Not My Vessel

The body is political. Whether it is around skin color, reproductive rights, health care choices, school lunches, food stamps, pesticide use, sexual assault or capitalism's way of telling us how we are supposed to age or what we should wear or how thin we should be, we simply cannot separate the personal from the political when it comes to our bodies. Like every woman I know I have struggled most of my life with body image. And to be honest, it's one of the few topics in therapy that I struggle with when it comes up with the women I work with, which it inevitably does. I seem to always exhaust any constructive feedback I might have about the issue and confirming that "yes, I totally get it. I struggle with the same things". The system is against us in this case. Let's talk about shifting those narratives and reinforcing the positive experiences you do have in your body" can only get us so far. I consider it a real tragedy and one that created by patriarchal systems as a means to control women by distraction, demoralization, commodification. It's shocking how easily we all got pulled into it and it is damn hard to do anything about it. Smart, strong, defiant women old and young still struggle with comparison, competition, obsession over their physical appearance. We spend truly unbelievable amounts of time thinking about it and ridiculous sums of money to fix or improve it, take wild risks with potentially dangerous side effects to change it so that it better matches cultural preferences. What an incredible waste.

When I was younger I didn't think too much about my body. I thought it was because I was confident and too smart to fall for that trap. As I started to get older though I realized with a certain embarrassment that actually the reason I hadn't struggled with horrible self esteem was because my body fit pretty well into an acceptable social standard. That doesn't mean there weren't things about it I didn't like, just that the whole generally checked out and didn't face a lot of criticism or scrutiny. But I grew up in New York, a notoriously image first place and have a gay father who noticed and cared about bodies in a way common among gay men so I was never unaware of how to way we look effects the way we are treated. Even as a teen though, I rejected the more obvious expectations and standards of how to dress. I thrifted and didn't really care how well something fit. Then I got super goth and didn't veer for years from a purely black wardrobe. As I aged of course things changed. Two pregnancies, a pandemic which limited everyone but the most diehard athlete's ability to get exercise and then perimenopause all had their own impacts on my shape and size. As did stress. And all these in turn changed what I wore both based on practicality and on appearance.

I don't like to exercise. Never have. I hated PE growing up and had never found a single physical activity that brought me joy or satisfaction except the occasional swim in idilic conditions or going dancing in my 20's, something I decided I was no longer allowed to do once I hit my 30's. But desperation for relief from anxiety and the gentle persistent message from my doctor that I kinda needed to do "something" in order to keep my heart healthy brought me to yoga at 48. At the time it wasn't a desire to change my body that was compelling, though I was heavier than I was used to. It was a need to control my own body and life. It was both escape and a movement towards something. It was the idea that increased balance and strength could be possible in a body that I felt decidedly disconnected from. I couldn't trace back when the disconnect started or whether it had always existed. I took for granted the way things usually did what they were supposed to do on the inside and tried not to think about the outside too much. But of course that's impossible in this day and age so at some point I think I just separated from being particularly conscious of it at all, at least to the best of my ability. Eventually though I realized I was missing out on something. That other people, even other women, seemed to be embodied in a way I wasn't or at least they seemed to be. I'm still not sure which. That there was appreciation and pleasure to be found within these arbitrary vessels we were poured into.

Spoiler alert, I'm not doing yoga right now. Two moves took me further and further from studios with classes that fit my schedule or teaching style and I was done. I tried at first not to give up but eventually I succumbed to passivity, my familiar baseline when it comes to movement. Hopefully I'll return to it because very surprisingly, after overcoming feeling totally discombobulated, inflexible and self conscious, I started to love it. I loved it in a way that was liberating and powerful. I pushed myself in a way that I never had before and was pleasantly surprised that my body showed up to task. It started to change form pretty quickly. And this is actually where things started to get complicated because this is when I started to shift my attention more to how I looked than how I felt. Discovering muscles that I didn't know existed, seeing tone and definition where there formerly was softness and yes, losing weight, started to feel intoxicating, addictive. But the thing that stood out for me most was what I wasn't thinking about. I wasn't thinking about my weight or my size in clothes or how they fit or if my husband was more attracted to younger women. I wasn't avoiding mirrors or looking at myself in them only with judgement and shame. I am not proud of this. Not at all. But I understood rather dramatically then how much I had indeed been thinking about those things before. It seems that I wasn't nearly the feminist I thought I was.

