I am visiting my grandparents in the Caribbean for a few weeks and doing the things one does when visiting 80-something year old grandparents. We drink coffee and we drink tea, and we go grocery shopping and run errands, and I drive them to their various appointments, turning left when I am told to turn left and turning right when I am told to turn right, and I offer Opa a young, sturdy arm to hold onto after his swim in the ocean so he can more easily make his way out of the water over the rocks and the uneven sand, and I carry things and bring the car around, and I ask a lot of questions about life when they were younger, and I try to listen, as there is still so much to learn and remember.
Well, a few days ago, as we were standing at the counter of the grocery store café ordering our post-shopping cappuccinos, the front cover of a magazine on display caught my eye. (I have tried now I don’t know how many times to be all tech savvy and put a picture of it here but for some reason, it’s not working, no matter how many different ways I try, so I’ll just have to describe it for you). Basically, what grabbed my attention was a column along the left side of one particular cover, which read “15 stoere vrouwen in bikini (zonder photoshop).” For the non-Dutch speakers, this can probably best be translated as “15 bad-ass/fearless/ballsy women in bikini (without photoshop)”. Interesting! Under this caption were three small pictures of three very different women, each strutting their stuff in a stylish and respectively flattering black bikini. The picture that intrigued me the most was one of a woman who I later read was 125 kilos, probably one of the largest women I have ever seen wearing a bikini. There she was - posing for all the world to see, hand on her hip, hair coiffed, shoulders back, with a confident smile on her face. She looked fabulous! And then, in big, bold letters just below these snapshots, it read DIT IS MIJN LIJF, which means “This is my body”. I saw all this and I thought to myself, “The rest I have to see!”
Now, I know we have the Dove ads that try to show a girl who is “normal,” who is not stick-thin like so many cover models, or perfectly curvaceous like the Guess girls or Victoria’s Secret pin-ups, and now we’ve also got Lena Dunham of the HBO TV show Girls. She is a feisty young woman who has stirred up a little controversy and been called “a pathological exhibitionist” and a “little fat girl” because she almost weekly takes off her clothes in front of the camera to unabashedly reveal a body that does not quite match the western world’s mainstream societal standards of beauty. But this magazine in my hands seemed somehow different.
Later in the day, stretched out on a lounge chair at the beach (how fitting), I started flipping through the pictures. The girls in this particular photo shoot, were not, as far as I could tell, models- stick-thin, “plus-size” or otherwise. They were just average everyday students, cashiers, social workers, mothers, real women- some with small waists and wide shoulders, some with large breasts and larger hips, some flat-chested with strong and solid legs- they spanned the spectrum of tall, short, thick, thin, stout, pear-shaped, but were all proudly “imperfect”. The lighting here hid nothing, and while these women had certainly sat for a good session of hair and make-up, everything was visible- stretch marks, cellulite, pores, rolls, moles- everything. I read and reread, and looked and looked again at these ordinary women volunteering to participate in something extraordinarily empowering, and the whole experience got me thinking about something that has been on my mind for a while now.
You see, I’ve recently had some back-to-back instances of negative body image bullshit. It started a few months back when I had a good look in the mirror post-shower and heard myself say, “Girl, you certainly aren’t as young as you used to be” and an unnecessarily extensive, super close-up inspection of my face revealed lines and pigmentation spots and aging that I had never really noticed before. Soon after, in preparation for summertime, I stood in front of my full length mirror and tried on all my bikinis and warm weather wear to determine what should stay and what should go, and I just remember that experience bringing on a whole lot of discontented sighing and head-shaking. Then, just a few weeks back, on a balmy beachworthy day, a group of my girlfriends decided to go to the public pool for a session of sunbathing and swimming. A great idea! I didn’t go- partially because I had an overdue to-do list in need of attention, and partially because I am not a fan of spending a day surrounded by shrieking children, but also very much so because I have absolutely no desire to flaunt my pasty, veiny, bumpy bits of flesh in a public place where I might run into students, colleagues, and acquaintances. No desire whatsoever. To top it all off, a few days after I left to come here on my vacation, I saw a picture posted on facebook of friends having a late afternoon dip in a nearby swimming hole, and I realized that if I were still in town, I would probably have been invited, and more importantly, I realized that I probably would have declined the invitation. Late night skinny dip (i.e. nudity in the pitch black dark): no problem. Hanging out in a bikini on a beach with strangers whose opinion I give less of a shit about: maybe. Midday early summer bathing suit-clad swim with friends (i.e. absolutely no tan yet to at least somewhat camouflage the pasty, veiny, bumpy bits): no thank you.
That’s messed up.
And what’s even more messed up is that this is not something new, not some new kind of discontentment that has evolved with the recent realization that I am in possession of an aging, gravity-obedient body. This has been an issue for as long as I can remember. I would have reacted with the same hesitation to a late afternoon swimming invitation 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago.
Messed up.
The thing that struck me, thinking about this collection of recent body-conscious moments, the history before it, and then this experience now of taking in the images of these bold, bikini-clad women bearing their (almost) all on the pages in front of me was this: I am 35 and have spent almost my entire life being discontent with my body. That’s a really really really long time, and, quite honestly, I am tired of it.
