I am really fed up with the notion that losing weight and staying youthfully beautiful will equate being comfortable in your own skin and deliver a healthy mind, body and spirit. Sorry gals, but life isn’t an Oprah episode. When I was eighteen and 118 pounds and by everyone’s account stunning, I was miserable.
Miserable because boys wouldn’t talk to me and girls hated me. I was excruciatingly lonely. Wherever I went, men would gawk, say lewd things and otherwise treat me as if I was simply an image of a person, devoid of a life, personality and feelings. Being comfortable in my own skin was a foreign illusion. No one knew me, and I felt punished by my appearance. I was pretty and everyone wants to be that, right?
Now, many years, a marriage and four kids later I see a different person in the mirror. That young girl with the flat stomach and flawless skin is disappearing. Wrinkles, grey hair and a body that perfectly illustrates Newton’s law of gravity have replaced her. Now my culture wants to punish me for my appearance. No one wants to get old and ugly, right?
But this girl smiles more. I have a couple of true friends and a growing network that supports me professionally and emotionally. I dare say that the softness and age makes me a better person, mother, wife and friend. I have accomplished a lot so far and I like to think the best is still yet to come.
This body that creates and crafts art, tends to the people I love, that loves a good man expertly, that carried, birthed and nourished four babies is simply the physical representation of me. It doesn’t define me. If it doesn’t conform to some man-made definition of beauty, that’s fine by me, nature takes its course on us all, and understanding that delivers a healthy mind, body and spirit. I only wish my eighteen year old self could have seen this, she may have been happier.
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