Of course, discovering you have a (hopefully) benign tumor the size of a cantaloupe isn’t the best day, particularly when you consider all of the ramifications. Cancer, procreation, recovery, auto-immune disorder, gender questions, emotional processing…and you guessed it; body image.
I don’t think I’ll really surprise anyone when I say that loving my body hasn’t always been easy. Ask any woman, or maybe even most men, and I think you will find a general confusion about self-love and body image, and just to set the record straight, this is not the way it has to be done.
1.) Weight: I think the first diet I ever went on I was about 11. It was at the behest of my best friend, who was just following her mom’s example. But once I got to high school, eating became my enemy. When every food seems to irritate your entire system, you just stop. The doctor told me I was underweight so I had to get up early to force feed myself breakfast. Friends thought I was anorexic. I wasn’t. I had an auto-immune disorder and didn’t know it, so I weighed about 100 lbs. Cut to college and the freshman 15, for some still unknown reason I had little to no auto-immune issues. For the first time in decades I COULD EAT!!! And I did! Lol. It was great! But by my senior year I ran into emotional issues and went back to old habits. I’m not really sure how to explain it, but I just didn’t eat. Maybe once a day, if that? I still kind of romanticize the idea of starvation, but it’s not healthy, and I recognize that.
2.) Exercise: This too, started at an early age. I discovered that when I sat down, my thighs visually doubled in size, so I ran into the living room and starting doing sit-ups. There was a toy company in the 80’s called (I kid you not) “Get in Shape Girl” and I had a set of plastic dumbbells, jump ropes and pink leg warmers. P.E wasn’t any fun because it involved dodgeball and horrendous competition. Honestly I don’t remember too much of an issue with this. My mom pulled me out of dance lessons before I noticed any potentially destructive habits. By the time I re-entered dance in high school I was already underweight, so I fit right in. It wasn’t until college that I decided to try exercising independently. I did Taebo, I did running, I did gyms. I finally trained for a half marathon my senior year and this actually was a positive discovery of self-empowerment AND…you’ve got to eat for that!
3.) Purity Culture: Hopefully without ruffling any feathers, the most straightforward thing to say is that I wasn’t really able to enjoy my body and what is could do for a really long time. This culture can teach women that their bodies are unspeakable, and displaying them is inviting trouble. I stayed fairly buttoned up in high school (apparel code), but by my senior year of college I was ready to flaunt a bit more. And honestly, it was great. I looked smokin’ hot, and men noticed it. It was absolutely wonderful, but my male teachers didn’t think so and asked me to change my apparel immediately. The buttons went back up.
4.) Performing Arts: This is also sad to say, because I do believe things are changing, but anyone in the performing arts industry knows that weight is an issue. Besides being surrounded by glorious dancers on all sorts of eating/exercise regiments, you are in an industry that requires physical prowess. On tour, we would finish a 10 hour bus ride, and half the bus would go to the bar, and the other half would go to the hotel gym. You MUST maintain the correct weight in order to fit in expensive costumes. And even us character actors some times have weight requirements in the opposite direction. In an industry that tells you fat is funny, it can often seem like your body isn’t even yours.
5.) The Comparison Game: I’m fairly certain if you go into accounting, you are not sharing a locker room with your female and MALE coworkers. And if you are, come join us at the theater, you seem to be in the wrong profession. It’s common to be surrounded by naked bodies all the time, and one can easily find themselves playing the unhappy comparison game. I mean, you’re literally measured inch by inch, provided underwear and bras. Gently (hopefully) manhandled by sound technicians fixing mic issues. You are a part of an assembly line, and even when it’s operating well, it’s difficult to feel special in your own skin. Ten years of sharing wardrobes with roommates makes you realize when your poundage changes for good or bad. And after a while, you’re tired of wearing high heels and tight elastic, and you just want to be able to BREATHE for heaven’s sake.