Now, many of these women in the magazine had lost a substantial amount of weight and were proud of themselves for overcoming such a life-defining obstacle, or they had recently given birth and were getting used to their newly shaped body, or they used to be shy and had finally begun to feel comfortable in their own skin. My reality is that I have never really had any *significant* body issues or particularly noticeable shifts in body image. I don’t have any disfiguring scars or skin conditions or disabilities or any kind of otherness that make me look significantly different from my peers or that might lead me to feel self-conscious. I am not overweight or underweight. I am tall, but not exceptionally tall. I pretty much fit squarely in the category of totally and completely average. Nobody’s ever called me “fat” or suggested I don’t eat a second cupcake. Nobody’s ever called me “ugly” (except maybe one of my siblings mid-fight sometime a gazillion years ago) and while teasing is an unfortunately prevalent activity among kids, aside from my long, lanky preteen self being teased about the flatness of my chest and told I should eat something or the wind might blow me away, little of the bullying I endured as a child centered on my physical appearance. Very little guilt surrounds my mealtimes, even if I sometimes have a few more bites than I need. I have a gym membership I barely use, which sometimes causes me teensy little waves of shame, but that’s more about the wasted money than untoned muscle. What I mean to say is that the common body image issue that many women often struggle with- this everpresent awareness of one's shape and size, and how that relates to the shape and size of others or to the shape and size of the past self (or the ideal self), doesn´t generally permeate my daily routines.
So some might say, really, what’s the problem? The problem is that, in spite of being without what one might deem “significant” body image struggles, in spite of being a reasonably confident woman who recognizes my worth and the fact that my worth extends far beyond how I look, I still insist on continually being unkind to my body, picking, judging, harping on all the little imperfections I see when I look in the mirror. I try not to be a public harper (aside from this grand reveal), one of those girls who constantly goes on and on about my thighs and my zits and my hair and my this and my that. But privately, when it’s just me and the mirror, I am a downright critical bitch- like, a clipboard in hand, tsk-tsk-tsk, displeased, disdainfully eye-rolling, critical bitch.
This is my point. My body is healthy and strong, my face is joyful and expressive, and generally everything seems to work as it should, so why why why do I give so much attention to creating, maintaining and bemoaning the long list of little things I don’t like, all the features I find out of proportion or unattractive? And the sad truth is that this list of mine is absurdly long and embarrassingly detailed. It includes the size of my eyes, the shape of my nose, pores that are too visible, and a face that is never ever ever without a blemish. It includes my smallish breasts (I mean, I think God could have easily blessed me with an extra cup size- I am certain I could pull it off). It includes my slouchy posture, my full upper arms, my worker hands, my pasty white complexion. It includes my ever-growing web of spider veins- the rivers of blue that wind underneath the transparent skin of legs that are, by far, my least favourite feature. I have long felt that these too-thick ankles, and sturdy, muscular, Dutch legs, designed for bicycling or speed skating, belong on a girl with a bigger frame and a shorter torso. And this intense dislike for my lower limbs reaches way way way back into my youth. I remember once sitting in the summertime on a bench with friends and being very much aware that my thighs spread out so much more than those of all the pretty girls around me.
This is part of the problem, perhaps where it starts- the self-sabotaging act of comparing oneself to all those pretty girls. I look at their big, lashy eyes and their flawless skin and their jiggling breasts and their slender legs and their itsy bitsy little ankles and I feel envy. I felt envy as that 14 year-old girl sitting on a bench, and I feel it sometimes still. In fact, I admit that I have wasted a significant portion of my life feeling jealous of beautiful women, of my perfectly photogenic sister, of my fashion model high school best friend, of the carelessly pretty popular girls, and my collection of gorgeous girlfriends . Envy is dangerous, because it leads to insecurity and discontentment and sometimes even resentment, and it leads us to view difference with judgmental and ungrateful eyes, and these states of being are far more unattractive features than fat ankles or pasty skin.
I know that I have, for a very very long time now, often tried to compensate for feeling less beautiful by being louder, bigger, bolder, wilder, wittier, artier, smarter or sweeter. I suppose this is because a very long time ago I decided that I would probably never be a “head turner,” in the traditional sense of the word. Someone won’t walk past me and give me a second look because of my physical beauty. I can believe they might stop and take another look because they got distracted by my fabulous shoes or my hearty laugh, or perhaps they got a kick out of the animated way I was telling my friends a story, or they might have been impressed by my vocabulary or my wicked trivia skills, but “Hey girl, you’re gorgeous” is not something I have often heard, except maybe at the end of the night when the bar is closing and buddy is drunk and looking for a companion to take home. Cute, sometimes maybe. Gorgeous, not so much.
Now, why am I sharing all this? Please rest assured that this is not some pathetic, self-pitying solicitation for my friends to pile on the compliments and make me feel better about myself. I generally, in the grand scheme of things, when evaluating the combination of my inside and my outside me, feel pretty good about myself. I can see the good in me, and I am very much aware that much of this stuff I have allowed myself to believe for so long is more or less ridiculous, irrational, trivial, and maybe some of it isn’t even truth. I know that, and I also acknowledge that it is deeply unfortunate that I have wasted so much time and energy on disliking a body that has generally served me quite well.
