Over the past few months, my relationship with my body has come into sharp focus. I’m a bigger person. Most typical clothing stores don’t sell pants that fit thighs like mine and I often have to return online purchases in the largest available sizes.
However.
I like my body. I think my large thighs wide hips tapered waist and firm calves are sexy. I like how I look in dresses, pants, t-shirts, and button-ups. I like the hair under my arms and the much patchier hair dotting my shins and calves. I like my moles and the constellations they form over my arms and chest. I like my hands, which are often stained with the green and blue of various gel ink formulations. I like my nose piercings and the way dangly earrings frame my face. I like how my tattoos complement my anatomy and even how they change as my body changes. I remember the day I developed a stretch mark through the tattoo on my abdomen. I was crestfallen. I tried to reverse the damage to my precious ink using healing lotions and ointments and oils, anything to bring back the sharp, powerful borders of the black labyrinth over my ribs. After months, maybe years, I grew to love this augmentation to my body art. I feel the extension of my consciousness through my body, like a great library of my clumsiness and resilience. Scars are much more powerful than I had ever seen them to be.
I like bodies like mine. I desire people with bodies like mine.
But. Self-love doesn’t erase the silent looks in my direction whenever my peers discuss working with larger patients. It doesn’t erase the sidelong looks when a professor discusses obesity. It doesn’t erase the overwhelming nausea and cold sweat that overtake me when my friends encourage me to come to the gym with them.
Despite my every hope and aspiration, my body is not yet my own. It is co-owned by many, many people. My first girlfriend, who was nearly a foot shorter than me and so much smaller than me we couldn’t comfortably hold hands. The first woman I slept with, the memory of whose freckles still bring me to tears. My mother, whose own mother still owns a share of each of us. My father, whose eyes were never brighter than when I was playing football. My first boyfriend, who had no right to a heart like mine, and never made an effort to enter it. My childhood friends, who never let me be the fair maiden in our games of make-believe. The many men and women whose eyes and hands and lips traced the shape of me over the years. Even my sister, who I hope understands that it's not her fault that her love sometimes hurts. And, unfortunately, my loving partner. Your name is on the lease my darling, but I can’t let you sign the deed.
My body, along with the hair and fat and skin and ink, comes with baggage. When I look in the mirror I see a canvas for art and love and creativity. Yet when I see myself in pictures captured by friends and peers, I see a gestalt image of what through context clues, must be me. I know that this experience is not unique, or even uncommon. The body is an interesting case of the perceiver being the perceived. The integration of many signals such as interoception, nociception, even peripheral vision, and olfaction, results in the generation of this self-image. Our self-perception is always incomplete because there are simply parts of the body that we don’t often see or feel or smell or touch. The width of my rib cage is not something that I am conscious of unless I am actively surveying this bodyscape using mirrors or hands or the stretch of fabric. My feet occupy an amount of space that allows me to maintain stability in a bipedal posture. I do not often think about the size and shape of my feet. Until I’m looking at the wall of hundreds of shelves containing perhaps a half dozen articles in my size. These external rules for the size and shape of a woman’s body are not compatible with the unaided senses by which we understand and visualize the body.
I want to disentangle my body image from the external standards for what my form should be. I do not believe there is a platonic ideal of the human form, no Vitruvian man which I strive to emulate. I want my body to serve me. I am young, and I recognize that this journey will take time, space, and work. I am hopeful that practicing yoga and meditation will support the melding of my spirit and body. It feels good to breathe with intention. I already partake in daily journaling, but I may take up a more intentional body journal, which will allow me to understand the thought patterns that leave me feeling disillusioned and depressed. I love playing sports, I love feeling my body work for me, so I want to find a space where I feel that in a way that doesn’t feel polluted by shame and fear. I want to try going to the gym, attending an actual yoga class, and dancing without thinking about how different my body is from those around me.
I want to feel like me. To see myself how I feel myself. To show myself the grace and love that I deserve.
I want to smile and laugh and sing without pause.
I want to be me.