This has been an especially interesting week for me. I have been challenging some deeply ingrained belief patterns, particularly around my body image and really looking at where it all comes from. And how I have played into it with my history of losing and gaining weight. And why making peace with my body has been something that has just always felt so out of reach for me.
I know! This is a lot, and clearly not something that is going to be wrapped up in this blog post but it begins by telling the story. It is at least a beginning point.
“Body positivity is the assertion that all people deserve to have a positive body image, regardless of how society and popular culture view ideal shape, size, and appearance. … helping people build confidence and acceptance of their own bodies. addressing unrealistic body standards.”
Very early on in my life, the messages I got about my body, told me that there was something wrong with it. I was fat. And because of that I was unacceptable and my body had to be fixed.
And so at the age of 13, my diet journey began. It was the beginning of my budding relationship with Weight Watchers. A relationship that would last for many, many years!
It was a venture created by my father. As an incentive, he would pay me $1.00 for every pound I lost, but I would have to pay him $2.00 for every pound I gained! I’m sure you are all smart enough, especially if you are a parent, to figure out how badly that went. It was an epic fail!
I want to say right off the bat, this post is not at all to bash my father and point out what a bad person he was. On the contrary. He loved me more than life, probably, and he never set out to intentionally harm me. But based on his beliefs, the biases he grew up with and his image of women, sadly, it did harm me greatly.
After my first WW fail, I tried and tried again for years to reach that “perfect” body. But I was coming from a place of self degradation. Consequently, I also developed an eating disorder and became a binge eater.
I learned very quickly that the only way to find peace with food was to eat it in secret. Alone, where no one was watching, I could eat as much as I wanted. Eating large quantities of food became how I survived emotionally. How I would numb myself.
The food I ate, and the amounts of food I ate, whether or not I had seconds or dessert, was apparently always good family dinner conversation. It began with my father, but soon my siblings jumped on the bandwagon as well. My mother, who had her own issues with food and weight, never really contributed much to those conversations. She had her own issues with her weight as she was living this world with my father as well. But she also NEVER said anything to me about it! As a teenager trying to come into her own, I would have loved to have known I had her support in some small way. That I was loved and beautiful exactly the way I was. But her silence was her complicity.
Today in schools they call it bullying, but when I was in middle/high school it was “sticks and stones can break your bones but names will never hurt you.” Well those names not only hurt me but became the words I built my beliefs about myself around! The lies I started to tell myself about who I was and who I could never become. Because I was overweight. And my body was wrong.
Those pivotal years when girls (and boys) are developing their beliefs about who they are, and their place in the world, were dark, lonely and confusing years for me. I devoured Seventeen magazines looking for the secret that surely someone had. I was eating “acceptably” in public, but eating from my secret stash of food when I was alone.
And so here we are all these years later and popular culture is beginning the conversation about body positivity. That ALL people deserve to have a positive body image. It is a quiet conversation, that is getting louder and I absolutely believe it is going to change some beliefs.
But I am here to say that, although a small segment of society says it’s OK if your body isn’t “the ideal standard” and plus size women are showing up in ways that they never have before, the conversations need to start at home.
Our children need to know they are beautiful, strong, powerful and acceptable. That is where the body positivity movement needs to start. It’s easy when they are cute 1 yr old’s looking down at their squishy bellies and rolly polly legs.
But the conversations become critical when they are 10 and start looking at themselves and pointing out their excess skin, commenting on how fat they are. Tell them over and over and over again how beautiful they are. But most importantly, check your own fat bias. We all have them to some extent. Don’t let your issues, subconsciously become theirs. They need to know that they are safe, that they are loved, and they were created for great things. We all need that.
So my journey to body acceptance is ongoing, and I am up for the challenge. I am learning that I am beautiful and perfect exactly the way that I am. And yes, somedays I tell myself that is a bunch of crap! But I keep moving forward. And I hope you keep moving forward too regardless of what that voice in your head is telling you.
You are not alone my friends. This journey is not for the faint of heart! But we are in this together.