Unfortunate. Ridiculous. Irrational. I know. But still, I can’t help but wonder where these absurd ideas about beauty come from, as well as these tendencies towards needless comparison, discontentment and self-criticism. And I wonder how these beliefs manage to remain so strongly etched across time and space, beyond the me that was a young, insecure teenager getting used to her body, all the way into the adult life of a strong, reasonably successful woman. And I wonder- most importantly- how to finally and completely override those beliefs. Because that’s the point, isn´t it? It’s not really about what’s actually standing there in front of the mirror. It’s about what I choose to see, what I choose to believe.
I know I have certainly made some progress over the last decade or so in terms of accepting, maybe even sometimes enjoying, this body of mine. Small and simple steps have positively impacted my appreciation of my body, little things like finally having no issues throwing on a pair of three inch heels, even if results in me towering over some of the men around. My younger self would have felt that kind of tallness was unfeminine. I have also come to recognize all the excellent bonuses to my smallish breasts- I can run without them jiggling and causing me discomfort, I can spend pretty much this entire vacation braless, I can wear things that women with a more ample bosom probably couldn’t get away with. And I have taken to snapping “selfies” to document moments when I am in a good space or with good people, when I feel happy and confident, because it seems that when I feel good, I am more likely to feel like I look good, and all these self-portraits provide a kind of reactionary evidence against the infinite piles of pictures of myself over the years that have made me moan and groan. So, there has definitely been some progress, but it’s not enough, because as long as there are still moments when I look in the mirror and snarl a little, then that’s a problem- one that must be remedied. The sooner the better.
Now, this moment- here, now, of being confronted with the reality of a body image that’s still in need of a little improvement- is not exactly something new. I mean, that’s how life works, right? Growth isn’t really a linear process but cyclical. Lessons, emotions, experiences recycle themselves until we finally actually get it. So, we find ourselves again and again in a familiarly uncomfortable situation, with ugly emotions we recognize from the way they sit in the gut or bend the spine or press on the lungs, and hopefully, each time we arrive in that spot again, we have wiser eyes, and a stronger character, and a more patient heart, and a mind that is ready for a new idea to root itself deep down.
So, in this particular revisitation of the body image issue, the fifteen bad-ass women staring back at me remind me that there is still work to do. They remind me that not only is beauty in the eye of the beholder, but that perspective and perception is everything, because it is not really body issues that so many of us struggle with, but body image issues. The problem arises in the act of our own beholding. These women remind me that beauty, like intelligence, exists in a delightful multitude of forms. They remind me that, just as we can all agree that the IQ tests of yesteryear made a nasty little mess of trying to evaluate an abstract, culturally-dependent , individually-defined concept, we should also be able to agree that the idea of a bunch of women with different backgrounds, stories and values all striving for a uniform standard of beauty is slightly ridiculous. Put these ideas together and out of it grows the unmistakable truth that somebody somewhere out there is bound to find attractive the very things about my body that I so fervently dislike. I mean, I can think of dozens of examples of a friend sharing one of the aspects of her body that gets in the way of her smiling at her reflection, and my response being one of complete disbelief because I hadn’t even ever noticed it, or I personally think that feature is beautiful or unique, or I simply can’t wrap my head around how it could possibly even qualify as an issue. Now, there is of course the reminder as well that far too often my ideas about what is beautiful are too greatly influenced by what I believe society in general, and men in particular, think is beautiful, and so I am reminded that I need to be able to appreciate my body in spite of/without outside commentary. But, it is good to remember that it is often easier for us to see the beauty in others than in ourselves, which means that maybe me should more often practice looking at ourselves through the eyes of another, or –even better- looking at ourselves with the same gracious eyes we use to look at others.
Then, of course, there’s the whole sticky problem of this word “beautiful” because while it is, by definition, just a harmless little adjective, it is actually oh so much more. It is different from other descriptors like funny, serious, introverted, extroverted, these words that exist on a spectrum where the different possibilities at each end are both valued and respected as desirable attributes. “Beautiful” is problematic because it is a very weighty word, carrying this massive value judgment that is connected to all kinds of personal and cultural baggage. I wonder if we can move away from this idea of “beautiful” altogether as the universal deciding determinant of whether or not we are allowed to be happy with what we see in the mirror. This idea of striving to be able to look at myself in the mirror and tell myself that I am beautiful feels a bit silly to me. I wonder if there is a way to have a more positive relationship with my reflection without having to rely on these kinds of value judgments. We might also want to consider, of course, the complicated semantics of other descriptors used when discussing our bodies, and their connectedness to our perception of what is attractive and acceptable: “stocky” and “skinny” feel much more negative to me than “strong” and “thin.” I don´t know, but it’s something I’d like to think a little more about.
Anyways, back to the reminders.
