Body Image Confession Time
I'm honestly not sure what made me think of this tonight, but in the shower I had a flashback to a conversation. I'm 13 or 14 years old and at yet another of those team sleepovers. Two of my teammates are twittering, because they know some story or rumor and it involves me and (gasp!) the new, hot, older guy at our gym. I'm trying to play it off, act all cool, like I don't really care what they think of me. Finally they're out with it - this guy said he thought I had the hottest body on the team, but my face wasn't much to look at. I can hear how mean and terrible it is now, and I can recognize what the other girls were doing in the telling of it. In the moment I just worked really hard to pretend that the whole thing was ridiculous and hysterically funny, because really, who would think or say such a thing? But in my head I was already assessing - eyes, pretty good. nose, too big. mouth, a disaster (I had a mouth full of braces and still had one or two oral surgeries in my future). Well, yes, I thought. That makes sense. Gymnastics had turned my flat little pre-pubescent body into solid muscle and minimal fat, so ok, that's what I had going for me. I guess I had better hang on to this body since I'm not pretty enough to pull off anything short of physical perfection from the neck down.
Most days I do ok. The good thing about being an athlete, as I've said a million times before, is that it allows you to focus on all the cool things your body can do and takes away from thinking of your body as just an aesthetically pleasing work of art. And yes, I see how grotesque and screwed up the above story is. Honestly (thankfully) I didn't freak out when puberty gave me boobs and hips and an ass and curves. But in those inevitable moments of critique in front of the mirror, when I just can't resist regretting the size of some part of my body...if I'm being really honest...it's not about that part of my body. It's about worrying that my face isn't pretty enough.
My but we get screwed up early, don't we?
3 Comments:
Oh, honey, that's terrible. Kids are so cruel.
It's so weird to look back, as us now, who often feel completely beautiful and confident, at those people we were, so deeply hurt by the exaggerated, unasked-for opinions of assholes. And yet that pain is still a part of us. Oof.
whew, right there with you on the infrequent-but-intense moment when all the crap from age 14 comes bubbling up to take over.
I've got different fill-in-the-blanks that upset me, but I remember being so decimated by the shape of my body back then.
Actually, now that I stop and think about it, this is the odd detail I remember, circa 7th-8th grade: all the schools were hyper-air conditioned, and my nipples were always hard, and I was waaaaay too embarrassed to wonder if there was a different kind of bra to wear or anything. So I started wearing only shirts that were big enough that I could lean forward and keep the cloth off my chest. I kept that up for years.
Yeah, we do get screwed up early.
Oh, and not to sound like too much of a misogynist, but I can think of a metric ass ton of compliments for your body. As they say in India, "I wouldnt kick *her* out of bed for eating curry...."
~Sid
Post a Comment
<< Home