There's no one way to change your relationship with your body. Yoga helped me temporarily and I'm grateful for that. I really needed it at the time and it taught me a lot and there are practices I definitely want to return to. But not only is doing hot or power yoga 5 days a week and eating excessively healthy not sustainable for me long term, it doesn't get at the real issue. That part seems so incredibly hard to reach. I'm not overly ambitious here. I will never be someone who really believes that every wrinkle is earned, every stretch mark the beautiful tiger stripe of a goddess and it's highly likely I will never be into ecstatic dance. When I work with clients on the same issue that's not the goal. We don't arrive at self love or respect, we work on it. Every day. Having rough days with how we perceive ourselves or how much time we spend thinking about it is part of that. It doesn't make us vain. It makes us survivors of a really messed up system that fights every day to take what belongs to us. What no one else has the right to comment on. I wish it were easier to really believe that rather than just knowing it in the intellectual sense. It breaks my heart how much of my life and the lives of so many women I know has been influenced by my understanding of how I'm supposed to look. Especially when we have so much else going for us.

When I think about self esteem I think about alignment of values with behaviors. Generally those with higher self esteem are living their lives in a way in which their actions match up with their morals. I love fashion and I love playing with clothes and makeup. That is a fun, creative form of play and expression to me. That part I want to keep. It lines up with my values of being an independent person with her own style. What I don't want to keep is caring how other people respond to that. I also don't want to keep any part of that that is a product of trying to look a certain age or sit at a certain weight because those things don't. I love massaging oil into my hair or skin because it has become a ritual of care that feels nourishing to me and somehow tender and precious. I try to reject that part that also hopes my face or locks will look glowy or glasslike to use the terms that are so popular right now. Strangely enough the opposite of the matte look that we all wanted when I was younger and the terror I felt of letting products that weren't oil free anywhere near me. Yet another trend that directs our choices on what to buy in case anyone was still confused on how capitalism and sexism work to control us. From thin eyebrows to full bold ones, skinny jeans to wide leg ones, high rise or low rise, it's everywhere. And don't get me started on branding.

Sigh. It's hard work. And each age we reach seems to have another lesson to offer. Some are easier than others. I decided to stop coloring my hair about 6 months ago and genuinely love my grey. Does it make me look older (as in the age I actually am)? Sure. But no one who is over 50 has no grey hair and it started striking me as ridiculous that we try to pretend we do. I'm not saying it's wrong to color your grays. Do whatever feels right to you. If you have ever seen me you know that I'm covered in art and not one to reject bodily autonomy. This was just one of the more apparent ways for me that my choices and values weren't in alignment. These little gestures are the ones that seem to help me move forward in my progress in making my relationship with my body a little kinder, a little less overbearing and hostile. It is both easier and harder for me here in Australia. On one hand where I am people really value health and fitness and wearing a bikini to the grocery store is not uncommon. Not me good lord, but others. On the other hand, no one here knows me or seems to care what I look like. It's an interesting experiment for me to think about how much the way I chose to dress or look back in the US was influenced by who I knew that might see or comment on it. It is different after all, to wear something cute knowing it won't be liked online or appreciated by your partner, clients or friends. To truly wear it only because you like it and the way it feels. So while I still love getting dressed here, I do find myself accepting that once again I am wearing a tank top shorts and flip flops and not an outfit that sparks joy. Doing so does make my light feel a little dimmer but not actually that much. Not as much as I would have expected. Which I think means I'm honing in on what self acceptance really is.

I wish for more for young women. More turning and trusting inward and less looking for validation and approval or praise or admiration from outward. And I know it's a tremendous ask given how powerful all the messaging is. How impossible it sometimes seems for women to ever be released from it. How it seems like with social media being what it is, it's getting worse instead of better no matter what advancements we may think we have made in other areas. I'm not going to tell you that you are beautiful. Even if you accepted it for a moment, even if it feels good to hear it, it won't last. It's just not that easy. And the more we depend on that the easier it is to stop trying to find it where it really lives. Inside. Inside our head and our heart where belief lives. I'm not saying we shouldn't say it to each other because we should. We should say it when someone made the effort and when they didn't and we should also say it in regards to every other beautiful and damn awesome thing about them. Maybe if we get it from all directions, in and out, self and others, it will start to sink in. Until then, go easy on yourself when you feel down. It's not your fault. Just don't let yourself stay there too long, please. The world needs all of you.