Enough Is Enough

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
Anna Quindlen


Yesterday a friend sent me a link to a post on another blog.  It was all about a woman having her 33rd birthday and her struggles with body image.  As I sat and read it, I couldn't help but think that somehow our minds are all wired the same, whacked.

I know women who are "bigger" and they are perfectly ok with it.  I mean, they work it and have self-confidence.  They wear clothes that hug their bodies and post pictures of their less than perfect selves and are really proud.  I envy them.  Somehow, they have missed the memo that if we are not a size 2 we are less than perfect.  Heck, even if we are a size 2, we should find fault.  Another friend put a status about a tv commercial in her town that said, "if you are tired of being larger than a size 6, come see us for liposuction" (I'm paraphrasing that, as I can't remember the exact ad).  Size 6?  Really?  Anything larger requires plastic surgery?  That's just wrong.

Many of the comments on the blog yesterday spoke of similar feelings and how they were trying so hard not to pass on these body image issues to their young daughters.  I struggle with this.  My mom was a huge part of why I never feel thin enough.  I remember being in a bathing suit when I was 18.  I weighed 110 lbs and was 5'4 and she asked me if I was pregnant.  I could never be thin enough.  In retrospect, I ate so little back then that I was probably bloated like the emaciated people we see on tv.  My body type is just the kind that will never have a six pack stomach.  My stomach was never "fat" but it was never "ripped" and I could not just embrace that.  I wanted a super model's stomach.

My daughter has my body.  I encourage her to wear a bikini.  She is a dancer and has bigger legs than I ever did and I encourage her to embrace them and appreciate their strength.  When I look at her I see an amazing, beautiful girl with the perfect body.  I was thinner than her at that age and all I ever saw was disgusting fat.  I have to check myself alot.  My daughter loves to eat and I find myself getting nutso when she's eating more than she should.  I hear my mother's voice and it makes me cringe.  I do not want her to be obsessed with her weight.  It will never be the right number.

As I read this woman's blog yesterday, I wished I knew at 33 what I know a decade later.  It really is not just me.  I wish I had embraced my body and loved it and focused on what was good about it instead of finding EVERY little fault.  I wish I had known the battle was only going to get harder, that the disgust was only going to increase.  I wish that I had known that men love a WOMAN'S body, not a 10 year old child's body.  My hips are my nemesis, they are my husband's favorite body part.  I showed him a picture on my Pinterest of a butt that I was "going to have if it killed me," he told me it looked like a "dude's" and he would hate it (Thank God because even if I had a surgically implanted "starter" butt I don't think I could have that one!).  He loves a woman's softness and curves.  He loves that I work out and keep fit but it is me, not him, who is coveting the bodies I see all over the media.

When will this end and why are we all like this?  Is it the media shoving air-brushed images down our throats?  Is it society freaking us out that we are an obese nation so that must mean all of us?  Is it the drive to be perfect and not age?  Never before has a generation fought so hard to look younger.  Women just aged in generations past.  There were no creams and magic potions.  Only movie stars and the super rich had plastic surgery.  Now we can set up a payment plan and fix anything we don't like in an afternoon.

I don't know the answers but I know I'm exhausted.  I don't want to look back at 53 and say, "gee, I wish I had loved my body at 43 because it was a whole lot better than this one!"  I'm turning over a new leaf.  I'm going to love my body and love myself.  I'm going to exercise and give myself healthy foods because it's the right thing to do to get this body to carry me comfortably into old age, not because I want to be skinny.  If I fall off track by accident or by intention I am cutting myself slack for it.  I'm going to worry more about the life I live rather than how I look living it.