SPECIAL NOTES ABOUT THIS ESSAY: To hear me read this essay in its entirety, click here. To hear my interview on The Deeper Pulse with Candice Schutter about this essay, click here.
In honor of Valentine’s week and in alignment with the February theme of radical self-love (as inspired by Sonya Renee Taylor) I offer a bonus post. In the “Unapologetic Action” section of her Your Body is Not An Apology Workbook, she invites us to write a new body story. The invitation reminded me of this essay that I wrote in 2016 but never published (out of pure chicken heartedness). Inspired by Ms Taylor’s invitation, I’m sharing it now in 2022. [NOTE: I regret some of my language around mental illness (especially the word “crazy”) and I’m leaving it as it is with the caveat that I would write it differently now.]
When did I start hating my body? When? When did I go from being a child living and moving in her skin, eating until I was full, to a woman obsessed with making her body smaller and tighter? When did my body shift from being my vehicle for living and feeling to a vehicle for shame, punishment, and madness? When was the moment that I stopped embodying myself and started judging, criticizing, hiding, and always always working to change myself?
Child body memories are strong. Lithely leaping from rock to rock. Swinging high, wild and windy on playground swing sets. Intently playing in the dirt, on the beach, on the grass, on the driveway on my perma-scabbed knees. Jungling on the jungle gym until my hands smelled of metal. Falling off my bike again, so frustrated that I threw the stupid thing down and kicked it until I cried. Crying, with my whole body in anger or sadness or fear, crying with every cell and fiber, letting the feelings pour, rip, tear through, and then pass leaving me empty and tired and clean.
Grown-up body memories are strong, too. Grabbing the fat on my belly with both hands as if I could wrench it off of me. Looking at pictures of models and movie stars (the people who count, who are loved and admired) and thinking, knowing, panicking, that I didn’t look anything like that. Being hungry (or worried or anxious or bored or tired) and eating too much and then plunging, crashing, feeling ashamed, and worthless. And since I could not stop eating (as some strong-willed friends could), working out extra hard or long to burn it, sear it, incinerate it off. And for years, decades, the feeling of bitter futility and deep unworthiness.
When did I start hating my body?
It happened in bits and pieces – the image of myself constructed like a mosaic. A little painful comment here, a bit of comparing there, and before you know it, I couldn’t tell the difference between what I was thinking and feeling in my body and what the world was telling me I should think and feel about my body.
After survival, love and belonging are all any human being wants. After the basics are covered, everything for everybody comes down to love and belonging. At some point, I got the message loud and clear: if I wasn’t thin and beautiful, if I didn’t look good, if I wasn’t attractive, other people were not going to love me and I would not belong.
These are stories from my journey from body love to body loathing to body learning, (sporadically) to body peace. Like selfies taken from arm’s length, this is a series of images taken at the sometimes awkward and sometimes revealing angle of time. These are glimpses from the meandering path that first moved away from the wholeness and worthiness of my embodied childhood and is gradually coming back again with an adult’s awareness and compassion. These are pieces of my own puzzle which is, in a small way, part of the complex cultural picture of women and their bodies.
I share them to shed light on my experience -- both internal and external -- and to let the sun shine on my compulsive, obsessive craziness. You may or may not relate to body image issues. If you’re not crazy and insecure about your body, rest assured that you know someone who is. And maybe you have those crazy feelings about something else. And just like I have spent my life pretending (mostly) that I’m not crazy with feelings about my body, you very likely have covered up your own craziness, too. Sadly, we spend enormous energy hiding this madness but when we share it, all that energy becomes unnecessary. We can see that we’re all in the same boat, that body love and compassion can be the norm and we can all relax and go have a cup of tea.
Ultimately, my story comes down to two things: discerning and reconciling contradictions. Discerning between my inner voice of sensation and intuition, and all the external voices of family and peers and culture. Reconciling the contradiction of how I want to look, how I think I should look and how I do look. Discerning between what my body needs and loves, and what my mind and emotions lead me to believe I need and love. Reconciling the contradiction of how I want to think about my body and how I do think about it. Discerning between real love and inherent worthiness and conditional love that requires I look, act, and be a certain way. Reconciling the contradiction of the holistic way I want to write, teach, and be while living in an American culture that worships beauty and youth.