I am reminded this time around that pretty much every woman I know- even, it seems, those pretty girls- has a list as long and detailed as mine, and I am reminded that perhaps we, as women, need to do a better job of appreciating our fellow womankind, of making sure that we frequently tell our friends and loved ones what we value about them, how they enrich our lives, what makes them unique and awesome. We need to try and balance out all the superficial, surface stuff, to bring perspective to the abundance of messages concerning what we should look like that are stuffed down our throats by Hollywood and Paris, by storefront windows and magazines, by our would-be boyfriends and well-meaning mothers . And when we venture out into the territory of commenting on the outer shell of the women around us, we need to make sure our compliments are sincere and selfless, rather than the far too common dirty compliment such as, “God, I love your hair. I wish mine was curly like that” or “Look at you. You´re so skinny. Do you even eat? You’re lucky. I am constantly on a diet but could never get as tiny as you” because these aren’t really compliments at all but rather self-focused complaints, and I mean, how exactly is someone supposed to properly respond to a “compliment” like that? “Um, thanks….I think.”
I am reminded that how I talk about and treat my outer self reflects my relationship with my inner self. I am also reminded that, like it or not, given my line of work, I have a moral obligation to the teenage girls sitting in my classroom to model positive body image, to show them what self-acceptance and contentment look like. Actually, to be quite honest, I don’t really like that term “self-acceptance” because acceptance insinuates putting up with something that isn’t ideal, which is about judgment and evaluating and agreeing that there even is something ideal to aim for, and I don’t like the term “contentment” either because it also implies being happy with meh, with not bad, with good enough. I want to strive for self-celebration instead of self-acceptance, and delight instead of contentment.
So, these are all certainly important reminders, reminders I will likely need to hear again and again and again, but this time there was also a new realization in the cyclical lesson of learning to look on my reflection with greater kindness and grace. And that new realization was this: my body tells a story- an evocative, complicated, fascinating story. As I was looking through that magazine, the body and posture and facial expression of each woman told a little bit about where she came from and what she’d been through. One woman had fresh stretch marks which told the story of her new motherhood. Another woman had considerable rolls of skin above her belly, which made her feel both pride and insecurity, pride because those rolls were evidence of the weight she’d worked so hard to lose, insecurity because those rolls still got in the way of her fully appreciating what she sees in the mirror.
My body tells its own stories. I, like many other people, have a nice little timeline of awesome scars- there’s the burn mark on my forearm from the first time I cooked a Christmas turkey by myself, the slice across my ankle where I was attacked by an angry, spiky palm tree leaf, the hairless line in my eyebrow that tells of the close encounter my toddler self once had with the corner of a coffee table. There are also the metaphorical and metaphysical stories layered underneath the obvious and superficial. My pale complexion, for example, reminds me of the need to slow down, to pay attention, to take the time to respect and protect myself, to resist the temptation to urgently and eagerly just get out there already. My slouchy back and my ongoing struggle to straighten up and fully embrace my tall stature speak of my internal struggles to stretch out and up and take the space I need, to stand firm and tall so I don’t waver when others need/expect/disagree/disapprove/demand. The importance of perspective and interpretation factors significantly into this storytelling business- again, it’s not so much what is there but what we choose to see. Recently, after revealing to a friend how bothered I was by my increasingly veiny legs, she turned to me and told me she thought those veins were beautiful because they signified vulnerability. What a fascinating perspective. What a wonderful thought.
Perhaps, however, the most interesting and important story told when I look in the mirror is the story of where I come from. This story reveals itself when looking at family photo albums with my Oma. I see faces I may not have ever known but still recognize, and I see myself in the younger versions of my parents and grandparents. I experience this story when I meet people here on the island and they tell me they could see that I am the daughter of my parents because I have my father’s eyes and my mother’s smile. I am reminded of it when I think of my little nephew and how often people naturally try to claim ownership of his feet, his eyes, his mouth, his hair. We carry in our body, in our reflection, the stories of our family and our roots. I am, after all, not a sculpture chiseled in an artist’s studio, not some kind of on-line avatar clicked together by a gamer, not a Gattaca baby, with all my phenotypes and genotypes deliberately selected before my conception. I am a patchwork quilt of family features stitched together, grown, blended, passed on. That means that when I sit here bitching about my ankles and my thighs and my eyes, I am not only being unkind to myself but I am disrespecting the ancestors who passed them on, disrespecting the gifts given to me by those who love me and delight in seeing themselves in me, disrespecting my mother and my Oma and my sister and my cousins who share some of the same features as me.
There is the story as well of what I was designed to do. None of us, obviously, were evolutionarily intended to lie around on beach chairs looking pretty or to sway our hips and flick our hair as we strut down the runway in high heels and a tight skirt. I look at myself in the mirror and I know I was designed to work. I can picture myself one hundred years ago in wooden shoes, shoveling hay and milking cows and fixing fences. I have a long, lean back and strong hands and strong arms and even stronger legs. I can work hard and I can keep going. I can pull, push, lift, carry because I was intended to be strong. Probably, I wouldn’t be so strong with skinnier ankles and leaner legs and tinier upper arms and a smaller stature. So if I really really think about it, when I am standing there at the shore line with my bikini on, and the sun is glistening off all my freckly, pasty whiteness, bouncing off of the blue veins winding through my calves or a dimple in my jiggly butt cheek, and I firmly plant these sturdy, solid legs on the ground, and I know with great confidence that when Opa grabs my arm and holds my not so girly hand, he can trust my strength, that I will be able to support his unsteady, 70 kilo frame, well then, I suppose I’d have to admit, if anything makes me appreciate my body, that does, and if anything is truly beautiful, that is- pretty damn beautiful actually.
