I realize that in this I say some things about my body that could very easily translate into fat-shaming. That is absolutely not my intention. I’m just trying to work through why I felt and feel what I felt and feel about my body. The ways I judge my own body are different from the way I see other bodies. So every time I say I worried about looking fat, it isn’t that I thought/think fat is bad, I’m just a self-obsessed, insecure wreck sometimes and that’s how I judged myself.
I also want to briefly touch on the fact that I’m working out about five hours a week and that isn’t because I want to be thin. I do want to lose weight, but that is only because I know that I’m above my natural weight because of the way I handled taking care of myself the past four or five months (i.e. not sleeping like a normal human, skipping meals to do work/save money, rarely exercising my body at all). I’m being very healthy about this (working out early in the morning and then eating a full breakfast, drinking lots of water, eating only when I’m hungry, not when I feel like it or need something to do) and I’m tracking how much energy I have, how well I sleep, and how well I swim, rather than my actual weight.
SO. The way I think about my body now versus the way I thought about it last summer is different, obviously. Physically, I gained not a whole lot of weight at school (I don’t keep track of the actual number), but enough for me to notice and enough that other people would if they were paying attention. But that’s the thing, no else is really paying attention, and that is a mostly comforting thought. In high school, most noticeably in the spring of senior year, I gained a confidence that stemmed from me being beautiful enough for myself and screw everyone else. Which is really wonderful, it is, but it created this situation where even if someone held a positive opinion of my physical appearance, I wouldn’t listen. I was afraid that hearing good things from other people about what I viewed as good enough for me and no one else would make me less independent, more eager to be complimented and validated from outside sources, and up until then, my searches for outside validation in any area of life had been not only unsuccessful, but also mildly devastating, and I just. Didn’t need any of that. So I loved my body mostly, still made myself wear sleeves even in ninety-degree heat because I was self-conscious of my scars, and went about my business.
Fast forward to fall. I had a roommate, meaning I needed to be okay with someone else seeing my scars and my chub and that was difficult to accept, but I had no choice. Also I have a great roommate so it’s really okay. I began to realize that when I see people, I don’t see them as the “ideal" weight they could be, I just see them as them, you know? I never question anyone else’s body, so why should I question my own? And that lead to a few weeks in the fall in which I would wear things more revealing or form-fitting than I was generally comfortable to see if I was the only one who thought that way. (I literally believed that there was a definite line that I could cross and that someone or everyone would have the right to tell me I needed to wear something different. (So of course I pushed it a little bit.)) Obviously, that never happened. So I began examining more closely the bodies around me and how everyone dressed and realized that 1. There is a fashion standard at Lawrence, but it’s barely discernable and it’s set by what people choose to wear, not by what people think other people should wear. We create the standard rather than all trying to fit the media standard of fashion and beauty. I wanted to be able to wear what everyone else was wearing, but I realized everyone else wears whatever the fuck they want. But just as I was really feeling comfortable applying that to myself, winter break came and I returned to sunny Southern California and to the media-based standards that I’d just gotten away from. It turns out that I slipped back into it a little too easily, the thought of no one but me liking my body and that being enough for me but not exactly encouraging either? I was in touch with maybe three or four people from school, and though I realize now that I already had a community of friends there, I didn’t let myself believe it? I didn’t acknowledge that there were other people who like. Thought I was cool and wanted to hang out with me because I was thinking a lot about how I didn’t gain any weight at school but I had the opportunity to lose some and didn’t take it and I was sure everyone at home noticed and everyone at school thought I was lazy.
I’m going to take a hot second to talk about my hair. At this point, it was short. I’d cut it off in the summer for the wrong reasons (my mom wouldn’t leave me alone about it and certain people I wanted to spite told me I wouldn’t like it) and for a few weeks it was nice and cute and easy to care for. But then I started looking mirrors more critically and realized that it made my head look really round but too small to balance out the roundness of my body and I didn’t like that. Most of all, I didn’t feel feminine enough. And while I was aware of the clear social standard that femininity is everything for a woman, blahblahblah, and I knew that I might have internalized that and I knew that someone else might take this opportunity to fight the patriarchy in that way, I conceded the point and decided to grow it out again. I realized that it was my own decision and I felt no pressure to change how I looked except from myself. I just plain didn’t like it.
