Does anyone else get a little nostalgic when they see a bathroom scale? Does the silhouette of your body sometimes still haunt you now and then? Now and then, do you look in the mirror and begin to eye all the curves you want to shave down? Do you still have moments where you can feel like you want to hide behind your own body? You begin to notice the stretch marks traveling along with parts of your body as they mark their territory. It seems to write all your insecurities in a cursive format. The cellulite and belly rolls are a constant reminder that your body will take up more space than your voice.
It is easy to feel like your own worst enemy. It is easy to want to crawl out of your skin. I was introduced to the word “fat” at a very young age, not knowing it wasn’t a word to describe someone’s physical appearance. I grew up extremely self-conscious once I knew what that three-letter word meant. After hearing that word, I began to question whether or not the ground could carry my heavy footsteps. With every creak on the floorboards, I would have my answer. Every trip to the kitchen can be dreadful because you are waiting for judgemental comments, but in reality, I was waiting for my thoughts to creep in.
Once I grew into my curves, it started to feel like everyone was staring at me. Yes, I hit puberty, and suddenly, everything started to have movement but in a good way. Swinging hips and flabby arms, it doesn’t stop there. I could not stop getting “compliments” on how “skinny” I looked. But in reality, I could never feel good. I could never wear the clothes I always wanted to wear because I never had the body for the clothes. I thought that I never had the body to pull off skirts and dresses. To this day, I have dresses and swimsuits sitting on my wishlist. I told myself that I would buy a dress (or any flattering clothing) once I had the body for it. But I think, in reality, I just needed confidence. I am still working on my confidence. It is a long journey, but I can say I have been falling in love with myself more and more every day.
I learned how easy it is to hold ourselves back throughout my self-love journey because we like to think about self-worth and define our physical appearance. We like to believe that our physical appearance doesn’t align with the standards embedded in our society. I know what you are thinking; we already have diverse representations of body types in the media. Yes, your thinking is correct, but having a more inclusive and mindful society doesn’t fix how people are suffering in all the ways beauty is being defined. We need to learn how to establish that our body is good rather than looking good—understanding that we are more than just our bodies. We tend to fall into the trap of self-objectification. Self-objectification is when we fix our appearance from an outsider’s perspective. You picture what you look like on the outside, and you begin to adjust until your badgering thoughts go away. It is hard to feel good about your body when constantly judging it by appearance. Once we can see past the idea of our bodies being seen as objects, we can move on to being what we always dreamed of.
I recently learned that people could gain confidence because they could learn a thing or two from their painful experiences from their body-shaming experiences. Those experiences can act as a barrier to their body image, and that can bring us out of our comfort zones. It can change the way you look at your body. We tend to adapt to body shame to hide in situations where we don’t want to be looked at. Shame and body fixation are often standard parts of our comfort zones for some of us, and we don’t even realize when we react to those issues. We can use our experience to shape us into the person we dream of becoming or use our experience to sink us even further to the ground. We have to fight to be more. We betray ourselves every time we fall victim to self-objectification. We can use our experience to shape us into the person we dream of becoming, or we can use our experience to sink us even further to the ground.
There are times when I find myself sinking beneath my comfort zone and falling into the trap of self-betrayal by wearing clothes that are rarely flattering. Because those non-flattering clothes reflect how I viewed myself, it can sometimes feel like you are hiding behind the shadow of your own body when you become a victim of self-betrayal.
As I said before, the journey to self-love is long. I am learning not to cringe when reciting affirmations in the mirror and not to get discouraged when I have to use up all of my morning energy to jump into a pair of jeans. But one thing to remember is that your body is good even though you think it doesn’t look good. It can honestly feel freeing when you love something rather than spend your entire life trying to hide it.