This is not a story that follows a straight predictable line but rather staggers and starts along a haphazard flying moth path. That is just the way life tends to go. Roughly speaking, I’ve arranged these snapshots in chronological order. May they offer lines of connection and compassion for yourself and everybody you know.
Calorie Book
I’m 10. I find a well-worn, green and white calorie counting book in the kitchen drawer. It fascinates me. I look up all the foods I ate that day to see how many calories I’ve had. Then I just start reading it cover-to-cover, noticing which foods are “good” (low calorie) and which are “bad.” I notice my mother’s writing in the margins of additional foods and their caloric cost. Clearly, she has spent time with this little book. There is a whole section of tips for successful dieting. High on the list: Smoking. (Smoking, for goodness sake.) A known appetite suppressant and therefore beneficial to weight loss. I know from school that smoking is unhealthy. But I also know that weight loss is good. Is it more important to be thin or healthy? This, I don’t know. I return to that book regularly for years.
Clean Plate Club
Finishing everything on our plate is warmly smiled upon at the McCulley dinner table. My younger sister and I get big approval for being a member of The Clean Plate Club. I love my dad and I want him to be pleased with me. I want to belong to The Club. So I clean my plate -- even when doing so conflicts with how hungry I am or whether or not the food tastes good to me. (Four and a half decades later, I still do.)
Scott
In 6th grade I like Scott Tully. Except for the unfortunate married name I’d have (Susan McCulley Tully), I am sure he is the one for me. But I’m genuinely worried that he only likes me because of how I look. When I express it to my mother, I feel stupid because it sounds vain, even though it really, truly strikes me as a problem. My mother smiled at what I expect seemed like an amusing concern and said she was sure that he liked me for me. (Even prepubescent me longs to be seen, not just looked at.)
Slide Show
At the end of 8th grade we watch a slide show of pictures from our two years of middle school. The stream of images is a car wreck of acne and anxiety, awkward bodies and show-off faces. There is a 7th grade picture of me standing in my beloved art room absorbed in a project. The image of my body surprises me. “I was so thin,” I say to no one in particular. Someone in the dark auditorium snaps, “No, you weren’t.” I say nothing but chew nervously on a hangnail.
Mom’s Scale
I discover the scale under my Mom’s dresser. In elementary school, I pile me, my sister, and a stack of books on it to get it to 100 pounds. As years go by, I go back to that scale to see how I measure up. To see if I’ve “done well” or if I’ve “been bad.” In high school, after dieting without cheating for a week, I gorge on a bag of Halloween candy on the bus on the way home. When I get home, I immediately weigh myself and express surprise to my mother that I haven’t gained back the weight I’d lost. Sometimes it takes a while for it to show up, she says, but it will.
Deception of Photos
In 7th grade I get a long red skirt for Christmas. I love how I feel in it: tall and slender. But when the Christmas photos come back from Kodak, I am taken aback. I look odd to myself. “I looked like that?” I ask, incredulous. “Yes.” This happens over and over throughout my life: the pictures don’t match my internal experience. I feel beautiful but in the pictures I look heavy and thick. Or I feel fat and lumpy, but in the pictures, I look slim and slender. Pictures become what is true. My sense of myself is disproved by the image.
High School Lunch 1
We high school girls are well-versed in dieting and criticizing our own bodies. By 9th grade, body hating and disordered eating are a way to belong. I eat a slice of toast and an egg for breakfast (I skip the orange juice when a friend tells me that it’s high in calories). By mid-morning, I’m so hungry I could eat my French book. I shouldn’t be hungry. It’s not lunchtime yet. Dizzy, I buy a candy bar and stuff it whole into my mouth during class, hiding behind my notebook to slobber and chew. My lunch is cottage cheese and carrot sticks or tuna fish and melba toasts and complaining that my thighs are too fat. Once home, I’m starving again, so I plop in front of General Hospital and devour a stack of cookies.
Supposed to Look
I join the track team in 9th grade. I run, not far or fast, but I do run most days. At the end of the season, we have team pictures taken. I don’t understand why, after all this running, but I don’t have muscles like the guys on the team. It seems like I’m supposed to have a lean body with muscle definition if I’m a runner, but I don’t.
