I was recently perusing the world wide webs when I came across an article entitled “7 Things To Look At When You Feel Bad About Your Body“. I encourage everyone to go read it now. Right this minute and then come back here…Go ahead…I’ll wait… (Warning: Contains bodies, in various forms and fashions)

Okay, so in case you didn’t click around the links like I did, let me provide the rest of Colleen Clark’s illustration for you:

What I liked so much about this post was that it illustrated the complex relationship that we all have with our bodies. Every single person on this planet has some issue with their body and to them, it is really important. What one person considers “fit”, is another person’s “fat”, what one person considers attractive another is repulsed by. If we choose to live that awful life of comparison, we will never fully appreciate who we are; all of us, from the rooter to the tooter, the good, the bad, and the weird. We will never be happy because someone will always be a more ideal version of who we could be; thinner, taller, smaller, tanner, paler, blonder, darker, younger, older, etc…Colleen’s closing sentence is the one that resonates most with me, “You have a body. It’s not the only thing you have”.

I keep hearing words people use to describe themselves, fat, curvy, skinny, tall, white, black, blonde, etc... We are many things, all at once, we are not ever solely any one of those. We do have fat (all of us, in varying quantities), we can be tall or short (maybe both, in different situations), white, black (or both, or neither), but no matter what we are not just any one of these. They are only a small fraction of what makes each one of us who we are. To allow emphasis on any singular part is neglecting to appreciate the complexities of all that we are. I really enjoyed Mary Lambert’s body positive message. She eloquently declared that she is a complex person with many wonderful facets, she is not ever just one thing. 

Now, maybe society/friends/family/etc place value or importance on a certain aspect of you but that honestly says more about them than it does about you (it really does, especially from a psychoanalytical perspective). I have to admit, I have the good fortune of having parents who really placed no premium of importance on the physical appearance of my body. My brain was what they valued. My parents are not people who place importance on physical appearance or materialistic trappings so my self-esteem and self-worth were never based upon such things. Only now am I able to fully appreciate the importance of that and how much that probably prevented me from falling into the labyrinth of self loathing that so many people spend so much of their life in. I have never allowed any negative external noise to penetrate my self worth. How could anyone ever tell me how to feel about myself? That makes no sense! I know myself better than anyone! But yet, people do, all the time. People allow the poison of others opinions destroy them and it saddens me that people can be so hurtful to another person, especially a family member, or a friend, or even a stranger. (Now “society” as whole, is a completely different issue altogether with varying motives for attempting to influence our body issues, self esteem, and self worth but that rant I will save for another day)

What I hope people get from this article, the illustration, this blog, and everything in between is that we are not alone in our body struggles. There is no “secret happy life” that you are so close to having if you just slimmed down, fattened up, grew an inch, shrunk an inch, had bigger boobs, had smaller boobs, smaller feet, bigger butts, we all have some body battle we are fighting daily so the best that we can do, to live this life we have and love the life we live, is to better arm ourselves for that battle. My own personal armor, that I carry with me daily, is a quote from Audre Lorde “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”