Body Image

Body image

Where do I begin when writing about body image? I have had every image of my body in my head, from feeling fit and toned, a goddess among mortals to disgust, loathing and over-analyzing of every inch of pale skin, and pockets of fat. 

When I was in middle school, I was friends with Charlotte.  Charlotte was naturally thin and athletic; her muscles were defined even before she played sports. Some of my earliest memories are comparing myself, my athletic abilities (or lack thereof) to hers, comparing my family’s house to hers, and especially my body, to hers.  Where she was toned and tanned with beautiful olive skin, I was doughy and pale, pink after a minute in the sun or at the slightest embarrassment. Where she was tall and continuing to grow, I was short and would forever remain under 5 feet tall. I desperately wanted to be her.  Charlotte brought ham and cheese sandwiches to school, so I asked my mom to pack them in my lunch too.  Charlotte started cheerleading, so I begged my mom to let me cheer too.  I still remember running laps in the hot August sun as we prepared for cheer camp, Charlotte leading the pack, me falling behind and walking with the coach.  I still remember, vividly, getting our cheer uniforms and feeling instant shame when my medium top was too tight, and Charlotte was swimming in her extra small. 

But that was just the start.  It wasn’t only Charlotte I compared myself to regularly, even at such a young age.  My sisters played sports and had no problem running for hours on the soccer field. I promptly told my mom “this chasing the ball thing, not for me” and was humorously taunted ever since.  I heard myself repeating phrases popular in the world of 90s and early 200s diet culture. “I can eat this cupcake; I’ve been really good today.” As if my morality was associated with what I consumed in a day.  I recently came across an old picture of me, I’m probably 13. I’m at the beach, my arm indiscreetly laying across my stomach, trying to hide the rolls that came from sitting. I remember that moment saying to whoever was taking the picture “ok, I hope I don’t look fat.” Now I would kill to be that “fat.” I was probably a size 2 at the time, my skimpy Aeropostale bikini acting in total disservice. 

After cheerleading for a few years, I finally signed up for dance classes.  This was a new world for me and I loved it.  My dance friends were less competitive and far less catty than my cheer friends.  I didn’t have to torture myself to move, instead I was enamored with the movements and spent hours in the studio, simply because I couldn’t get enough.  And, even better, I lost weight.  After a summer of dancing for hours on end and eating popsicles and orange slices almost exclusively, I lost about 15 pounds and fell in love with how people responded and complimented me.  My nana declared, in front of everyone at a family cook out, how I was looking “trim.” I was beaming for days.  I started that school year with a fresh outfit and a confidence that could only come from borderline anorexic eating habits. 

But even in my self-deprecation, I was indecisive. I never fully committed to anorexia, but I secretly loved the attention when I skipped a meal and my mother noticed, concerned.   I enjoyed the feeling of being “skinny”, but I loved food. I certainly wasn’t going to throw up a perfectly good meal as I witnessed through many of my peers.  I proclaimed I would rather be fat and happy than skinny and miserable.  But I wasn’t fat. And I wasn’t happy with myself, with what I saw when I looked in the mirror.

The years went on, it became a funny joke, a shared meme, to laugh about our bodies. I’d laugh along, eager to please, to be a part of the joke, even if it was geared towards me. Yes, my butt is shaped exactly like a pancake and yes, it is funny. “Look! I’m a beached whale ha-ha” I would say to my sisters as I laid on the beach.  These jokes weren’t funny, of course, but it got a laugh. I took pride in making someone laugh, pleasing someone even if it meant saying something untrue and harmful about my body. Sometimes I wasn’t laughing though. I’d make a joke in public then cry because the fat on the inside of my arms never went away, no matter how much I tried to tone.  For example, my final dance recital, senior year. I wore a gorgeous purple dress, my favorite, and performed a solo. Instead of remembering the final roar of the crowd and the other dances from the evening, all I remember is that my armpit fat was sticking out and I didn’t look like what I thought a ballerina should look like. 

The years went on, the sizes grew then shrunk again.  I didn’t live in constant discontent for my body.  At times, I felt so cute, “yes! These jeans fit me perfectly”.  But then I’d see a picture of me as I’m hunching over or eating food and I would spend hours crying, then even more hours at the gym “working it off.” Ironically, I would practically scream “LOVE YOURSELF” and “Your body is BEAUTIFUL” when my friends would readjust a shirt in a hasty embarrassment, but I would go to great lengths to tuck in, suck up or hide any area of fat.

It wasn’t until I was 26 years old that I realized that MY body could be sexy. This short, pale, sometimes overweight body, could be sexy.  I didn’t appreciate the curves of my waist or my toned legs until a man I trusted grazed his hand along those curves, kissed my thighs.   I didn’t think my boobs were sexy, they were just there, on my body, until I realized that when I push them up, boys look.  And my freckles! I went to great lengths to hide them or wear extra sunscreen so I wouldn’t get more because they made me different. If I wasn’t going to be fit and thin like Charlotte and the other girls, could I at least have skin kind of like hers?  But again, it wasn’t until multiple people told me how cute they were, that I finally said to myself “yeah, I like my freckles, they do make me unique.”

It’s funny how so much of our body image, especially as women, comes from something that someone (who might not even be a relevant figure in our lives) said or didn’t say.  I held onto my Nana saying I was trim for years. I loved my thighs, but only when someone else did.   I kept an image of what “fat” looked like and what a ballerina was “supposed to look like.” I didn’t appreciate my body until someone else told me I should. 

I wish I could say that now, at 29, I wake up every day in love with my body and what it does for me, how it has grown over the years and how much I truly appreciate it. I wish I could look at pictures from when I was a teenager and not think “it’s a shame I thought I was fat then.” I wonder if I would have enjoyed cheerleading more if I wasn’t obsessed with how much skinnier Charlotte was than me.  I wish I was as confident as I sometimes come across in an Instagram picture. I wish I could say that I am entirely confident and happy regardless of what someone says. I’m not. I’ve come a long way, and I do think I look beautiful at times. I love my freckles all the time and I love parts of my body sometimes.  But I’m never 100% satisfied. I still spend hours at the gym attempting to tone and re-shape.  I spent the last year sitting at a desk, in a job I hated, and my body suffered because of it.  I’m finally out of that situation and now I can eat when my body feels hungry, instead of shoving a doughnut in my face quickly because I have to get back to work. I’ve learned to appreciate food, to take my time.  I know that I don’t have to earn a meal, it’s a necessity, food is fuel.  I know now, after years of dancing and yoga, to listen to my body. To give it rest when it needs it, to give it movement when it craves that.   And most importantly, I’ve learned to love myself, appreciate my body, even if, and especially if it doesn’t look exactly how I think it “should.”