High School Lunch 2
The boys in high school do not understand our obsession with eating less and getting thin. They can’t eat enough and want to get big. All I want is for them to pay attention to me. John Weber sits at our table singing the praises of pizza and the joy of eating in general, “Everybody loves to eat! Eating is pleasure!” Seeing me with my half cup of cottage cheese and four carrot sticks, he pauses and says, “Except for you, I guess.” Belonging with the girls, means I don’t belong with the boys and “everybody.”
Function Junction
My junior year of high school, I get a job as a waitress at the Essex Junction Restaurant. We have horrendous brown polyester uniforms that look like a short monk’s tunic complete with rope tie belt. Audrey Hepburn would have looked dumpy and dowdy in this thing. Mom helps me buy white pants to complete the ensemble (oh, like chocolate pie and spaghetti sauce won’t show on those). “These are good,” she says, “because when you get skinny, they’ll be easy to take in.” Me skinny is what we both wanted. It never happened.
High School Lunch 3
My friend, June, has all but stopped eating. She has lost weight. She says she feels great but she looks too thin (is this possible?). As her friend, I don’t know what to do: congratulate her or be alarmed. Lying on the grass after lunch, I notice she’s wearing an extra layer under her jeans because otherwise, she says, they’ll fall off.
Petite…not
In our family of four, my mother and sister are petite, my father and I are big and hearty. Decidedly not petite. What feels strong and reassuring in my father’s body, feels “too much” in mine. I feel thick, heavy. I compare myself to my bird-like mother and sister and feel like an ostrich. Oddly, I don’t make the obvious connection between my father’s sister, my beloved Auntie Jane and me. She and I are built the same inside and out. Late in her life, I am visiting her in California. In my late twenties, I am recently married, exercising (and eating) like a wild thing. As I come back from a run, she says words that had never been said to me before (and rarely since), “You have a beautiful body.”
Gouda on Triscuits
In my first year of college, I gain the Freshman Fifteen: pounds that inevitably come with unmonitored eating and drinking. I make noises about wanting to lose the weight, but also love thick wedges of gouda on crisp Triscuits. Many, many of them. Until all that’s left is the red shell of wax and a few cracker shreds. While home on break, I catch my parents looking at each other with concern as I polish off the little round of cheese. I pretend I don’t notice. I eat a blueberry yogurt half an hour after dinner.
Mistaken
Waiting in a crowded dining hall line in college, the woman checking IDs mistakes me for a boy. I am embarrassed and ashamed and pretended not to hear her. The boys in line with me laugh and say, “Hey, she thinks you’re a guy!”
Aerobics, Chapter 1
I take my very first aerobics class in college in 1984. Two nervous girls leading a hive of nervous girls. It is my introduction to the female culture of body image and exercise. It is the first time I notice that the way I think I look (in my head as I’m watching the two beautiful, coordinated teachers) and the way I actually look (when I see myself awkwardly bouncing around in the enormous studio mirrors), have absolutely no relationship whatsoever. Doing crunches, the girl next to me is so thin that the waistband of her shorts stretches like a tightrope from one hipbone to the other. When I express alarm to a friend about this, she says, “No, that’s the way most people are.” I am embarrassed and ashamed and go eat pizza with my boyfriend at 10pm.
Mono
The summer between my sophomore and junior years of college, I am working at Pat’s Kountry Kitchen. I hate the job and myself. Pat is a mountain of a woman often with food on her face. A Diner Dictator who hired me on a recommendation and hated me on sight. I am heavy in all ways ~ body, mind, and spirit. In July, I get mono and am sent to bed. I spend weeks curled in my parents’ bed, watching TV, eating white rice with butter and cheese. The ray of relief is that I don’t have to face Pat for 6 weeks. The other truth is that, like her, I am becoming enormous.
Charlotte’s Dress
Going back to college for my junior year, I have gained even more weight but pretended it wasn’t happening. Then I put on my favorite pink shirt and it doesn’t cover my belly. And the jeans I love are too tight to button. There is a dance the first weekend back, and none of my dresses fit. None of them. I collapse on my bed and sob until I choke. Most friends steer clear of the fat, emotional catastrophe I have become over the summer. Charlotte, my roommate, offers kindness and one of her dresses. At the dance, I feel both awkward and transformed in someone else’s clothes. A guy I am vaguely interested in invites me to join the swim team, in part, he says, because then there will be “less of me to love.”
