On Body Image

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with my body image.

I can vividly remember the moment when I first became self-conscious of how I looked. I was maybe 8 or 9 years old and my step mother came into my bedroom as I was trying on clothes. She suggested that I would look better in the garments if I was a few pounds lighter.

From then on, I had a nagging voice in the back of my head that was acutely aware of my size and how others perceived it. Looking back at photos from that time now, I couldn’t have been a more normal-sized child. Weight is also the last thing someone of that tender age should be concerned with, especially one that had no physical or other health issues stemming from their weight. 

This was the early 00’s, so I also internalized the negative messages about being fat from the media and cultural zeitgeist. I read fashion magazines that offered dieting tips and only photographed models who were a size 2 or below. I watched TV shows like What Not to Wear that were essentially formed around the premises of shaming people for their looks. I was a singer and dancer obsessed with the likes of Britney Spears, Beyonce, Jessica Simpson, and Miley Cyrus, who were all criticized for the slightest of weight gain. 

I can remember dieting myself as young as the age of 12. It’s disturbing to me when I go back to think about how I was praised by many people when I dropped 20 pounds through eating nothing but peanut butter and using my Wii Fit for 3 hours at a time. 

I became one of those chronic dieters who was  never happy with the size of their body and was always trying to lose weight. I also developed an eating disorder, as a result of complex trauma. Food was one of the only things I could control as a teenager and it offered the comfort and care that I wasn’t getting elsewhere.

I was able to recover when I entered college and had access to both a caring environment and great programming around  body positivity and acceptance. I helped to run our campus’ eating disorder awareness week programming and even got to speak on a panel. It was increasingly powerful to be able to tell my story and have a positive outlet and community who didn’t judge me. 

I unfortunately went on to date some losers who caused my insecurities to come back from their dormancy. i questioned my worth if I wasn’t thin and tried to even win back an ex who dumped me because I wasn’t skinny enough for his liking. Instead of viewing those men as being the problem, I internalized their rejection and viewed my body as the problem that needed to be solved. 

Because I grew up with a Dad and step mom who devalued me because of my size, I was used to responding to this kind of wounding by changing myself, working to win their love and approval. I repeated this pattern in my 20’s with these various men, who it turned out, shocking I know, weren’t worth my time.

When I met my husband 2.5 years ago, I gained about 35 pounds upon our first few months of marriage. I’ve felt ashamed of this fact, I suppose because I feel that I ‘should’ weigh less. Even though he’s never questioned my worth or pressed me to lose the pounds I’ve gained, I still feel the need to pressure myself to do so. If anything, he loves my body the way it is and doesn’t want me to give into my insecurities. I can’t count how many times he’s said I’m pretty or beautiful and I roll my eyes because I don’t believe it. He has offered me a reparative experience, but I have mostly pushed away this opportunity to receive the acceptance I’ve craved.

It’s funny how life works like that; you suddenly get the thing you’ve wanted for two decades, and then when it comes, you can’t accept it. 

I don’t know what my thesis is: I suppose just to articulate that I feel these insecurities, to share my struggles, and to also offer hope, to myself and others. I need to hear that it’s okay to accept and love my body the way that it is, that I don’t ‘need’ to lose weight, or contrasting, judge myself for how I look. I don’t need to loathe my reflection in the mirror or avoid certain photos or angles. I need to learn to love me.