Loving Your Body: Why it Matters |
I believe that learning to love and accept our bodies is one of the greatest issues facing women today: I have yet to meet a woman who is unaffected by body image "stuff." And while body bashing manifests as a physical issue, I believe that it is, at its core, a spiritual one: a drive for perfection, rooted in a fear of unworthiness. Bashing our bodies for being imperfect -- fat, flabby, wrinkled, grey, stretch marked -- isn't really about our bodies. We see ourselves as imperfect, and therefore, unacceptable. Our bodies, because they're the part of ourselves that is most visible to the world, are simply the most convenient scapegoat: the outer target of our inner critic.
My husband, playing devil's advocate, asked me an interesting question the other day: Who cares if women love their bodies? Why does it matter? Granted, this comes from a person who has never struggled with food or body issues. But his question is a good one: Why does it matter?
Here's why it matters: Body hatred affects everyone around us, not just ourselves. It trickles down in insidious ways: seven year old girls who think they need to lose weight, or teens whose focus is not on figuring out what they want to do with their lives, but rather on how they can emulate the latest celebrity. Yes, those are direct consequences of our collective body bashing. Every 3rd grader on a diet? That's my fault, and your’s.
But body hatred also trickles down like this: You're bitchy and irritable (often because you're on a diet, and hungry) or you're sad and depressed (your self esteem is shot since you gained fifteen pounds) so you snap at your daughter, overreacting. Or you gossip about your thin, beautiful neighbor, because you're jealous of her ease with her body. Or you refrain from going to a job interview because you're scared: you don't feel confident enough in your appearance to go.
Body bashing keeps us stuck. It keeps us anxious, and unconfident, believing we're never good enough. It keeps us stressed, where everything is a possible trigger: magazines, TV shows, parties, holidays, family get-togethers. We exhaust ourselves with comparisons: comparing our bodies to other women's'; comparing our bodies to our own (If only I could look like I did ten years/twenty pounds ago.)
Loving our bodies matters because we can't hate our bodies and love ourselves. We are holistic creatures. We are comprised of body, mind, and spirit. They are not as separate as we might think: what we think about one part of ourselves seeps into the others.
But, even more importantly, here's why body acceptance matters: I can't be the woman, mother, wife, daughter, friend, or person I wish to be if I am consumed with thoughts about my body. You can't be the woman, mother, wife, daughter, friend, or person you wish to be if you are consumed with thoughts about your body. Multiply this factor by the millions of women who dislike their bodies---and according to recent surveys by Dove, it's nearly all of us---and what do you have? Generations of women who are trapped; their dreams, passions and deepest desires on hold; women who are unable to offer their talents to a world that needs their help.
Ladies, the world needs our healing. If you think the world would be a better place if more women ran it, think about how we could run it if we devoted all the time, energy, and money we devote towards fixing our bodies into fixing the world.
I remember my personal epiphany: I had just turned 30, and realized that I had spent the last decade trying to regain the super-skinny body I had as a bulimic 19 year old. I thought that if only I ate really, really healthy food, I could have that skinny body again. Nope. The only way I could be that skinny again was if I starved myself, which I wasn't willing to do.
So I surrendered. I released my body war. I prayed and asked God to remove my desire to be skinny. And I prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed. My transformation didn't occur overnight. Like everyone, I am a work in progress. But that step was the first in reclaiming my life: releasing the shackles that kept me trapped, imprisoned by the false belief that life would begin once I finally lost ten pounds.
Now I am free and clear to do the work that I was born to do: encouraging women. I am free and clear to connect with women, my children, my family and with the world. I am free and clear to dive into myself, to be the best me that I can be, without fear; to love and accept all parts of myself, without judgment.
Learning to love our bodies is serious business. Its effects are profound, and far reaching. It may be some of the most important work that you do. It is some of the most important work that I have done.
Love your body; change your life. Love your body; change the world.
Love your body: it matters. |
Karly Randolph Pitman |
| About the author: |
| Karly Randolph Pitman is the founder of First Ourselves, whose mission is to help women love their bodies, feel beautiful, and make self care their top priority. A recovered Mommy Martyr (a woman who put everyone else's needs before her own), Karly nurtures herself with running, reading, Netflix, and girlfriend talks. She is the mother of four, the wife of one, and lives in the mountains of Montana.
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