Fiber Pills
Senior year of college and I’m still battling between wanting to lose weight and wanting to eat. I am under the impression that both will make me feel better. I start taking fiber pills ~ four big, brown, grainy-looking horse pills before every meal with a big glass of water. The idea is that the pills will make me feel full so I won’t eat so much. But who am I kidding? I rarely eat because I’m hungry. Since I don’t listen to my body’s cues, I eat just as much and don’t lose any weight. But I poop like a champ.
“Nice Rack”
Twice in my life, men tell me that I have “a nice rack.” On both occasions, it completely flusters and flummoxes me. On one hand, I love the attention and admiration and I flush with pleasure. I want so much to be beautiful and sexy. And on the other hand, I hate it and it pisses me off. They only like me because of how I look. (Just like Scott Tully.) I know that all they really want is sex. It infuriates me.
Fat Grams
I am in my late twenties, and I live in Boston. I have a stultifying job (but I don’t realize it) and a stultifying marriage (but I don’t realize it). It’s the early 1990s and everybody’s panties are in a twist about fat. “Stop eating fat and you’ll stop being fat!” says everybody everywhere. There are fat-free cookies, crackers, cheeses, granola bars, and coffee cake. I eat them all with abandon. I join a gym and start working out morning and evening (sometimes with a personal trainer) and taking a brisk walk at lunch. I find a computer program into which I enter every blessed morsel of food that passes my lips, and the program spits out the calories, protein, carbohydrates and fat that I’ve eaten. Every day, I go for 1600 calories and NO FAT. Every day, I give myself a rating based on how I measure up.
Shitty Doctor
I have the shittiest doctor in Boston: a man with no kindness or warmth. I’m afraid to go to someone else, though, because of what he would think. Oddly, I don’t want to hurt his feelings. I decide it doesn’t matter that he’s shitty. Two years married and not the least bit interested in having children, I tentatively, hesitantly, ask him if there is anything I should know if I decided I want to get pregnant. (Why am I asking if I have no interest in having a baby? Excellent question. It is like eating lunch because it is noon. It seems like what I’m supposed to be asking my doctor at this point in my life.) “People have been getting pregnant forever,” says the world’s shittiest doctor. “There’s nothing you need to know.” A year later, deep in the throes of disordered eating and exercising, I tell him that I’m concerned that I weigh too much. He asks what I weighed my senior year of high school. “Everybody,” he says, “should weigh what they weighed in high school.” I have no idea what I weighed then, but “130” I tell him, knowing full well that was what I weighed in 8th grade. “You should lose 10 pounds, then,” says my shitty, shitty doctor. “Do you exercise?” I tell him my regimen of two workouts plus a walk every day. He looks at me over his shitty half-moon glasses and sighs. “I guess there’s not much more you can do then.”
Sidewalk Judging
As I walk along Boston sidewalks, I look at every woman and judge. “Fat.” “Thin.” “Fat.” “Thin.” “Fat.”
Loathing
Exercise is a chore. It is something I have to do. And it is never enough. I stare at my reflection in the studio as I follow the instructor. I look at myself in my carefully chosen purple spandex shorts and “anal floss” leotard. The self-loathing is visceral. “You will never be thin enough. You will never be good enough. You will never be enough.” I cry bitter tears in the middle of the double-knee grapevine.
Why Do I Look Like This When I Do All That
I exercise for hours every day. Aerobic and weightlifting. High intensity and endurance. I eat extremely carefully. So why don’t I look like I think I should look? Why am I not thinner, leaner, more beautiful?
The Health Cover Up
I know I am obsessed about my body. I know I am compulsive about my eating and exercise. I know I’m crazy. So, I do my best to hide it. I tell no one about the computer program. I say that I’m a vegetarian for health reasons. I work out so much just to be healthy. Even though I know it’s total bullshit and that I am insane.
When Are You Due? 1
Buying my lunch (salad, of course) at a Boston deli, the woman in front of me is incredibly, stunningly pregnant. As if the kid is big enough to be playing with Legos in there. The checkout woman asks her when she is due and the pregnant lady happily answers. The checkout woman then turns to me and asks, “What about you? When are you due?” I am mortified and hot red. I pretend I don’t hear her. She repeats the question.
