A few months ago, I was watching a talk by Brené Brown where she said she’s had to do her fair share of body image work. ‘What is body image work?‘ I wondered, and ‘I need some of that!‘
Certainly there are books out there that tackle this with specific exercises. One exercise I’ve come across, in the book Self-esteem by Matthew McKay and Patrick Fanning, is about writing an objective description of yourself and then reading it out to yourself repeatedly. The goal is to change how you think about yourself. Instead of thinking “I have ugly skin” (a subjective statement) you think of yourself as having “skin tone variation” (an objective statement). I never really got into these types of exercises myself. But I had an epiphany recently at Lake Tahoe which I want to share which I think illuminates a key element of positive body image: self-acceptance.
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I was wearing a swimsuit walking into Stampede lake, Tahoe and my fiancee had my phone in his hand with the instruction of taking a photo of me in the water. He clicked as I walked into the lake.
Later that day, as I was looking through the photos I was like “Ugh” at another swimsuit photo that didn’t turn out the way I wanted. Then it hit me – a swimsuit photo not turning out the way I wanted has happened for years now.
There are people of a certain body type who used to have very little body-fat as a teenager and in their early 20s, no matter what they ate. I was one of those people. I’d eat a whole box of donuts when i was 20 and still look super-slim. My body image got anchored as a thin woman. Being thin was easy, and in my control, I thought.
But then things changed with age. My metabolism changed, and my body changed. It would now take starving myself to have the same figure I did back when I was 20. Yet, when I looked at photos of myself all throughout my 20s, I told myself various false narratives on why I looked the way I looked such as:
- I’ve recently been eating a lot
- I’ve recently not been working out that much
- This camera angle is unflattering
- My posture isn’t great in this photo
- If I just exercised more, and ate more healthy, it is totally feasible for me to look leaner
This time looking at the photo, a different series of thoughts materialized:
1st: Ugh, I look so middle-aged with the back-fat
2nd: Why did this photo not turn out right?
3rd {realization}: This has happened several times now. This is what I actually look like!
4th: That’s ok
I felt a moment of calmness and self-acceptance after the last thought. It was a new, wiser way of seeing myself and seeing the world.
Blessings are curses in disguise, if you let them hinder your spiritual growth
– Brown Girl Confidence
Many of us that were conventionally “fortunate” in some way when we were young (thin, rich, good-looking, privileged or whatever) sometimes don’t develop the compassion in looking at others and ourselves as a result of the privilege. We live in a bubble, feeling entitled to any random gifts of nature or nurture bestowed upon us. Our self-esteem is based on these gifts.
But when we age, which we all inevitably will, and when we come to experience undesirable things, which we all inevitably will, we have the choice: to reject what has happened, make excuses for it, wish and will things to be different and hate it OR to accept ourselves the way we are and appreciate ourselves for the more persistent qualities we have.
The thing is no matter what your body shape, the water is still just as nice. The lake is still as fun. Your friends are still your friends. If you picked well, your fiancee is still your fiancee. It turns out working towards looking like a magazine cover model is not the worthiest goal in life (unless being a cover model is your career).
Accepting others and accepting yourself, and judging others and judging yourself are connected behavior patterns. The human mind has a tendency towards logic. If you have critical thoughts about others, you likely have them about yourself. If you have kind, loving thoughts towards others, you likely have them towards yourself. You can’t pick and choose to harbor critical thoughts about others and love yourself, or be mean to yourself and be kind to others.
So pick wisely what you want your thought pattern to be. I believe my epiphany in the lake was due to a conscious effort over the past six months to unlearn all the negative things I’ve been taught about women and their bodies, a conscious effort to see people for their skills, passions and values and not glorify them for traits based on their body – this means no more looking at Instagram models and being like “Wow she’s so thin” or “Wow, her butt is so big” or “Wow her jawline so chiseled.” So what? It’s just a body trait. Everyone has a different body type and all body types are totally acceptable.
