This is a video I wished I could have watched when I was growing up. Although probably hosted
by somebody else because I don't know if 30-year-old me would have been the most inspiring for
13-year-old me to see although maybe. But I don't know, 13-year-old me was a little judgy.
I still vividly remember flipping through a Delia's catalog for the first time and seeing
these tweenage models running around in bikinis and I looked at their thighs and they didn't
touch and I looked at my thighs and they did touch. And y'all even though I had never heard
the phrase thigh gap, I didn't really have the internet and certainly not instagram but
immediately I thought something was wrong. This really tipped the scales for me in an
already dangerous path toward hyper-controlled eating and fitness and overall body-loathing.
Because what I might have known at the time but didn't want to understand was that my
body is built in a particular way and my thighs are always going to touch but I thought that
if I could mold my body to look like those girls in that Delia's catalog, I would be
more attractive, I would have more friends, I would be more popular and ultimately protected
from things in the world that might hurt me. And if I could leap to such unhealthy conclusions
about my body based on images in seasonal catalogs, I can only imagine how much more
complicated body image has become in an era of social media and selfie-centered challenges
to showcase skinniness. Case and point: The recently gone viral bellybutton challenge.
Started in China, the bellybutton challenge alleges that if you can wrap your arm around
your back and fit your finger in your belly button, congratulations you're acceptably
thin. When in reality, congratulations because you probably have an incredibly flexible arm
socket and would probably do quite well in yoga. In other words a lot of these skinny
challenges, tests and criteria rely on smoke and mirrors and willfully ignoring how our
bodies work on an individual basis. I think a lot of us know that but chose to believe
otherwise, I know I did. In choosing to believe that we should look a certain way that outlines
the work that we have to do, the kind of self-control that we have to exert in our daily lives in
order to meet up to these false standards. It gives us guidelines, it gives us boundaries,
it gives us things to work with in a world that otherwise feels completely unmanageable.
But the thing that I've learned in the past 20 years since I first really started dealing
with these kinds of body issues is that the harder thing, the more challenging thing,
the thing that actually takes all of that self-control and determination and will power
that that fake thinspiration preaches day in and day out is actually letting go and
learning self-love rather than self-loathing. I have personally experienced how it's harder
to treat yourself healthily inside and out than go on an hour long run in blazing heat
when you really don't want to because the thing about that run that's different than
this whole self-love thing is that there's a beginning and an end. It's a discreet thing
that you can check off before you go to sleep at night. And I wish that I'd understood and
internalized this when I was younger to save myself the time down the road of having to
unravel all these lies that I not only believed but told myself about the importance of being
able to fit coins in my clavicle and stand with my feet together and my thighs not touching
and instead have worked on the more important thing not of how I should look but of how
I should be.