Body image
23 November, 2002
I have a story to tell. It begins with the photo of a girl, aged about 19. She is on a beach, wearing a bikini.
I'm not sure what young guys look for in a girl, but the girl in this photo surely can not be far from the mark. Tanned, blonde, 5'4", 110lbs, pretty, curvy, smooth and slender. Looking at that photo now I think Wow.
But if you were able to ask that nineteen year old girl what she thought of her body, she would answer with one word. And that one word would probably be "fat". Or "ugly". Or even "disgusting".
She has absolutely no idea. Her self-image is so distorted that when she looks in the mirror she thinks she is overweight. She is obsessed with sizes and numbers. And she has been like that since the age of thirteen.
As a teenager, she frequently starves herself, going days without eating, drinking only water. She sometimes vomits after eating. She takes caffeine pills in order to decrease her appetite. Every mouthful of food is taken with an accompanying feeling of guilt and self-loathing.
This girl thinks she is immortal, though, and doesn't care that 50 years from now her bones will become brittle because of the vital nutrients she is denying her body at this very moment.
Now fast forward ten years. Another photo. Same girl, but older. She's extremely fit, tanned, muscular, hair blonde and bleached by the sun. She probably weighs about 125lbs. She looks great.
She has a much better relationship with food now. Cycling over tall mountain passes has made her appreciate food at the most basic level. If you don't eat, you don't have the energy to cycle an entire day. It's a simple input-output equation. Extreme exercise has given her a new appreciation of what her body can achieve.
But is her body image any better? Not by much. She hates her breasts and she still thinks she should lose weight. She likes what her body can do, but not what it looks like.
Now another decade on. There is no photo. She rarely lets herself be photographed. At 39, she's no longer a girl by any stretch of the imagination. She's had two children. She is so busy she barely has time for herself. She hasn't exercised properly in about five years. Her body is very average looking.
In some ways, though, ten years has made a huge difference to her outlook. She enjoys food now. Sometimes, she is even comfortable with her body. Having children has made her view her body in a way that she could not have imagined before. Her body is much more than an object for pleasure — it's a place where miracles occur. Babies grow and are born and nurtured here, by this body, in this body.
If you ask her about her body, she'll say that being sexy is not about being perfect or being young. That it's all about being confident, it's about charisma, it's about what's in the heart and the head. And she's right, of course. She knows she's right. After all, the people she finds sexy are definitely not perfect, or young, or even thin.
She writes confidently about sex. She knows age is not a barrier to good sex. She is, after all, at her sexual peak, and she feels good about that.
And yet in that place in her soul where nobody else is allowed in, she thinks other thoughts. She wonders what would happen if her marriage ever ended. Would there ever be anyone else? Who would ever find her attractive? She shudders at the thought of another man looking at her naked. She can't imagine ever allowing anyone else to undress her. He would never understand about the stretch marks, or the scars where she's been cut open to have babies pulled out. How could anybody else ever love this body? It's too imperfect. Too many flaws caused by too many years of living.
Intellectually, of course, she knows that all that is rubbish. She's read The Beauty Myth. She's read Steinem and Friedan and Faludi. She's read them all. But tell that to the thirteen year old girl deep inside who just wants to look perfect. And tell that to the raw little part of her that knows, that now, at 39, she will never look young or anything approaching "perfect" ever again.
So. Almost forty years on this earth, and she is wiser, but no better. No less vulnerable. No less susceptible to believing this society's great lie that women are desirable and valuable only if they are young and without blemish.
I wish this story had a happy ending. I'd like to tell you that she has a moment of blinding revelation and becomes happy and secure with herself and who she is. But she doesn't and I doubt she ever will.
Don't think that this story is special. That this is unique. The tragedy of this story, I fear, is that it is all too common.
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