making peace with my body
dear body,
i love you. yeah, i said it. for some reason, it seems like those who express love for themselves are labeled as conceited, while it is considered perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, to criticize oneself based on appearance. i thought it was okay to shame you for needing food and overwork you at the gym without proper nutrients. i'm sorry i made you feel inadequate.
but i realize now that you are just the vehicle through which i'm able to see the world, and you're valuable for so much more than superficial reasons. how you look does not reflect my character, morality, or willpower. we live in a society that conditions people, especially women, to believe there is something wrong with their bodies. billboards and magazines display models photoshopped to perfection, training our eyes to become even more sensitive to any of our own physical imperfections. businesses spend billions of dollars to ensure that women feel insecure enough to buy products that we're convinced will make us reach our society's arbitrary standards of beauty. furthermore, as a woman, i have subconsciously absorbed the message that all my problems - emotional, sexual, interpersonal, etc - could be fixed if i channelled that mental energy into changing you. a woman's child-bearing biology is used as justification to place her into a contradictory role that demands simultaneous nurturance of others and denial of self-nurturance. still regarded as sexual objects, women derive a large portion of self esteem from body image. growing up female, i learned to view controlling my weight and appetite as "easy" solutions to far more complex problems because it is easier to admit one's desire to lose weight than one's dissatisfaction in other areas of life.
“men act and women appear. men look at women. women watch themselves being looked at. this determines not only most relationships between men and women, but also the relation of women to themselves”
a woman's role is either sexual or maternal. with both of these roles, it is often presumed that someone else's needs come before mine. maybe my body hasn't always felt like my own because i feel like i owe it to male partners or my future children. i shaped you to conform to how i anticipated others wanted you to be. but when i love someone, i don't love them based on their physical appearance, which can change at any time. when i love someone, that love is unconditional and i wouldn't try to change them. so why is it so hard to extend that same love toward my body? you are my best friend and best friends don't tell each other they are ugly and unworthy. they remind them they are loved.
you are a biological miracle. you allow me to breathe, run, see, hear, laugh, and dance. by focusing on something as insignificant as how you look, i'm not living for myself but for others' anticipated perceptions of me. we're only given a limited time on earth, and i refuse to wait until i have a perfect figure to appreciate and love you. i want to live an existence that is much more significant and powerful than that.
xox,
hannah
(art by gretchen)