Well, a few days ago, as we were standing at the counter of the grocery store café ordering our post-shopping cappuccinos, the front cover of a magazine on display caught my eye. (I have tried now I don’t know how many times to be all tech savvy and put a picture of it here but for some reason, it’s not working, no matter how many different ways I try, so I’ll just have to describe it for you). Basically, what grabbed my attention was a column along the left side of one particular cover, which read “15 stoere vrouwen in bikini (zonder photoshop).” For the non-Dutch speakers, this can probably best be translated as “15 bad-ass/fearless/ballsy women in bikini (without photoshop)”. Interesting! Under this caption were three small pictures of three very different women, each strutting their stuff in a stylish and respectively flattering black bikini. The picture that intrigued me the most was one of a woman who I later read was 125 kilos, probably one of the largest women I have ever seen wearing a bikini. There she was - posing for all the world to see, hand on her hip, hair coiffed, shoulders back, with a confident smile on her face. She looked fabulous! And then, in big, bold letters just below these snapshots, it read DIT IS MIJN LIJF, which means “This is my body”. I saw all this and I thought to myself, “The rest I have to see!”
Now, I know we have the Dove ads that try to show a girl who is “normal,” who is not stick-thin like so many cover models, or perfectly curvaceous like the Guess girls or Victoria’s Secret pin-ups, and now we’ve also got Lena Dunham of the HBO TV show Girls. She is a feisty young woman who has stirred up a little controversy and been called “a pathological exhibitionist” and a “little fat girl” because she almost weekly takes off her clothes in front of the camera to unabashedly reveal a body that does not quite match the western world’s mainstream societal standards of beauty. But this magazine in my hands seemed somehow different.
Later in the day, stretched out on a lounge chair at the beach (how fitting), I started flipping through the pictures. The girls in this particular photo shoot, were not, as far as I could tell, models- stick-thin, “plus-size” or otherwise. They were just average everyday students, cashiers, social workers, mothers, real women- some with small waists and wide shoulders, some with large breasts and larger hips, some flat-chested with strong and solid legs- they spanned the spectrum of tall, short, thick, thin, stout, pear-shaped, but were all proudly “imperfect”. The lighting here hid nothing, and while these women had certainly sat for a good session of hair and make-up, everything was visible- stretch marks, cellulite, pores, rolls, moles- everything. I read and reread, and looked and looked again at these ordinary women volunteering to participate in something extraordinarily empowering, and the whole experience got me thinking about something that has been on my mind for a while now.
You see, I’ve recently had some back-to-back instances of negative body image bullshit. It started a few months back when I had a good look in the mirror post-shower and heard myself say, “Girl, you certainly aren’t as young as you used to be” and an unnecessarily extensive, super close-up inspection of my face revealed lines and pigmentation spots and aging that I had never really noticed before. Soon after, in preparation for summertime, I stood in front of my full length mirror and tried on all my bikinis and warm weather wear to determine what should stay and what should go, and I just remember that experience bringing on a whole lot of discontented sighing and head-shaking. Then, just a few weeks back, on a balmy beachworthy day, a group of my girlfriends decided to go to the public pool for a session of sunbathing and swimming. A great idea! I didn’t go- partially because I had an overdue to-do list in need of attention, and partially because I am not a fan of spending a day surrounded by shrieking children, but also very much so because I have absolutely no desire to flaunt my pasty, veiny, bumpy bits of flesh in a public place where I might run into students, colleagues, and acquaintances. No desire whatsoever. To top it all off, a few days after I left to come here on my vacation, I saw a picture posted on facebook of friends having a late afternoon dip in a nearby swimming hole, and I realized that if I were still in town, I would probably have been invited, and more importantly, I realized that I probably would have declined the invitation. Late night skinny dip (i.e. nudity in the pitch black dark): no problem. Hanging out in a bikini on a beach with strangers whose opinion I give less of a shit about: maybe. Midday early summer bathing suit-clad swim with friends (i.e. absolutely no tan yet to at least somewhat camouflage the pasty, veiny, bumpy bits): no thank you.
That’s messed up.
And what’s even more messed up is that this is not something new, not some new kind of discontentment that has evolved with the recent realization that I am in possession of an aging, gravity-obedient body. This has been an issue for as long as I can remember. I would have reacted with the same hesitation to a late afternoon swimming invitation 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago.
Messed up.
The thing that struck me, thinking about this collection of recent body-conscious moments, the history before it, and then this experience now of taking in the images of these bold, bikini-clad women bearing their (almost) all on the pages in front of me was this: I am 35 and have spent almost my entire life being discontent with my body. That’s a really really really long time, and, quite honestly, I am tired of it.
