it’s my body
During this morning’s daily ritual of running into my roommate’s room to show her my outfit and ask her opinion and approval, right after she declared it’s fashion ability, she looked at me weird and calmly stated, “Your upper body is so small it’s annoying.” I laughed and asked her to repeat herself. “I wish I had your boobs,” she added as well.
“Well I wish I had your legs, so don’t worry!” I replied. Then we spoke about how if we could somehow put our two body types together, I’m sure at some point, we’d find something else to hate about them. Without doubt, this got me thinking about women and our obsession with finding the perfect body. Whether it’s in the body parts of our friends, the models in magazines or our favourite celebrities. Why aren’t we just content with what we’re dealt at birth?
I have a very Italian pear shaped body. And my roommate’s right, I’m very grateful for my small chest and torso as I can squeeze myself into things you wouldn’t believe for the amount of weight the scale tells me I am, but somehow, when looking in a mirror, I find my eyes trailing down to my thighs and knees. There’s just too much there I often tell myself. So I run, kind of; do spinning; now, I’ve started kickboxing; participated in Boot Camp; Pilates; yoga; swimming – etcetera, etcetera. The problem? The torso keeps getting smaller and those thighs never seem to fade. I know the rules of weight loss and muscle management. I know butt and boobs are first to go but the frustrating thing is how long it takes to get it off and all I have to do is go on vacation for a week and pretty much three months of hard work goes down the drain.
So why can’t we just be happy with what we’ve got? How come right after my roommate complimented my upper body, I immediately shifted conversation over to the things I hate about it? This got me to thinking about how we interpret compliments and our self body image and how we think others perceive us. At times, I can half-heartedly complain about my severe lack of breasts, but if there is a time that I’m wearing a bit of a cleavage-bearing top, I feel extremely self-conscious. I’m not used to people looking at my chest and not my eyes – it’s like nothing will ever make us happy. Although I don’t think I’d ever want to be the type of person who actually enjoyed someone staring at my chest instead of my eyes, but that’s another story.
All of this made me realize that although I love my body about a hundred times more than I ever did while hitting puberty, and while celebrity junk food news and idealistic, ridiculous fawning over plastic surgery Barbie faces (ramble!) has become the norm for today’s teenagers to look up to, there’s still something off with what I see when I look at myself in the mirror – and I don’t think I’m alone in that department.
How do we change this self imposed body image we have on ourselves? How can we just love what your momma gave you? How do you do it?
It’s not easy, especially when you rarely ever see a larger girl on screen, unless she’s playing the token fat chick.
I’ve also found that with my European upbringing that if I got a bit too confident, a close family member was waiting in the wings to knock me back to humbleville. I feel like nowadays people are so concerned with being seen as arrogant that taking a compliment is next to impossible.
I’ve tried to employ some confidence boosting mantras lately and now tell myself that if someone hands me a compliment, accept it, embrace it and most importantly believe. Unless, she’s Regina George.
I’ve definitely been there! It’s hard having a certain confidence in yourself when you just know someone is always on the sidelines, ready to knock you down.
I guess that’s part of the “coming out on top” and just believing in yourself no matter what others say. Because it’s really the other person’s problem if they are so concerned with other people’s body – and then ultimately, it’s them with the confidence problem.
I mean, even Regina George just wanted to be liked, in the end.