Deserve
I am fat. I don’t deserve a cookie. I don’t deserve a massage. I don’t deserve sex. I don’t deserve love.
Movie star thin
My bar is the actresses I see in movies, on TV, and in magazines. If I don’t look like them, if I’m not as thin and beautiful, then I’m not measuring up. I’m not worthy. I realize that if I were in a movie, the movie would be about me not being thin. The story line would be: can this woman who doesn’t look right find love and belonging and worth? I don’t want that to be my story line. I want it to be more interesting than that. I look to the superficial to give me depth.
Divorce
Four years into marriage, and I meet a man in my office who is completely taken with me. It is one of the headiest experiences of my life. I am overwhelmed by the drug of being wanted. In a quick cascade of ham-handed, ill-considered, reckless decisions, I initiate a divorce. I take full responsibility, I hate myself, and I am certain that everyone in my life will leave me. Albeit clumsy, it is one of the best choices of my life.
Too Big
After my divorce, I am dating and then living with a man who I thought was completely different than my ex-husband when he is actually exactly the same. We have a bumpy but honest relationship. I have a sense that he is unhappy with our sex life. He watches porn starring women with enormous breasts and teeny hips. None of the women he is excited by look anything like me. I ask him if he is attracted to my body. “Actually,” he says, “You’re too big for me.” His words cut, but I later realize that it was true. I was too much for him – in all ways. We broke up shortly after this.
THIS Is It
Throughout my life, I’ve started exercise programs or eating regimens and always, I’ve thought, “This is it. This is what will solve the problem.” Eat no fat. Exercise twice a day. Use a trainer. The fiber pills. The calorie tracking. Pilates. Running. Thousands of sit ups. Kettlebells. Et-fucking-cetera. I’ve told myself so many times, “This. This is what I’ve been missing. This will make the difference.” And never, not once did it change the way I felt in my own skin.
the org 1
A (tall, willowy) ballet dancer friend suggests I take ballet classes. I am flattered beyond measure and my heart soars at the idea of being a dancer. For two years, twice a week, I put on my pink tights and leotard (with little flowy skirt) and stand at the barre with the other beginning adults. I like the classes, but I don’t feel like I’m dancing. Plié, relevé, first position, fifth. My friend Wendy invites me to an Org class (a new-age fitness and wellness organization). Are you kidding me? “Too new age-y, too weird,” I say. No way. For two years, Wendy invites me. For two years, I say no fucking way, only more politely. Usually. And then finally, I go. It is new age-y and weird, but also fun and freeing and something snatches my attention. There are no mirrors for judgment and comparison. I never even think about the clock. I go back every week for a year.
Annie
Wendy is my friend who is walking ahead of me through life: she struggles with body image and disordered eating and exercise, she became a stepmother about a decade before I did. Wendy, my friend with the flashlight, always turning her beam on the rocky path we both walk. She introduces me to the non-fiction of Anne Lamott. I adore Lamott’s self-effacing style, her snort-worthy humor, and her wisdom. I’m forever laughing or amazed or touched and I make whoever I’m with listen to me read it to them. She calls her thighs The Aunties and loves them even when they are heavy and riddled with cellulite. I long to be (and pretend to be) so enlightened and compassionate and self-aware as to love my body just as it is. But I don’t.
THE ORG 2
After taking Org classes for a year, I make the edgy decision to go to an Org Intensive Training: a week with the Org founders, Marissa and Raul in Portland, Oregon. I’ve never done anything like this. It is terrifying and exhilarating. It pushes all my buttons plus some I didn’t know I had. At the end of the week, I decide I’d like to teach. The task seems enormous and daunting. The other teachers in my studio are slender and beautiful and full of serene wisdom about body love and self-healing. I feel intimidated and out of my depth but want to belong to their tribe.
When Are You Due? 2
In my first year of teaching Org classes, an artist, a painter comes to my class. Afterwards, she approaches me and asks if I will model nude for her. “You are perfect for a painting I’m working on,” she says. I am hungry for this. I want to be a teacher that inspires both by what I do and how my body looks. Finally, someone admires my body and even wants me to model for them! I practically lunge at the chance…until the painter says what she’s looking for is someone who is slightly older and looks pregnant. Since I’m pretending to be a serenely wise, new age Org teacher, I pretend that it hasn’t knocked the wind out of me like a punch to my soft belly.