Now, many of these women in the magazine had lost a substantial amount of weight and were proud of themselves for overcoming such a life-defining obstacle, or they had recently given birth and were getting used to their newly shaped body, or they used to be shy and had finally begun to feel comfortable in their own skin. My reality is that I have never really had any *significant* body issues or particularly noticeable shifts in body image. I don’t have any disfiguring scars or skin conditions or disabilities or any kind of otherness that make me look significantly different from my peers or that might lead me to feel self-conscious. I am not overweight or underweight. I am tall, but not exceptionally tall. I pretty much fit squarely in the category of totally and completely average. Nobody’s ever called me “fat” or suggested I don’t eat a second cupcake. Nobody’s ever called me “ugly” (except maybe one of my siblings mid-fight sometime a gazillion years ago) and while teasing is an unfortunately prevalent activity among kids, aside from my long, lanky preteen self being teased about the flatness of my chest and told I should eat something or the wind might blow me away, little of the bullying I endured as a child centered on my physical appearance. Very little guilt surrounds my mealtimes, even if I sometimes have a few more bites than I need. I have a gym membership I barely use, which sometimes causes me teensy little waves of shame, but that’s more about the wasted money than untoned muscle. What I mean to say is that the common body image issue that many women often struggle with- this everpresent awareness of one's shape and size, and how that relates to the shape and size of others or to the shape and size of the past self (or the ideal self), doesn´t generally permeate my daily routines.
So some might say, really, what’s the problem? The problem is that, in spite of being without what one might deem “significant” body image struggles, in spite of being a reasonably confident woman who recognizes my worth and the fact that my worth extends far beyond how I look, I still insist on continually being unkind to my body, picking, judging, harping on all the little imperfections I see when I look in the mirror. I try not to be a public harper (aside from this grand reveal), one of those girls who constantly goes on and on about my thighs and my zits and my hair and my this and my that. But privately, when it’s just me and the mirror, I am a downright critical bitch- like, a clipboard in hand, tsk-tsk-tsk, displeased, disdainfully eye-rolling, critical bitch.
This is my point. My body is healthy and strong, my face is joyful and expressive, and generally everything seems to work as it should, so why why why do I give so much attention to creating, maintaining and bemoaning the long list of little things I don’t like, all the features I find out of proportion or unattractive? And the sad truth is that this list of mine is absurdly long and embarrassingly detailed. It includes the size of my eyes, the shape of my nose, pores that are too visible, and a face that is never ever ever without a blemish. It includes my smallish breasts (I mean, I think God could have easily blessed me with an extra cup size- I am certain I could pull it off). It includes my slouchy posture, my full upper arms, my worker hands, my pasty white complexion. It includes my ever-growing web of spider veins- the rivers of blue that wind underneath the transparent skin of legs that are, by far, my least favourite feature. I have long felt that these too-thick ankles, and sturdy, muscular, Dutch legs, designed for bicycling or speed skating, belong on a girl with a bigger frame and a shorter torso. And this intense dislike for my lower limbs reaches way way way back into my youth. I remember once sitting in the summertime on a bench with friends and being very much aware that my thighs spread out so much more than those of all the pretty girls around me.
This is part of the problem, perhaps where it starts- the self-sabotaging act of comparing oneself to all those pretty girls. I look at their big, lashy eyes and their flawless skin and their jiggling breasts and their slender legs and their itsy bitsy little ankles and I feel envy. I felt envy as that 14 year-old girl sitting on a bench, and I feel it sometimes still. In fact, I admit that I have wasted a significant portion of my life feeling jealous of beautiful women, of my perfectly photogenic sister, of my fashion model high school best friend, of the carelessly pretty popular girls, and my collection of gorgeous girlfriends . Envy is dangerous, because it leads to insecurity and discontentment and sometimes even resentment, and it leads us to view difference with judgmental and ungrateful eyes, and these states of being are far more unattractive features than fat ankles or pasty skin.
I know that I have, for a very very long time now, often tried to compensate for feeling less beautiful by being louder, bigger, bolder, wilder, wittier, artier, smarter or sweeter. I suppose this is because a very long time ago I decided that I would probably never be a “head turner,” in the traditional sense of the word. Someone won’t walk past me and give me a second look because of my physical beauty. I can believe they might stop and take another look because they got distracted by my fabulous shoes or my hearty laugh, or perhaps they got a kick out of the animated way I was telling my friends a story, or they might have been impressed by my vocabulary or my wicked trivia skills, but “Hey girl, you’re gorgeous” is not something I have often heard, except maybe at the end of the night when the bar is closing and buddy is drunk and looking for a companion to take home. Cute, sometimes maybe. Gorgeous, not so much.
Now, why am I sharing all this? Please rest assured that this is not some pathetic, self-pitying solicitation for my friends to pile on the compliments and make me feel better about myself. I generally, in the grand scheme of things, when evaluating the combination of my inside and my outside me, feel pretty good about myself. I can see the good in me, and I am very much aware that much of this stuff I have allowed myself to believe for so long is more or less ridiculous, irrational, trivial, and maybe some of it isn’t even truth. I know that, and I also acknowledge that it is deeply unfortunate that I have wasted so much time and energy on disliking a body that has generally served me quite well.
