How I Learned to Love my Body

I have never liked having curves.  I felt awkward enough in a child’s body.  I fell asleep one night and woke up with hips the next day. I had to buy WAY bigger clothes... it felt like I turned into an ant. I used to be lanky, and now I had a Giant Thorax or something. I don't think I learned how to maneuver my body through the world with curves until I was well into my twenties.  I had the bruises on my hipbones as proof.

So recently, while  cruising the net, I ran across an article that talked about “the perfect  waist-hip ratio” for attraction. I was shocked to find that my unwieldy curves were awfully close. That being said, I was both comforted and affronted that I had made it into my thirties before finding proof that convinced my brain that I am at an “attractive ratio”. I had been assured by boyfriends and friends, but still never really accepted my shape.

I have in the past caught my reflection in a window without realizing it was me, and been envious of the figure I saw out of the corner of my eye. Once recognition struck, the feeling of envy disappeared and again I could see the flaws that invariably snuck into my brain. I was accepting of my body and mildly appreciative of its usefulness, but that was the extent of my positive feelings towards it. It had occurred to me over the years that I really ought to love my body more. But we are also taught that really loving your body is self-centered, egotistical, and all in all, not a desirable trait in human being. We are given these lofty airbrushed examples of how to look yet we are rarely guided on how to truly appreciate the bodies we have.   My mother attempted to assure me that I was perfectly normal, but of course she was a biased source.  

I didn’t find an actual level of appreciation for my body until I started to pursue fitness. I hired a personal trainer for my 30^th birthday, out of an ego-driven desire to look better at thirty than I had at twenty.  Already somewhat fit, my body did not change dramatically. What did change was the huge confidence boost I was given by challenging it to do things that I never thought it could.  As I grew to appreciate the strides I made with my work-outs, I in turn learned to appreciate what an amazing thing the body, MY body, really is. I would go so far as to say I learned to love it.

Learning to love those curves!

Can you imagine a world where all girls step into womanhood with a sense of confidence in their capabilities,  and pride in what their bodies are capable of?  I was never an athletic child, but had someone offered me more choices for fitness that didn’t involve embarrassing oneself in front of a crowd, I think I could have reached a level of peace and love with my physical self much sooner in life.

I share my story to encourage mothers especially to challenge their daughters to challenge themselves. To Challenge Women who have not challenged themselves for fear of failure. Attaining a new fitness level is not just about changing your body. Sometimes it’s not about changing your body at all.  It’s about learning to reach a goal, about redefining who you think you are, about finding your limits and surpassing them.  Movement and exercise do not have to be made a part of buying into the ridiculously unattainable standards that print media put forth for our daughters. I have seen many mothers so afraid of getting the wrong message across to their girls that the topic of fitness is avoided altogether, aside from the typical soothing mother words that no daughter takes as unbiased.  We women and mothers of today have an opportunity to change the associations of what fitness means to the next generation of women, and redefine what it means to ours.

We don’t want future generations of women working towards a size, or even a ratio. We want them working towards enjoying the practice of challenging themselves. We want them working towards a feeling of accomplishment, with a healthy body being just one outcome of the effort. Had I not found the emotional and esteem building benefits of pursuing a challenging fitness regime, I would not be who I am today.  I am a stronger, happier, and more confident woman than I have ever been before.  Who doesn’t want that for their daughter?  Encourage your girls, your friends, yourself, to pursue a fitness  goal. You’ll never be the same.