Geneen Roth
My friend Louisa introduces me to Geneen Roth whose brilliant work on women, food, and body image shines a light on the craziness that I thought was mine alone. I devour (!) her work and want to be able to walk that talk, to embody the self-awareness and self-love that she teaches. And yet, part of me also wants to hold on to the familiarity of my obsession of thin.
Her Own Kind of Cute
Wendy, who introduced me to The Org classes, expresses admiration that I am willing to teach with (and inevitably be compared to) the thin, beautiful studio owner. She says she admires me for being myself even next to this radiant woman. “Well, it’s not just me,” I say. “Anne’s doing that, too.” “Yeah,” responds Wendy, “but Anne’s got her own kind of cute.” I say nothing, swallowing the hard truth lump that I don’t.
Somatic Learning
As my Org training progresses, I take more body~mind classes and spend more time paying attention to the information that my body is giving me through sensation. On an intellectual level, I get this, and I do my best to be aware of what I’m feeling. And on a deeply entrenched level, I just want to have a flat belly, goddamn it.
Plastic Surgery
Several women in the Org community have plastic surgery. I feel upset and betrayed. I think that our work is to love ourselves as we are, not to make ourselves align with a cultural ideal. I struggle mightily with this. I feel angry. Even though I honor their freedom to do what they want with their bodies, I feel like they are misleading students and abandoning the cause of self-love.
The Org 3
In every aerobics or fitness class I ever took, I always spent the whole time checking out the instructor’s body, looking for flaws, and deciding if I’d do the class based on how she (or he) looked. If she has a body I want and admire, I do the class. If not, I pass. As I stand in a tank top and tight pants in front of a room full of people, this comes back to haunt me. How can I hold myself up as a model of fitness when I have this thick, Clydesdale body? Who will ever want to take classes with me?
Yeah, but it’s not an issue for you
Every once in a while, I scuttle up to the edge of my body image issues, take a risk, and admit to someone how insecure and inadequate I feel. Usually, it is a conversation of misunderstanding. When they say they feel something similar, I balk and say, “That doesn’t make any sense. You are thin and beautiful and have no reason to feel that way. You look great.” Objectively, I think, I have a problem they couldn’t possibly have. Neither of us feels heard and the conspiracy of silence and isolation continues.
Brown Belt Belly
At different times in my life I judge, criticize, obsess about practically every part of my body: ankles too thick, thighs too heavy, hands like a man, boobs too small, arms too jiggly, hair too all-over-the-place, feet too, well, feet-y. But nothing has given me fits of insecurity and angst like my belly. I am constantly sucking in, covering up, clenching and crunching, trying to lose my soft belly. After teaching Org classes for four years, I go to the third level of training: the Brown Belt. Moments before an open-to-the-public class, Raul (my trainer and Org founder) tells the trainees that we have to wear our clothes in a way that makes us uncomfortable. No telling anyone outside the training what we’re up to, either. The other trainees put their hair in crazy ponytails, hike one pant leg to their thigh and pull an arm out of their shirt. Shyly, I roll the waistband of my pants down, and pull my shirt up to reveal my belly. As Raul steps in to teach class, he looks at me skeptically and says, “You need to do more than that.” I look at him with wide, panicky eyes. “You have no idea,” I say, “You have no idea how big this is.” “Okay,” he says, apparently seeing that it really was my sincere edge. At the end of class, a handsome young man who’s not in the training asks me why I’m not doing the crazy clothes thing with the other trainees. “I am!” I say, emboldened by Raul’s tacit approval. “I’m showing my belly!” He looks surprised and says, “But that’s your beautiful source of feminine power!” Only in Portland, Oregon, my friends. Only in Portland.
Not Her, Too
Later in Brown Belt, grappling with my own demons and I see a beautiful round, brown woman crying about her body. This brings on a fresh round of tears to think she was stuck in this, too. Not her, too.
