I don’t remember the exact moment I learned to see my body as bad.
But I know I did not start out that way because I do remember a day where I felt confident strutting around my house in my dress-up princess gowns and pinchy plastic slippers. The contour of my body the FURTHEST thing from my mind as I devoured mac & cheese and hotdogs at my grandmother’s house on those hot summer afternoons after playing in the pool, bikini worn proudly.
It was not until later that my memories become tainted with thoughts of – “I should suck in my stomach,” or “I am a bit thicker than the other little girls.” It was around the time I entered middle school, likely no older than 10 or 11 though I cannot be sure. And I consider myself lucky as statistics now show the unfortunate plight of body image concerns starting on average around the age of 6 years old.
See, at some point we all learn to connect skinny with beautiful. Maybe it is because of the magazines or social media accounts promoting diet culture and idolizing Victoria Secret super models who – let’s be honest – are far from the picture of health. Maybe it is because as a society we do not hide the fact that there are certain components of a woman’s body that if possessed make her more generally desirable – even if these standards change every decade and it’s impossible to fit them all. Maybe it is because our mothers were taught their bodies were bad, just as their mothers were taught their bodies were bad, and their mothers before that, and so it is just one of those things we learn generationally by watching those who come before us.
Whatever it is, I am sick of letting people who do not know me or love me define me based on an arbitrary number that does nothing more than tell you about the gravitational pull on my bodily frame.
I have danced with culture, done my best to perform to their standards of beauty:
In high school I shrunk myself because I was afraid of my athletic build.
In college I struggled immensely with feeling confident in my skin and clothing because what if I did not fit their ideas of beautiful and was shamed for it?
Every spring I felt the pressure to be summer ready, so people did not mind how I looked in my swimsuit.
Every holiday and birthday denying myself delicious traditions because of the fear of altering my weight.
I wonder how I will feel when I become pregnant and have to face a changing body.
And post-partum will I once again feel the pressure to shrink back into the person I was before I grew an entire life in my womb.
I have realized, friends, that if we listen to society about what beautiful means we will spend our entire life chasing it, perhaps only catching it for a fleeting moment before a change in standards or a natural change in our growing bodies catapults us back into the chase again.
Luckily the positive side about knowing body hatred is learned, is that it means there was a time, and can be again, where it is not my reality.
I have seen this in glimpses, shining moments of hope where my love begins to overwhelm the cultural hate. I have seen it when I have handed my view of my body over to someone who does know me and loves me deeply.
His name is Jesus.
And in those fleeting moments when I have been so utterly consumed with Him, His Word, His worship, His presence, what culture, or strangers on the street think of me become entirely invaluable. Unworthy of my attention or acknowledgement. Because in those moments I have the Savior of the universe staring gently into my eyes and telling me that I am incredibly beautiful, and my body is good because He is incapable of creating anything else. He tells me about His plan for my creation and the design He held in His head long before my parents held me in their arms. He tells me how He so carefully knit my body together, no thread out of place, as I formed slowly in my mother’s womb. He tells me about the intentional concoction of my personality that He gifted just to me, and the plans He ordained that are just for me. He tells me that when people truly come face to face with the intricacy and complexity of my being, when they begin to understand the incredible balance and insanity of the workings of the human body, the will not be able to hide their amazement regarding the creator for something such as me.
Then He tells me the most important thing of all, that I am His child and that is all that truly matters.
I am a child of God. And so are you.
And when He finishes telling me this, I re-enter the world and though I may stand strong for a while it often sweeps me off my feet again. Thank God for His patience and willingness to rescue and remind me time after time.
With this cycle I wonder if this fight will extend the length of my entire life. I know I may spend years trying to unlearn what people have taught me, slowly replacing the lies with the truth of God’s word. But I am also starting to see now how valuable it is that I embrace the fight to see my body as good despite what culture may try to change me as my body ages and life does its thing - no matter how long it takes.
Because as Jess Connolly says in Breaking Free from Body Shame, it is not just for me that I am fighting: “Women are watching you. Your daughters, sisters, mother are watching you. The gal who babysits for you, the one who sits two rows behind you at church, the other students in your school. Your roommate, your barista, the gals in your exercise class. They are all up against the same fight, the same struggle, whether they know it or not. The enemy of their souls is waging the same war against their bodies and their understanding of worth. And that’s not to say it’s all up to you, or that you have to be the hero. Jesus is the hero! He’s got them. He loves them. He has a plan for their redemption. But you can be a part of His plan.”
I want to be a part of His plan. Do you?
If I one day am so blessed to have a daughter, I do not want her to grow up seeing me hate all God has made me to be. I want her to see me respecting my body and taking care of my health, yes, but also loving my body for all it is and all it has done for me without expecting it to change, or punishing it for not being what I think it should be.
It may be awkward at times, and it will probably be messy too [healing always is], but we can start setting the example today. We can decide enough is enough. We can build a habit of not talking negatively about our bodies. We can remind ourselves the truth that we are beautiful. We can tell ourselves that diet culture and cultural standards of beauty are made up and unimportant. We can make today the day we dedicate our time to seeing our bodies as good and beautiful once again.
Because once upon a time we all did.
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