Unfortunate. Ridiculous. Irrational. I know. But still, I can’t help but wonder where these absurd ideas about beauty come from, as well as these tendencies towards needless comparison, discontentment and self-criticism. And I wonder how these beliefs manage to remain so strongly etched across time and space, beyond the me that was a young, insecure teenager getting used to her body, all the way into the adult life of a strong, reasonably successful woman. And I wonder- most importantly- how to finally and completely override those beliefs. Because that’s the point, isn´t it? It’s not really about what’s actually standing there in front of the mirror. It’s about what I choose to see, what I choose to believe.
I know I have certainly made some progress over the last decade or so in terms of accepting, maybe even sometimes enjoying, this body of mine. Small and simple steps have positively impacted my appreciation of my body, little things like finally having no issues throwing on a pair of three inch heels, even if results in me towering over some of the men around. My younger self would have felt that kind of tallness was unfeminine. I have also come to recognize all the excellent bonuses to my smallish breasts- I can run without them jiggling and causing me discomfort, I can spend pretty much this entire vacation braless, I can wear things that women with a more ample bosom probably couldn’t get away with. And I have taken to snapping “selfies” to document moments when I am in a good space or with good people, when I feel happy and confident, because it seems that when I feel good, I am more likely to feel like I look good, and all these self-portraits provide a kind of reactionary evidence against the infinite piles of pictures of myself over the years that have made me moan and groan. So, there has definitely been some progress, but it’s not enough, because as long as there are still moments when I look in the mirror and snarl a little, then that’s a problem- one that must be remedied. The sooner the better.
Now, this moment- here, now, of being confronted with the reality of a body image that’s still in need of a little improvement- is not exactly something new. I mean, that’s how life works, right? Growth isn’t really a linear process but cyclical. Lessons, emotions, experiences recycle themselves until we finally actually get it. So, we find ourselves again and again in a familiarly uncomfortable situation, with ugly emotions we recognize from the way they sit in the gut or bend the spine or press on the lungs, and hopefully, each time we arrive in that spot again, we have wiser eyes, and a stronger character, and a more patient heart, and a mind that is ready for a new idea to root itself deep down.
So, in this particular revisitation of the body image issue, the fifteen bad-ass women staring back at me remind me that there is still work to do. They remind me that not only is beauty in the eye of the beholder, but that perspective and perception is everything, because it is not really body issues that so many of us struggle with, but body image issues. The problem arises in the act of our own beholding. These women remind me that beauty, like intelligence, exists in a delightful multitude of forms. They remind me that, just as we can all agree that the IQ tests of yesteryear made a nasty little mess of trying to evaluate an abstract, culturally-dependent , individually-defined concept, we should also be able to agree that the idea of a bunch of women with different backgrounds, stories and values all striving for a uniform standard of beauty is slightly ridiculous. Put these ideas together and out of it grows the unmistakable truth that somebody somewhere out there is bound to find attractive the very things about my body that I so fervently dislike. I mean, I can think of dozens of examples of a friend sharing one of the aspects of her body that gets in the way of her smiling at her reflection, and my response being one of complete disbelief because I hadn’t even ever noticed it, or I personally think that feature is beautiful or unique, or I simply can’t wrap my head around how it could possibly even qualify as an issue. Now, there is of course the reminder as well that far too often my ideas about what is beautiful are too greatly influenced by what I believe society in general, and men in particular, think is beautiful, and so I am reminded that I need to be able to appreciate my body in spite of/without outside commentary. But, it is good to remember that it is often easier for us to see the beauty in others than in ourselves, which means that maybe me should more often practice looking at ourselves through the eyes of another, or –even better- looking at ourselves with the same gracious eyes we use to look at others.
Then, of course, there’s the whole sticky problem of this word “beautiful” because while it is, by definition, just a harmless little adjective, it is actually oh so much more. It is different from other descriptors like funny, serious, introverted, extroverted, these words that exist on a spectrum where the different possibilities at each end are both valued and respected as desirable attributes. “Beautiful” is problematic because it is a very weighty word, carrying this massive value judgment that is connected to all kinds of personal and cultural baggage. I wonder if we can move away from this idea of “beautiful” altogether as the universal deciding determinant of whether or not we are allowed to be happy with what we see in the mirror. This idea of striving to be able to look at myself in the mirror and tell myself that I am beautiful feels a bit silly to me. I wonder if there is a way to have a more positive relationship with my reflection without having to rely on these kinds of value judgments. We might also want to consider, of course, the complicated semantics of other descriptors used when discussing our bodies, and their connectedness to our perception of what is attractive and acceptable: “stocky” and “skinny” feel much more negative to me than “strong” and “thin.” I don´t know, but it’s something I’d like to think a little more about.
Anyways, back to the reminders.
I am reminded this time around that pretty much every woman I know- even, it seems, those pretty girls- has a list as long and detailed as mine, and I am reminded that perhaps we, as women, need to do a better job of appreciating our fellow womankind, of making sure that we frequently tell our friends and loved ones what we value about them, how they enrich our lives, what makes them unique and awesome. We need to try and balance out all the superficial, surface stuff, to bring perspective to the abundance of messages concerning what we should look like that are stuffed down our throats by Hollywood and Paris, by storefront windows and magazines, by our would-be boyfriends and well-meaning mothers . And when we venture out into the territory of commenting on the outer shell of the women around us, we need to make sure our compliments are sincere and selfless, rather than the far too common dirty compliment such as, “God, I love your hair. I wish mine was curly like that” or “Look at you. You´re so skinny. Do you even eat? You’re lucky. I am constantly on a diet but could never get as tiny as you” because these aren’t really compliments at all but rather self-focused complaints, and I mean, how exactly is someone supposed to properly respond to a “compliment” like that? “Um, thanks….I think.”
