Engraved on the body

The endless, tiring, useless pursuit of trying to love your body as a woman

Jessica told me to stand in front of the mirror and say over and over “I love my upper arms, I love my upper arms.” The point is to change the negative self-talk, to rewire the brain, change the tapes playing on repeat in your head. She had done this about her hair and swore she saw it differently now, that it was growing in thicker and more luxurious since. 

So much is just in how we see. My friend’s daughter punched a mirror and said she just felt like it when asked why. My friend thinks it had something to do with what she was seeing reflected back. She didn’t like what she saw. 

The thought of that beautiful, clever girl hating her body sends pangs across mine. The old familiar aches, the endless yearning to inhabit any body but your own. The waif-thin friends agonizing over 5 pounds they need to lose, reinforcing the wrongness of your frame. 

How do you write a letter to your body from your most beloved part to your most detested when the parts you love the most are your eyes and they were trained to see flaws from the moment you opened them? Those big chocolate orbs that have hypnotized people into falling in love with you. Tricked them without realizing until it was too late – they had already fallen in love with every other piece of you. Even your most detested, those thick upper arms, the ones you try to hide in all seasons, the ones you have always somehow had even at your smallest size. 

You have finally embraced the fact that while you can love someone who loves your body – every piece of you – while you can stare at them in wonder while they squeeze the parts you hate most and claim them as their favorites, there is very little chance you will ever find yourself in the same state of admiration for your body. Appreciation, yes. So much appreciation for the healthy and strong legs that get you places even the arms for all the holding they let you do. 

But your body has been engraved with a million words of self-hatred from a million women who have stood in front of you and told you what they hated about themselves. The too thick thighs, the invisible gut, the double chins, every fad diet, and every headline in every magazine you’ve ever laid eyes on. Since as long as you could stand they grabbed the thick of your thigh and commented on it. Then as a wobbly toddler acceptable and cute but nothing you were supposed to take into your teen years. They call it baby fat for a reason. No, it’s impossible to recover from 48 years of that constant pounding of the same message hammered into your skin. Seeping into every pore that saw the light. You are not right. You do not belong. This does not fit. You do not fit. And it’s a wonder you can stand in front of a mirror now and appreciate and swap your eyes for his for even a moment to see how he sees you. Strong and beautiful, every defect to your eyes a beauty mark in his. 

It’s amazing you have come this far after a lifetime of every woman you have ever been close to, crossed paths with, overheard in a dressing room, has remarked on the wrongness of her body. As if there were one perfect right thing we all had to be. 

I get it. The angst in a 16-year-old who stands in front of a mirror and wants to smash it. And does. And I wish I could tell her it gets better.