(This blog is dedicated to the women of O-Squad and especially to the women of my team. Every last one of you is so beautiful and lovely.)
I’ve been thinking about my weight a lot lately. I’ve never ever been a girl who really gives much thought to my weight though. In fact I don’t even own a scale so I only weigh myself about once a year and even then, I usually just shrug and forget the number almost immediately. But lately I’ve had lots of thoughts about my weight, primarily because every girl on my team and my squad has had lots of thoughts about their weight, too.
One thing that seems to happen unavoidably on the Race is that women gain a few pounds and men lose a few pounds. It seems entirely unfair and twisted that in the midst of battling homesickness, struggling with the injustices of poverty, and learning some really hard lessons, women also have to fight to fit into their one pair of jeans no matter how much P90X they do but meanwhile, men slim down and tone up with little to no effort.
(4th of July in Nairobi, Kenya)
I’ve watched a good amount of women on my squad experience some distinct physical changes, particularly in their waistlines or under their arms or around their thighs. But while their bodies seem to stretch and expand beyond their control, mine has stayed pretty much the same size. I know it seems unfair to them, and I wouldn’t blame them if they resented me because it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. The thing is, my whole life I’ve been the skinny girl.
It was in middle school when people first started getting self-conscious and insecure about these things. Many of my friends were just starting their battles with midriffs and skinny jeans, but I remained effortlessly skinny. So when girls would confess insecurities about their weight, I usually had nothing to contribute to the conversation. I was the girl who ate tubs of ice cream and whole bags of chips and never gained even a pound, so it was probably best that I didn’t make a comment while they all talked about their latest diet ideas or their pre-prom work out regiments.
The constant conversations about body image continued into high school, and before long, I began to question my own confidence. I guess being around so much self-hatred made me think twice about feeling even remotely content with the way I looked. If everyone else found something on their body to hate, it seemed expected that I, too, find something to hate about the way I looked. The ironic thing though, was that everyone around me felt insecure for being “overweight”, yet I found myself feeling insecure for being “underweight”.
No matter what size we were, what kind of curves we had or didn’t have, each of us found some reason to be self-deprecating because of how we looked. Whether we were big or small or somewhere in between, each of us had the same struggle: when we looked in mirrors, we were disappointed by the body looking back at us. We cried in dressing rooms and got anxiety about swimsuit season and spent way too much time reading Vogue magazine, looking at Photoshop’d models whose beauty was always just out of reach.
My friends kept telling themselves that if they could just be skinny like me, then they would be forever happy and content. They would finally get a boy friend or be Homecoming Queen or whatever, because the number on the scale was what was keeping them from accomplishing those things. If they could just slim down to that particular size, if they could just fit into that certain type of dress, then all things would align. Their life could begin, as soon as they dropped to a certain weight.
But then there was me. I was telling myself if I could just put on a few pounds in certain places, then I would be beautiful like them. I would finally feel pretty or beautiful or sexy or whatever it is that those other, non-skinny girls felt when they looked in the mirrors.
What my friends and I didn’t seem to realize is that happiness and confidence is not inherent once a woman weighs a certain amount. There’s no magic number on the scale that causes some atmospheric shift that makes fireworks go off and banners unroll and trumpets announce that your time has finally arrived. My friends and I, we convinced ourselves that attaining some specific body type was the key to making life happen and until we attained that body type, we’d simply be waiting around, missing opportunities, and watching life slide right on by while we remained trapped in a body that seemed to grossly misrepresent the beauty we so eagerly wanted people to notice about us.
But at a certain point, some where between the end of high school and the beginning of college, I realized how exhausting it was to hate the way I looked. So I finally came to terms with my body. I made peace with the way I was created, and I accepted the things I can’t change about myself. I started to look in the mirror and appreciate the body staring back at me. I began to take better care of myself, and stopped feeding my body poison, both physically and mentally. I found contentment, and that contentment made me confident, and that confidence made me feel truly, unconditionally beautiful.
It might seem absurd that a skinny girl had to find contentment with her body, but that’s what I’m telling you. I’m confessing that I haven’t always liked the way I look so I, too, know what it feels like to stand in front of a mirror and hate what I see. I, too, have had mornings where I try on a dozen outfits before I settle on something because I feel ugly in everything else. I, too, have convinced myself that probably no one of the opposite sex finds me attractive at all. Just because I’m skinny doesn’t mean I’m innately immune to insecurity.
Regardless of body type or hair color or height, it seems that there is a universal struggle with insecurity. For some reason, we’re just never satisfied with who we are.
But I’m writing this confession, I suppose you could call it, because I want things to be different. Instead of letting ourselves be consumed by self-loathing and obsessive attention to every “flaw” on our body, I want us, as women, to rise up and revolt against the temptation to believe we are ugly.
I want us to all quit buying in to the fabricated belief that we are not good enough, that we are not pretty enough, that no one will ever love us. I want us to quit telling ourselves that happiness and beauty and confidence can only be achieved by a certain number on the scale.
Beauty is not determined by our bodies. It starts first in our minds, with the choice to believe that we are holy creations made with intricacy and designed to be remarkable. We are more than a number on a scale. We are more than a size on a tag. It’s time we start taking better care of ourselves, and this starts with the way we talk about our bodies and talk to our bodies. Happiness will not magically begin when you look a certain way. It begins when you find peace about who you are and how you look.
So this is my confession and this is my charge. Let’s make peace with the way we look, because the world is waiting, literally, for women to stand up with confidence and self-respect and demand that things be different. It’s time to stop objectifying and stop being objectified. It’s time to start looking in the mirror and knowing, with unshakable confidence, that the woman staring back is beautiful.
“You are altogether beautiful, my darling,” says the Lord, “and it’s time you start believing that.”
“But what I found is that there is no such thing as skinny enough. There is no magic number that can make you feel safe or protected or confident. That, I found, was an entirely different thing – a belief, a decision, something – but not a number.” –Cold Tangerines, p 64
