I hate my body.
That makes me a walking cliche. A woman, who, like most women in this country, has bought into what society says I should look like.
I hate my body.
That makes me vain and obsessive, focusing on my looks–thinking that they equal my value. I say negative things to myself throughout the day. I avoid mirrors. Each night, when I go to turn out the light by my bed, I catch sight of myself in the full-length mirror that came with my apartment, attached to the wall, and I try to go to sleep anyway. Sometimes I’ll be feeling good, feeling sexy, and I’ll see myself in a bathroom mirror and lose some of my mojo.
I hate my body.
That makes me self-conscious whenever it’s time to go on a date. A couple of guys have made it clear through facial expression and body language that they’re not feeling it when we first meet (and, of course, I’ve also had that first moment feeling, sometimes based on looks). I always assume they’re making the judgment based on my problem areas, and I don’t entirely blame them.
I hate my body.
That makes it difficult to show it to someone new. It should be exciting to meet a new body for the first time, but I think too much about my own; it’s difficult to relax, difficult to be who I want to be–confident and sexy.
I hate my body.
That makes me a person who’s had a bad body image for thirty or so years. When I was a teenager, I was underweight (due to genetics, not starvation). I hated that I had no breasts (this was exacerbated by the teasing about them, of course). I hated the Waltonen dark circles under my eyes. I then hated the stretch marks that came with having a child in that small body. And then I continued to hate it.
I hate my body.
That makes it difficult to think about what my body is good at–healing, being alive. I love that my friend Tiffany marveled at her body after she had her child–marveled at what it could endure, what it could produce.
I hate my body.
That makes it difficult to accept all the things it’s bad at–how dare it pile on? It’s bad at being healthy. It has a lot of problems, which require an average of four appointments a week to control. Lots of PT. Lots of money. Lots of procedures. Lots of drugs. I know that to have a body closer to what I want, I would have to torture it a bit–tell it it can’t eat when it’s hungry, take it to the gym. But it’s already doing a lot of work and spending a lot of time just to keep walking around.
I hate my body.
That makes it difficult to keep one of my favorite quotes in mind. “Too late, you realize that your body was perfect–every healthy body is”–Melissa Banks (in “You Could Be Anyone”). I want to go back to that small breasted girl (who only had bad headaches and severe asthma) to tell her to love her body now. The guys tease her about her tits, yes, but they love those legs. That hair. Those eyes. Appreciate the body before the broken back at 25, the arthritis, the hernias. The tits she’ll eventually have will come with many pounds in other places. I bet an older me wants to come to me now, at 40, and tell me to love that those tits, as they’re relatively new, don’t sag. To love that I’m cancer free. That I can still eat whatever will likely be taken away from me as I get older. I try to tell myself how disappointed future me will be that I’m not appreciating this now.
I hate my body.
That makes it difficult when guy’s bodies don’t work around me. In these past few years, dating older guys now that I’m older, I’ve been with quite a few who had, shall we say, circulation problems. Understanding how minds and bodies work, I am patient and comforting. The fear of judgment can make the problem worse, after all. I don’t want a guy who walk around hating his body, to be self conscious when it’s time to show it to someone new. One man recently talked about how he wished more women were like me–he was frustrated when women assumed the problem was about them. I told him a story about a man in his late twenties whom I dated when I was about thirty. About how he was on a medication that caused this problem. About how, in a moment of frustration, he turned on me, saying it might be easier for him if I “weren’t so heavy.” I hear that voice, those words, whenever the problem recurs.
I hear those words whenever I get a message like this (after a guy initiated a conversation by saying I seem smarter than the average bears out there): “So you’re 5’7″, you look to be about 155 or so pounds? Yes body is important. it’s not all about the mind.”