Anatomy for Yoga
A friend and Org trainer, Helen, tells me about a DVD called Anatomy for Yoga. In it, an experienced yoga teacher explains that how people do the postures comes down to their structure. How deep they can go is determined by a combination of their soft tissue (muscles and connective tissue that can be lengthened and strengthened with practice) and their skeletal structure, which is what it is. So it’s not a yogi’s fault, necessarily, if they can’t do the full expression of a pose. It’s the way they are built. It occurs to me that the same is true for our body shape and structure. There are some things we can change and with training and care, but there are some things that we can’t. Nobody looks in the mirror and says, “I’m going on a diet so I can get shorter.” Nobody thinks they can turn their brown eyes blue.
Athletic Conditioning, Body Pump, Kettlebells, Running
On one hand, I am committed to teaching holistic fitness and advocating for body love, self-healing, listening to sensation and doing just what your body needs ~ no more and no less. On the other hand, I am determined to get thin and super fit. I am determined never to be mistaken for a guy or a pregnant lady again. I start taking traditional “hard core” group exercise classes (using my awareness, I say, oh yes, using the Org principles). It is the absolute irony of my practice. I am saying and teaching one thing; doing, thinking, and believing another. It’s fine for my students to be all holistic and shit. It’s great that they are moving in pleasure and loving themselves. They deserve that. Me? I need to get slimmer and fitter and leaner.
Beach
A beloved student whose weight has fluctuated in the time I’ve known her tells of going to the beach. I asked if she swam in the ocean. “Oh no,” she says quickly. “I’m too ashamed of my body to wear a bathing suit.” Shortly after, when vacationing at the beach, with an honestly open heart I notice all the shapes and sizes and ages of people playing in the sea. And I keep thinking, how terribly sad it would be if all these people were missing this experience because of their shame about their bodies. I feel deeply sad for my student.
“Love Actually”
It was supposed to be a light, romantic comedy. Instead, it pisses me off. Lots of joke and jabs about fat women. Every woman that was being made fun of, all of them are thinner than I. It makes me sick.
Crying and Eating at the Same Time
I’ve done it. Many times. I can’t remember all of the specific circumstances, but I can feel the feeling of snuffling tears and stuffling food, barely able to swallow past the tightness in my throat, of a heavy wad of weight in my tummy. Why do I do this? Do I want to distract myself from the emotion or do I think the food will make me feel better?
When Are You Due? 3
I’ve been teaching The Org classes for 13 years. At times I think I’m making my way past all my negative body image stuff. As I walk into the studio, the teacher of the previous class is taking her things from the stereo. She turns to look at me and then stops and gives a wide-eyed look. “Are you pregnant?” she asks. The question takes my breath away, NO! I’m nearly 50! NO. Fuck. No. It crushes me.
the org and Tracy
After being asked if I was pregnant (again), I start doing Pilates-like exercises created by the waif-thin (and later, plastic surgery-ed) Tracy Anderson, trainer to Gwyneth Paltrow. Gwyneth, who makes me sigh with her thin, unassailable, uncriticizable beauty. I obsess that Tracy is what I need: I will do these exercises for 30 minutes every day, even Christmas Day, for 3 months and this will solve the problem. This will help me lose pounds and inches and look the way I’ve always wanted to look. I’m teaching The Org classes and preaching about body love while doing Tracy Anderson and trying to look like Gwyneth or Jennifer Aniston (I’m easy, I’ll take either). The truth is that after months of relentlessly doing the exercises, I still look like me.
Sexy Anchors
I rarely watch TV but when I do, I am stunned by how sexy the female news anchors are with high heels, short skirts, low-cut dresses, and all that hair. The male anchors (with the exception, perhaps, of Anderson Cooper) are neat, smooth, and tailored but not sexy. Many of the men are downright dumpy and unattractive. Of course they are, they are on TV because of what they have to say, how they think, what they know. And yet, there is no such thing as unattractive female anchor.
Hate It But…
I hate it. I hate it that women are judged primarily by how we look. That if someone isn’t thin and pretty, then she’s already behind the 8-ball. And yet when a friend loses 20 pounds, I really do think she looks great, beautiful, gorgeous. I hate it, but I buy in.
“Inspector Bellamy”
Inspector Bellamy is a French film with Gerard Depardeu in the lead role with his crazy nose and his enormousness. His character is a brilliant, wise detective. A beautiful, thin female actress plays his adoring wife. It occurs to me that this story would never, ever be told the other way around: with a heavy, unattractive woman and a handsome man. The only way it would ever be cast that way is if the story was about a handsome man loving a fat woman.