Anyway. Over the break, my hair got long enough that I could pull it back in a somewhat loose bun and that did a lot for my level of comfort in my own skin. And then it was winter. Real winter. And I was allowed to be cozy-looking all the time and wear big sweaters and boots and warm things and I really liked that. The actual weather wasn’t the most fun (ha. hahaha.) but I handled it well and wasn’t touched by the seasonal disorders I was warned about. Also I realized my immense love for leggings and because they’re generally inexpensive, I ended up with four or five pair and it was the best. It’s because I am short and they sit just above my belly button (all but erasing the fat roll below it) and they make my butt look good and are very comfortable to move in and sit in (unlike jeans, which are great as long as you don’t have to sit for more than like forty minutes and which on my body tend to sit right under that fat roll and make me really uncomfortable and self-conscious of it, so much so that I have to sit with my back perfectly straight, a little bit for a comfortable but mostly so I don’t feel really fat). Anyway. Leggings = good Body Feelings.
Okay so a thing happened in the winter that technically qualifies as outside validation and I hate that it has influenced me, but it was important in my process of letting go of my fear of outside opinion. I found a handful of people who are now good friends who on a regular basis made sure I felt like an emotionally acceptable human. Also in that time, I discovered (that’s not really the right word for this but) I discovered that there are people at Lawrence (and at home) who find me legitimately physically attractive. Like, enough to say so. In a few cases, enough to have feelings about it. And yes, I had encountered that before, but not from people whose opinions really mattered to me. Lawrence is place where beautiful is something that nearly everyone can see and people don’t have Skinny Blonde lenses they have to take off to see it because not everyone is striving for that? Anyway, I realized that I don’t have to be sarcastic or self-deprecating around these people when I talked about self-image because they just get it. (This is basically a shout-out to Sam and Anna, if you’re reading this.) I didn’t have that so much at home. Anyway, I made a point of being friends with these people who also didn’t fit the Skinny Blonde mold but who are, generally speaking, stupidly beautiful. And through them and also a generally supportive environment (and also le Hannah, who will probably get her own paragraph or two in one of these things later) I was able to let go of my closed-off attitude about my body and appearance and kind of just let other people have opinions about it and let myself be alright with that. And because of that shift in attitude, I’ve now achieved an even stronger sense of Fuck You This Is My Body, because I let myself accept the positive feedback instead of listening only to myself (which was also a generally positive voice but? Do you get what I’m saying?)
Anyway, spring rolled around and I felt a little worried because I couldn’t look cute and cozy all the time anymore, but I realized upon close examination of myself that yes, I’d gained weight, but I was (duh!) physically different than I was at fifteen and that the weight settled well into my figure because I was done with the general roundness and awkwardness of fifteen and had generally grown into a woman’s body. And I realized that I really like that, both in myself and in the people I tend to find attractive. So I embraced lace and a semi-bare midriff and tight pants and well-fitted dresses and literally felt good almost all the time. And that was wonderful. I worried that when I came home, it would be harder to do that, but I’m pretty much succeeding so far.
I also want to acknowledge how big an influence tumblr has had on how I view my body. When I first joined tumblr, I was semi-immersed in the self-harm and thinspiration wings of it. And that was just not healthy for me. ( I don’t think it’s healthy for anyone.) But over the course of the past year and a half, I’ve moved over into the feminism, body positivity wing and that literally has made such a huge impact on how I view myself and the people around me and how I filter through the media regarding body and the beauty standard I see on a regular basis. And that’s a big deal, that a website/ group of blogs can do that. That’s powerful.
So in conclusion, I’m still insecure about my body sometimes, and I still worry about what other people think of it, but today I realized that own a black bra facilitates the wearing of a black lace shirt without a black half-shirt beneath it and I look hot and I kind of feel like that every day, which is great, and this is obviously still a process, but this is something that I’m really happy with right now, and I really believe that this is a good fight and right now it’s going really well for me.