6.) Auto-Immune Disorder: If you don’t have chronic health issues, this is going to be a difficult concept to explain but the only thing potentially worse than physical pain, is getting the impression that it is somehow your fault. I’ve been nebulously told by multiple gastroenterologists that I am; too stressed, too anxious, too empathetic, too sensitive, too tired, too underweight, too overweight, too haphazard, too lazy, too busy, too depressed, too intelligent, too Jewish, too allergic…just all around too much. When every flare up feels like a punishment you start to distrust yourself and the very physical home you live in. You begin to feel as though you are in a constant war with yourself and losing. It’s hard to celebrate your body when it is constantly misbehaving, and sometimes you just give up completely. Why follow rules that don’t work, when the end result is the same? I still feel like crap.
7.) The Double Standard: This statement is just flat out mean, but most men I know have no concept of how physically difficult it is to be a working woman. This isn’t to say that men aren’t held to ridiculous societal standards and facing other challenges, but when I say women have a higher threshold for pain, it’s because we have so much experience with it. The days and weeks I have spent, nearly passing out, and then plastering a ridiculous smile on my face to deal with administrators who are clueless —should qualify as our next cinematic masterpiece. And I am 100% not alone. Mamas who are dog tired as their little one pulls at their hair…teenagers who are terrified their menstrual cycle will be discovered in gym class, girls visiting the bathrooms so they can lose those lunch calories their so worried about. Women and humans at large are expected to front SO MUCH in the name of normalcy, when day to day living just involves a lot of physical and emotional pain.
8.) Age: I could be wrong, but I feel like I’m holding my own on this one. My mom exampled some GREAT positivity on this front and I’m trying to do the same. But, the mansplaining. Please stop. I don’t need you to tell me how difficult it is to grow older as a woman. Or the difficulties of balancing home and professional life. Or how good I would look if I just didn’t wear make up. Or why my hair should be long. Why I should only wear certain colors. Why I should only wear certain clothes. I think they are trying to prove how knowledgeable they are about their female counterparts, but even my girlfriends don’t tell me how to do these things! Why are men? I’m growing older just fine. I’m only a little mad about losing elasticity in my neck skin, but I’ll get over it.
9.) The War on Moms: I have also noticed in some of my previous blogs that it would be easy to think I have something against mamas and their calling, but I don’t. As a teacher, it’s my privilege to be in the support system that’s moving your child through their development. And yes, stage moms, over-involved moms, diva moms, clueless moms, just doing your best moms, absent moms, foster moms…sometimes we butt heads. BUT it’s only because there is so much at stake and it’s almost always based on LOVE. Therefore, it’s super unfair there should be any kind of war or judgement on mamas vs. professionals. It’s embarrassing to admit that one specific reason I don’t want to birth a baby is that I don’t want to put my body through that metamorphosis. BUT that’s also because I have an auto-immune disorder and my system just won’t tolerate that effectively. So, YES I spend almost every day at the gym for all the good it does me. And if you don’t have time for that, it’s probably because you are hands on crafting a small person into a real human. We don’t have to be at odds, and we don’t have to shame each other.
10.) Purity Culture Reprise: Even outside of sex, there’s a somewhat unspoken assumption that good girls don’t get tattoos, piercings, henna…anything that decorates your body is frowned upon because that’s hedonism of some kind. Geez, you could even go so far as to say that racism plays in, for a culture that seems to prize perfect alabaster skin, even freckles can be seen as an abomination. The list get more and more ridiculous.
Which brings us to my scary admission; I don’t want the scar. After ALL THAT, I don’t want the scar. Horizontal, vertical, I don’t care. It’s been and winding road and I felt like I had made some self love progress. Now, my abdomen is constantly distorted and unhappy, medically compared to an 8 month pregnancy and I have NO IDEA what my body is going to look like afterwards. Through a series of choices and circumstances, my body is as close to ‘factory standard’ as I can possibly get it. I don’t even a birthmark and now you’re telling me there’s going to be a searing line pointing all the way to my womanhood like an arrow that says, “SHE MISUNDERSTOOD THE ASSIGNMENT AND DOESN’T HAVE ANYTHING TO SHOW FOR IT BUT THIS LOUSY SCAR?” My dear friend who recently had back surgery is constantly reminding me to just feel my feelings. And this conversation topic is definitely up for my therapist. But I’m really sad. I just spent 40 years learning how to love the body I was in, do I have to start from scratch for 40 more?