Anything & Everything
I watch women in the world. Part of what I learn is that women can do anything. Geraldine Ferraro. Hillary Clinton. But then the media slaughters them, questions them, makes horrendous fun of them—who wants that? Yet the alternative seems to be for women to give up our energy and power to obsessing about our bodies. The possibility that women can do anything translates into women have to do everything.
Stop
I’m 49 and my husband Frank and I are at the beach. I shyly say I’m going to wear a swimsuit that shows my belly even though I’m ashamed of it. He looks at me sadly, and says, “But your belly is part of you.” I take this in and realize that I would feel so sad if he was ashamed of the thumb he cut on a table saw when he was 17 or the capped tooth that gives him such a Frank smile. I sit up in bed the next morning and say, “I think I’m ready. I’m ready to stop obsessing about my body.” Just saying it out loud feels different, good. When I find myself thinking in that old, tired way, I remind myself that that thinking comes from wanting love and belonging and that being thinner has nothing to do with that. I ask myself how I can feel more love and belonging in other ways.
Code
My wise, kind, brilliant friend Kate tells me about an idea she had for her graduate thesis years ago: she wanted to write about how when women talk about their bodies, they are speaking in code. When they say, “I feel fat” or “I hate my legs” what they are really saying is “I feel like you don’t love me” or “I feel like there is something inherently wrong with me.” I think this is a spectacular observation. As I pay attention, I find it is absolutely true. My feelings about my body and my tendency to over-eat are actually a code for other things: feeling inadequate, unlovable, unworthy, anxious, needing comfort. Kate tells me that her idea was rejected by her advisor: a woman who had radical surgery to lose 80 pounds.
Yeah, right.
Some women friends say that they never judge anyone as harshly as they judge themselves. This is not my experience. The harsher I am with myself, the sharper I am (in my head) with others. The kinder I am to myself, the kinder I am to others. For me, it is a direct reflection.
Comparison Diet
I go on a comparison diet: an abstention from comparing myself to anyone else. The practice makes me realize that I compare myself all the blessed time and it’s crazy. As the folks in AA say, “Don’t compare your inside to somebody else’s outside.” So I pay attention to when I start to wander down the comparison road and remind myself that it makes no sense to compare. We are different people with different experiences and genetics and it’s sillier than comparing grapefruits to koala bears. Why not celebrate both of us? All of us. When I can break the habit, it feels spacious and freeing to measure myself against no one and to appreciate others just as they are.
Thank you, Body, thank you.
At the end of my yoga practice, I start murmuring a gratitude prayer to my body. “Thank you, Body, thank you. Thank you for everything you allow me to do every day. I am grateful. I love you.” It feels kind of goofy, but it feels true and overdue.
Serenity Prayer
I am reminded of the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
I reframe the prayer in regards to my body, my health, and my Self. Instead of pushing constantly for improvement, I realize that I can accept the things about me that are what they are, while doing my best and being the best I can be. The madness of my body image battle has sprung from the confusion between these two. The battle isn’t over. The old patterns and habits still come up, but some days I find the wisdom – either from other battle-worn people or from my own source.
I don’t know when I started hating my body. Disordered eating and exercising and thinking started as a way to be included in woman-hood, part of what I thought it meant to be a woman. Harsh self-judgment and criticism, was a defense against judgment from others (you can’t possibly me as mean to me and I am). After a while, little by little, it changed into something else. My disordered body image isolated me from other women and from myself. The madness sapped my energy and distracted me from what really mattered. It didn’t happen all at once, it happened little by little.
The healing, the shift back to peace, I presume will happen the same way. These issues are complex and deep. I suspect that they will always be with me. But as my hair turns gray and I decide not to color it anymore, as my neck skin gets wrinkly and wobbly, as cellulite creeps into my calves, I can make the choice of kindness and wisdom. I can be grateful for this borrowed instrument I am living my life in. I can be more peaceful in my skin as it is and as it ages. I can listen to sensation -- body, mind, and emotion -- and respond with all the courage and compassion that I can muster. I’ll fall into old madness sometimes, of course, but I will make a different choice sometimes, too. Little by little. Step by step. Given the journey I’ve been on, every move toward peace is its own kind of miracle.