“Are you sure you need another cookie?” “How many slices of pizza have you eaten already?” “Have you gained/lost weight since I saw you last?” “Do you really think you should be wearing _________?” Ask anyone, but especially a female, to recall a time when their appearance or appetite was the topic of someone’s conversation, and I’ll bet you a venti latte that they’ll immediately think of at least three instances.
Now I don’t mean to imply that males are free from the critical eyes of others; it’s just that I’ve lived my life as a female and can really only speak to that experience. And for as many times in the past five decades as I’ve squirmed or burned hot with shame under someone’s scrutiny and come up lacking (or excessive), I’ve never figured out just why people insist on forcing these conversational threads. When I think of the people in my life, their appearances or what foods (or how much) they consume are truly the least interesting things about them.
I was talking at a work function with a small group of women who all possess terminal degrees in their fields, have a laundry list of personal and professional accomplishments, and who, on top of all that, are just lovely people. We were discussing one woman’s recent running of a marathon, and another divulged in a lowered voice that she would trade her doctoral degree for weighing twenty pounds less. “I would feel terrible if my daughter knew I felt so insecure about my body because for her whole life I’ve preached the priority our hearts and minds have over our ‘bikini-ready’ bodies,” she admitted. We all nodded as we recollected our own moments of secretly wishing we could be cast as one of the characters in a James Bond movie who packs the one-two punch of being both a MacArthur Genius Award and Miss America winner.
I talk a good game when it comes to reminding the women in my life of their inherent worth and immeasurable beauty, both inside and out, and I mean every single word. When it comes to the observations I make to the woman in the mirror, though, words of a Pink song come to mind: “You’re so mean when you talk about yourself….” Any good I may have done in my life, any intellectual prowess I may have demonstrated, all dim in their importance when the number on the scale is different than I need it to be.
Still, although I’m a slow learner and a late bloomer when it comes to honoring the body that has sustained me for half a century, I’m getting there. When I was much younger there weren’t as many school-sponsored athletic activities for girls and so I pursued cheerleading. My lower body has always reminded me of a Corgi’s (a breed I adore for its swagger), and the power of my trunk made me the perfect base but never the flyer for our pyramids and gymnastic feats. A student of ballet for thirteen years, my endurance was as impressive as my lack of grace was cringeworthy. I remember a classmate looking at my pink tights-clad legs before class one day and observing that they looked like a frog’s. Fifteen-year-old me wished for an invisibility cloak in that moment. Fifty-year-old me would have beamed with pride at the big quads I’d developed from years of riding my horse. It wasn’t until I discovered martial arts in college that I realized that my body was made for more than my self-loathing, and that eating impressive amounts of nutrient-rich food would fuel it to do things I never dreamed it could. I learned to love the lower body that I’d condemned as “too much” because the power that came from it could kick a hole through a wall (or send an attacker to the ER), and I felt this new feeling of gratitude that I could walk alone at night, look a stranger in the eyes, and feel that in situations where my physical safety was threatened, I would manage just fine.
Increasingly, though, as more and more of my friends have faced health scares and experienced the effect that time has on us all, I wake up with thanks on my lips for this body that has never failed me and the prayer for as many more years as I can have of being its custodian. While I wish I could go back in time to grant it grace for not looking like it belonged running alongside those red swimsuit-wearing Baywatch beauties and to allow it the pleasure of eating the chocolate cake without a side of guilt, I know it forgives me. Sure, I have some aches and pains that make me wonder if it’s my body’s passive aggressive payback for being such a brat to it for years, but if so then I more than deserve it and I’ll gladly accept that in exchange for it hanging in there with me all this time. Besides, why would I even want to be one of those waifs from the 90’s when my #CountryStrong self can unload a truck filled with hay bales and deliver a spinning side kick to the throat?
And “Yes,” to answer the question too many of us have been asked in our lifetimes, “I do think I need another cookie and I’ve had one less slice of pizza than I’m going to have, so step out of the way so I can get to the buffet!”
PartWolf 