bodies, rest and motion.
In my last post, when I asked about the “stupid things we think about too often”, I wasn’t shocked to hear women mention difficult thoughts about their bodies as a constant challenge in their lives.
Of course.
This is our obsession.
The workout frenzy girls; the diet girls; the “accept me however I am!” girls; the bodyshaping underwear girls; the sports nut girls; the buy-jeans-one-size-too-small girls; the recovering-from-an-eating-disorder-girls; the girls for whom the most scathing and oft-used insult is, “She’s fat!”; the sex-with-the-lights-off girls; the “I lost weight and now I barely wear clothes!” girls; the “I just want to feel healthy” girls; the girls who constantly reference Nicole Ritchie; the girls who count calories; the girls who have an ideal they can’t let go of; the girls who raise an eyebrow at teenage girls and say, “yeah, you better wear that while you can!”; the before-and-after picture girls; the professionally self-deprecating girls; the girls with the medical concerns who can’t get where they want; the girls who date guys who confirm their self-hatred; the girls who won’t believe men love them regardless of imperfections; the girls who never gained a pound until they gained a pound and then lost all their anchoring in the world; the girls who resent that they care; the girls who judge people who don’t care; and the girls who don’t care except sometimes when they catch the wrong angle in a mirror walking by.
There are girls, of course, who don’t give a rat’s ass how they look, or like/love how they look. Which is great.
But they are awfully rare. For a reason.
We live in a society that is obsessed with appearance. We live in a society where billions and billions of dollars are spent every year in the pursuit of a certain type of appearance, a certain way of being. We can tell you the calorie counts on everything.
We watch our public figures’ bodies like hawks.
We compare ourselves to actresses and our girlfriends.
We remember every good and bad thing ever said about how we look.
We’ve actually said the words, “Well, the flu sucked, but I lost ten pounds!”
We get older, we experience health changes, we have babies, we embark on programs, we gain weight, we go up and down on the scale, we fear high school reunions, we want to get back at exes, we poke at parts of ourselves, we wear things that are “forgiving.”
This is us.
Practically speaking, being within the correct medical weight range for your height is a good thing, according to most doctors. But it doesn’t mean you’re healthy. Being healthy means you’re healthy — it’s just one of the factors. There are plenty of skinny girls who aren’t doing as well on the inside as heavier girls.
Then there are the arguments for being genetically pre-programmed to seek out the healthiest mate possible, there are the arguments about culture and nature and nurture and diet and location, there are the lengthy discussions of feminism and chauvanism and lookism and ageism and… well, everything else.
So much stuff. At length. All the time. Ongoing. Everywhere.
I get so sick of it, I can’t even tell you. What can I tell you?
I’m overweight. I have not been my whole life — just the opposite, actually — but I am now. Genetics? Autoimmune disorder? Hormonal imbalances? Laziness? Yep.
No two ways about it, no overstatement, no “but I’m so proud!”, no dysmorphia. It needs to change, but it is what it is.
And I hate writing about it. What the hell does how my body looks have to do with me as a writer or as a woman or as a human being? I don’t talk about relationships I’ve had or sex or anything else like that here, because my audience is so varied and wide.
Why do I need to be yet another female blogger obsessing about how she looks or going on about my diet at length? Why do I need to go there in this venue when my figure does not define my intelligence, my sense of humour, my wisdom about life, my capacity to love?
Because.
It just keeps coming up. It will not go away.
So much of our identity as women — and men, for that matter — is tied into how we look that I’m kidding myself to think it won’t come up here at all.
Say I want to post a picture of myself on my blog, but I hate how my body looks in the photo, so there, I’ll put my face up. That is my face, after all… that’s how I look. That’s good enough for people to connect with, to get a sense of me, right? My body doesn’t define me! This isn’t an online dating profile! I’m a writer! Why should I even GO there on my website? If I wouldn’t bring it up in conversation with a friend, why should I discuss it on my blog?
But then some part of me worries that this is dishonest. That I’m hiding something under the guise of not wanting to make a point of it. I get emails from people wanting to hang out with me and I think, ugh, they’d be disappointed if they met me. I’m not very pretty.
I’ve dealt for years with people’s frustrations with how I look.
Such a pretty girl, if only she’d lose weight.
Such a smart girl, why doesn’t she lose weight?
You can’t choose what you’re attracted to, sorry.
I would love you if you were thinner.
I’m surprised how confident you are on stage, given… well, how you look.
You dress so well for your… body type.
You should be less argumentative/less opinionated/less somethingorother… you need as much going for you as you can get.
Once, a boy offered to pay me to go on a diet. Once, a boy told me he thought we would be married by now if I looked different. Once, a boy who thought he might like me changed his mind as soon as he met me. Once a boy said how I looked made him sad.
All of these things hurt terribly. All of these things stay in my head.
But I’ll be damned if I ever wanted sympathy or community in it. Going there in a public sense felt — feels — self-indulgent, felt like looking for reassurance, felt like drama. And screw all of that, as it were.
Who am I kidding, though? Every compliment I get on this blog about my appearance, I think, “Oh, if you knew.”
Never mind that some of those come from people who DO know. I’ve let myself get neurotic about this, and it has to come to a stop.
I try not to be neurotic about it in my daily life, actually. And it’s worked.
Most of my girlfriends are thinner than me, but almost all of them will confide to me about their insecurities, their diets, their issues without much of a second thought.
One of them even phoned me crying when she grew out of her size four jeans. I don’t think it even occurred to her who she was talking to, or how ironic it was.
And that’s how I like it. I don’t want little weird boundaries about what people can say around me.
That’s how little I bring it up in my speech, in my work, in anything.
Not because I don’t know it. Not because I don’t deal with it. Not because I don’t want to change it, because YES, I do. I just deal with it in a private way.
And I know this post this has been all over the place, but that reflects my feelings on the whole issue pretty perfectly.
So.
I need to work on my body.
I will work on my body, and I have been, though I probably won’t talk about it here. It doesn’t make me happy. It’s not what I enjoy writing about. The diet blog will not be forthcoming.
None of this has anything to do with my skill as a writer, my value as a friend, my capacity for thought, for love, for humour. And if you think it does, I’m sad for you.
It does have lot to do with how I walk into relationships. But that is not the fault of men in general, but some specific men. And I need to let that go. And I am, and this is part of it.
Girls out there? I feel you in how much it hurts, how much it consumes your thoughts. If you ever need support, to vent, to be complimented wildly? I have your back.
I support you in doing healthy things you need to do to feel better, but I don’t support you in mocking yourself or mocking others for their appearance. Don’t you dare sell out other women and think it’s funny. That’s absolute bullshit. There is no excuse.
This is me, then.
And that is really all I have to say about that.
