlived planet.

And one I want to get reacquainted with. One that I want to acknowledge and pay homage to —  her whispered desires and insistent shouts. I want to follow the trail of clues toward greater happiness. I will keep you posted.

Today, March 28, 2010 is my Venus return. What better way to celebrate a new Venus cycle than posting this article.

Photos: credit of  Flickr Common Creative