Rejecting 'Body Image' – Claiming Intrinsic Beauty
As a little girl, I loved having a body. I could run, roll down hills, jump, cartwheel, spin until I got so dizzy I fell over, swing, climb, and after some instruction, tumble and flip, too. Sure, sometimes I got hurt, skinned a knee, rolled an ankle. But my body, miraculously, healed itself.
It felt good to have a body to explore, finding the spots that were ticklish, others that flooded my body with exquisite pleasure, feeling the strength and flexibility that coexisted in my muscles. With my body, I could taste food, read stories, see the Grand Canyon, smell flowers, pet a puppy. It was a source of delight.
This slowly changed – as it tends to do – when I hit adolescence. The messages of how female bodies were supposed to look slowly crept into my awareness, eating away at my innate awe and enjoyment. Initially, I became aware that my body didn’t look right because 20 hours of gymnastics training a week had me, at 15, looking like I was maybe 11. No breasts. No hips. I still had to shop in the little girls’ section to find clothes that fit.
When I stopped training, just shy of 16, my body took a big, much needed exhale. In a single month, I grew 2 full inches and gained 20 pounds.
I was in shock. I had a completely different body that was suddenly soft and curvy rather than straight and muscular, and I didn’t know what to make of it.
Part of me was excited. I didn’t have to shop in the little girls’ section anymore. I looked like a normal teenager, and people started to notice. Boys began to pay attention to me in the hallways at school, their eyes lingering over every inch. All of a sudden, I felt the power of my body due not to its strength or capacity, but for its effect on and value to others. In some moments, I reveled in it; in others, it felt like a frightening liability to have a body that drew attention and I wanted to hide.
I was simultaneously scared of the softness and curves because I knew that my body wasn’t supposed to be big. I was worried that it would keep getting bigger, a fear that was reinforced when my former coach and my dad both poked at the new layer of fat that was covering my former six-pack.
No longer was I orienting to my body from the inside out, enjoying all that it was capable of and all that it made possible. Instead, all that mattered, from this moment forward was how it looked, from the outside.
This is how body image forms in us. Females especially are enculturated to put our attention on our appearance from a rather early age, to focus on our bodies from the outside in. Even if our mothers remind us that what matters is how beautiful you are on the inside, we’ve watched them devote their time and energy to maintaining an appearance that fits within the expectations. We get that how we look to others matters. Perhaps more than most anything.
I feel a deep-seated grief rise up in me as I remember and reflect upon this and all of the time that I’ve spent concerned about how I look. The meals I’ve skipped, the time I’ve spent applying makeup, trying on clothes, comparing my body to other women, pulling my tummy in – always pulling my tummy in – hating certain parts of my body and wishing desperately that they could be different, exercising not because it felt good but because it might tame my body into the acceptable shape and size.
I imagine all of the other things I could have done with that time and attention and I feel a wave of rage rush through me. Who, I’ve begun to wonder, benefits from all of this? When my attention, and the attention of so many other women in the world (and increasingly those of other genders), is focused on how we look, what are we then not paying attention to?
The way forward here is not to create a better “body image,” but rather to tear down the construct entirely. It’s to begin to inhabit your physical form, honoring and regarding it as inextricable from who you are, but not the definition of who you are. It is to experience your body and all that it is capable of from the inside out, rather than always watching it from the outside in.
My transition toward, once again, experiencing my body from the inside out is still in process. I still have days when the body dysmorphia endemic to our culture invades my thoughts. But the last few years have found me orienting more and more from what feels good to my body. I exercise not because I want to lose weight or change the shape of my body, but because moving it feels good, in the moment. I make sure to taste and enjoy the food that I’m eating, no matter what it is. I spend time intentionally reveling in my senses and the entire range of sensations and experiences my body can bring.
The fact that this transition is happening is not random. It’s because I’ve chosen to surround myself with women who are doing the same. I’ve learned from my elders and my peers that this battle I’ve been in with my body is not mine. It’s not personal. I can actually choose to walk away, liberating my attention so that I might take my seat, speak my truth, and challenge the status quo. It is in community that we will have the power and reflection to reclaim relationships with our bodies because it involves creating an entirely new culture than the one that we grew up with. This is not something we can do on our own.
And so, I want to invite you to check out the first virtual group that we, here at the Verdant Collective, are offering beginning May 7th: Rejecting ‘Body Image’, Reclaiming Our Intrinsic Beauty. This 8-week online group brings women together to learn, share, and create a culture within which we might not only heal our relationship with our bodies, but also claim our power, beauty, and capacity to cultivate and channel erotic wellness in service of Life itself. Learn more here. We would love to have you join us.
