Trying to Get my Mojo Back, Part 3

It’s no surprise to anyone who knows me: I have body issues.

As a teen, I absorbed all of the toxic messaging of the 80’s and 90’s, with its hyper-focus on BMI, the “obesity epidemic,” and how many calories were in fats versus carbs and proteins. I remember looking around my high school classes, and realizing that there was only 1 girl heavier than me. And once I got to college, surrounded by college sorority girls, I was told that I was cute, but I was never told that I was beautiful. It was clear to me that college girls were hot. I was not. I was smart, competent, reliable, available. I was not hot.

And then…a career teaching high school has me surrounded by girls at the fetishized age. I am surrounded always by 16 year old girls, before childbirth and life and menopause destroys their abs and draws lines down their legs and wrinkles their decolletage. Surrounded by the “perfect female form” that is not even yet an adult.

In my teens and twenties, I used to define myself by the male (and female) gaze. Only if I could get that slight smile, that look up and down followed by a narrowing of the eyes and a quick jerk up with the chin —an unspoken but clearly communicated “whassup” of approval— only then did I know that I was attractive. But that kind of neediness and reliance on others was harmful —is harmful— not only to me, but also to my relationships. Needing approval from others who will always eventually desire someone else smaller, firmer, younger —it’s toxic. And it’s just fucking wrong. 

My physical attractiveness has fuckall to do with the gazes of others.

Our collective obsession with thin and fit and even curvy* has moralized weight, as if those who are thin and fit (and curvy*) are deserving of their size because they’ve worked hard for it, while the rest of us clearly are gluttonous, lazy, self-indulgent piles of lard.

But thin people aren’t more virtuous because they are thin. They don’t work harder. They don’t eat less. They don’t deserve more admiration because they won the genetic lottery. Thin people are thin because they are predisposed to being thin. They are not morally superior. And they are not more beautiful.

It’s taken me 49 years of never being thin enough —never being fit enough— and a summer of listening to the podcast Maintenance Phase and realizing how much of the toxic messaging I have absorbed in my lifetime…it’s taken me 49 years to say the quiet part out loud: What if this is the size that I am for the rest of my life? What if I am never again a size 12? How do I figure out how to look in the mirror and see a beautiful woman looking back at me?

So that’s part 3 of trying to get my mojo back: trying to remember what it’s like to feel attractive, and to finally know that I am beautiful. But instead of relying on the compliments of others, the number on the scale or the number on the back of my jeans, I want to find other ways to measure. 

Photo by Aleksander Vlad on Unsplash

I want to slowly run again, working intervals into a daily routine, moving because it feels good to move. I want to climb the stairs and feel powerful instead of winded. To feel the muscles in my thighs working, the strength in my calves, the tendons and ligaments working together in strength. 

I want to increase my lung capacity and lower my resting heart rate. I want to stretch and find flexibility instead of judgment in my movement.

But most importantly, instead of finding approval in the gazes of others, I want to find it in my own gaze. I want to look myself up and down, a slight narrowing of my eyes. A Mona Lisa smile smiling back at me. A slight nod of the chin. 

An unspoken energy vibrating in the air. 

“Whassup, girl. You look good.”

*Curvy = bigger, but still without rolls or wrinkles. Like J. Lo or Beyonce.