Shame and the Polka Singing Girls
On the Swing
I have a few distinct early childhood memories of living in a little house at the bottom of a hill. When we lived in this house, the neighborhood had its share of children, big and small. One of my memories had to do with a swing set that our neighbors generously shared with us.
A number of the younger children played outside one day and two of the older grade school girls came out to be with us. They offered to push us on the swings. One pushed from the back and the other from the front. As they did, they sang a song and pushed in rhythm to the song. I waited excitedly for my turn.
At long last, I hopped on the swing. The higher the swing went, the more fun it became. The delight disappeared once the girls began singing. Out of their mouths came the lyrics of an old polka.
“Oh, I don’t want her, you can have her, she’s too fat for me.
She’s too fat for me. She’s too fat for me.
Oh, I don’t want her, you can have her, she’s too fat for me.
She’s too fat, she’s too fat, she’s too fat for me.”1
Of all the songs they could have picked, they chose this one. I felt confused and frightened. I jumped off the swing and ran inside. Why would they sing this song for me? I was too fat. They didn’t want me. There was something wrong with me. I felt alone, left with the message of what had just been sung aloud.
Effects of the Lyrics
More than anything else about the event, I remember my internal response. I panicked. I felt the fear of being exposed. My interpretation of the experience was that the girls announced to the whole neighborhood that I was undesirable. I carried a new identity: the fat little girl that no one wanted. And everyone knew.
Looking at pictures of myself at that time, I was thin. Guessing from when my children were that age, I was probably in the lower percentile for weight in my age group. But this is not what I saw in the mirror or what I thought after I jumped off the swing.
It is hard to distinguish what shame messages came from the swing set encounter and what came from childhood sexual abuse or other insults and disrespect I’ve experienced in my life. It sort of all runs together. Together, these harms affected my body image and self-assessment. Yet I do wonder how this early childhood experience affected me.
Most assuredly the experience on the swing brought me shame. I tried to hide it. I didn’t tell my mother. I didn’t tell anyone. I told my husband about it for the first time a few years ago as we were falling asleep one night. The lights were off so I didn’t have to see his face in response to what I shared. Even after 50 plus years, those song lyrics held power in me.
As a maturing adult, I tried to exercise and eat healthy foods. Some of the motive for this was good and right, but a part of it was my belief that if I was in shape and at a healthy weight, I would be more loved. I would be acceptable. My deepest fear was that the polka singing girls were right, that those who abused me were right, and that those who hurt me by what they have said or not said about me are right.
God has done a mighty healing work in me through the years. I am grateful for the change. Most days I am confident of God’s delight in me and it is enough. But there are times when my old shame gets triggered and my fear of not being enough returns.
Tool of Forgiveness
When that happens, I have learned to put in place some of the tools I’ve gathered for dealing with shame. As I remembered this old hurt from long ago, I needed to put in place the tool of forgiveness.
On my healing journey, I learned that forgiveness helps free me from the lie of shame because it delivers me from the effects of sin. It is sin that creates shame. Jesus’s death on the cross validates my worthiness for respect because He paid the debt of the sins done against me. He paid for the shame. When I forgive, the debt is released and shame loses its power. Forgiveness restores my dignity.
Just as I walked through the forgiveness process for my abusers and others who harmed me, I needed to forgive the polka singing girls. I’m sure they had no malice in singing a song that would hurt me in this way, yet their childish insensitivity created a wound in my feminine soul that needed healing. I want God to free me to wholeness. I don’t want to be defined by the shame I felt that day at the swing set. I don’t want to live feeling destined to be overweight.
I want to live in the dignity that Jesus redeemed for me. By God’s grace, I want to live unencumbered, naming and then releasing the lie that gets revealed when I believe I don’t deserve to feel beautiful. By God’s grace, I want to let go of the self-protective pattern of giving myself permission to overeat, because it doesn’t matter what I do, I will never be lovely.
I want God to heal me from the shame that can drive this fear and unbelief. Praise God that this is His work in me. He is at work everyday to accomplish it.
Psalm 25:20 “Oh, guard my soul, and deliver me! Let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you.”