I am reminded that how I talk about and treat my outer self reflects my relationship with my inner self. I am also reminded that, like it or not, given my line of work, I have a moral obligation to the teenage girls sitting in my classroom to model positive body image, to show them what self-acceptance and contentment look like. Actually, to be quite honest, I don’t really like that term “self-acceptance” because acceptance insinuates putting up with something that isn’t ideal, which is about judgment and evaluating and agreeing that there even is something ideal to aim for, and I don’t like the term “contentment” either because it also implies being happy with meh, with not bad, with good enough. I want to strive for self-celebration instead of self-acceptance, and delight instead of contentment.
So, these are all certainly important reminders, reminders I will likely need to hear again and again and again, but this time there was also a new realization in the cyclical lesson of learning to look on my reflection with greater kindness and grace. And that new realization was this: my body tells a story- an evocative, complicated, fascinating story. As I was looking through that magazine, the body and posture and facial expression of each woman told a little bit about where she came from and what she’d been through. One woman had fresh stretch marks which told the story of her new motherhood. Another woman had considerable rolls of skin above her belly, which made her feel both pride and insecurity, pride because those rolls were evidence of the weight she’d worked so hard to lose, insecurity because those rolls still got in the way of her fully appreciating what she sees in the mirror.
My body tells its own stories. I, like many other people, have a nice little timeline of awesome scars- there’s the burn mark on my forearm from the first time I cooked a Christmas turkey by myself, the slice across my ankle where I was attacked by an angry, spiky palm tree leaf, the hairless line in my eyebrow that tells of the close encounter my toddler self once had with the corner of a coffee table. There are also the metaphorical and metaphysical stories layered underneath the obvious and superficial. My pale complexion, for example, reminds me of the need to slow down, to pay attention, to take the time to respect and protect myself, to resist the temptation to urgently and eagerly just get out there already. My slouchy back and my ongoing struggle to straighten up and fully embrace my tall stature speak of my internal struggles to stretch out and up and take the space I need, to stand firm and tall so I don’t waver when others need/expect/disagree/disapprove/demand. The importance of perspective and interpretation factors significantly into this storytelling business- again, it’s not so much what is there but what we choose to see. Recently, after revealing to a friend how bothered I was by my increasingly veiny legs, she turned to me and told me she thought those veins were beautiful because they signified vulnerability. What a fascinating perspective. What a wonderful thought.
Perhaps, however, the most interesting and important story told when I look in the mirror is the story of where I come from. This story reveals itself when looking at family photo albums with my Oma. I see faces I may not have ever known but still recognize, and I see myself in the younger versions of my parents and grandparents. I experience this story when I meet people here on the island and they tell me they could see that I am the daughter of my parents because I have my father’s eyes and my mother’s smile. I am reminded of it when I think of my little nephew and how often people naturally try to claim ownership of his feet, his eyes, his mouth, his hair. We carry in our body, in our reflection, the stories of our family and our roots. I am, after all, not a sculpture chiseled in an artist’s studio, not some kind of on-line avatar clicked together by a gamer, not a Gattaca baby, with all my phenotypes and genotypes deliberately selected before my conception. I am a patchwork quilt of family features stitched together, grown, blended, passed on. That means that when I sit here bitching about my ankles and my thighs and my eyes, I am not only being unkind to myself but I am disrespecting the ancestors who passed them on, disrespecting the gifts given to me by those who love me and delight in seeing themselves in me, disrespecting my mother and my Oma and my sister and my cousins who share some of the same features as me.
There is the story as well of what I was designed to do. None of us, obviously, were evolutionarily intended to lie around on beach chairs looking pretty or to sway our hips and flick our hair as we strut down the runway in high heels and a tight skirt. I look at myself in the mirror and I know I was designed to work. I can picture myself one hundred years ago in wooden shoes, shoveling hay and milking cows and fixing fences. I have a long, lean back and strong hands and strong arms and even stronger legs. I can work hard and I can keep going. I can pull, push, lift, carry because I was intended to be strong. Probably, I wouldn’t be so strong with skinnier ankles and leaner legs and tinier upper arms and a smaller stature. So if I really really think about it, when I am standing there at the shore line with my bikini on, and the sun is glistening off all my freckly, pasty whiteness, bouncing off of the blue veins winding through my calves or a dimple in my jiggly butt cheek, and I firmly plant these sturdy, solid legs on the ground, and I know with great confidence that when Opa grabs my arm and holds my not so girly hand, he can trust my strength, that I will be able to support his unsteady, 70 kilo frame, well then, I suppose I’d have to admit, if anything makes me appreciate my body, that does, and if anything is truly beautiful, that is- pretty damn beautiful actually.
