I will shout this from every social media platform rooftop: the moment I laid my own regular white girl eyes on you, I thought: “he has the kindest most lovely eyes and warm smile I’ve ever seen”. So there’s that.
Love these thoughts. My concern with the app was what horrors for privacy and data collection it might hold. haha
I don't know how to write about my struggles with body. I'm not fat, as in what fat activists would consider fatness, but I'm not thin, as in what is acceptable to the world I have a body in. My doctor's office has a flag for "unhealthy BMI" on my list of issues to check for with every visit, but even by that pseudoscientific bullshit, by any chart I can find online, I'm "normal." I'm in the sort of body that looks like it was meant for thinness, but something went wonky and choices were made and "this is what's wrong with America today." A walking stereotype, here and abroad.
I wish I were thinner, and I wish I didn't have to wish that. I cannot change the inherent biases of the people I am supposed to be "finding." Finding, the ever-constant recommendation to solve all problems. If only I could "find people." People who.... an infinite list promising love and belonging and connection and mental health and companionship and security and spiritual enlightenment. Finding people who don't see my roundness and judge or assume or suggest tips to fix me. There's so many things I would do if I were smaller, I think, if I took up less space. I could be so many things that only thin girls are supposed to be. So I try harder, but never enough. It's genetic, in part, I know, but surely, I can be better, I can earn it, I can win this, my enneagram 3ness tells me it's just enough dedication away, and my 4 wing is drowning in shame. For the cake last night and the pasta I'm about to eat and the years before I eliminated things that wrecked my blood sugar until I had to cut them out.
Shame is the song from the time our mothers first say they don't think we should be seen in public "like that" (not from immodesty, but from our baby fat no longer being cute anymore) and they are just "concerned for our health." From the time our parents bribe us into losing weight by offering to buy us cool, popular girl clothes. From the time we realize the reason the popular girls never let us in. The time we realize why we'll never make the dance team. From the crying in the dressing room when a shopping buddy or family member or salesperson recommends we try on a bikini we are sending heart eyes to, just to see if we like the way we look in it and for the first time, we wish we would die. From the way we self-medicate or are comforted by others with a Dairy Queen Blizzard. Then they judge us for being able to finish it. Or are taught to self-soothe with a drink or chocolate, from the ones we love or from advertising all around us. Then are told we are lazy and stupid for falling for it all, the sign of a degenerate generation, consumers of gluttony, with our twangy accents and chubby faces and bulging jeans symbolic of the worst of humanity. We are too depressed and lonely to make dinner. We microwave something that will inevitably be our shame once again, just to keep ourselves from starving.
So I don't know how to write about my body in a way that has anything inspirational or spiritual to say. I'm a millennial woman, with a childhood made of Happy Meals and sugar in the '90s, a teen of the anorexia-driven 2000s, and survived the diet app 2010s. Born into the try harder, be better, work to win it, no pain no gain, before and after photo, transformation culture... but never escaping.
I needed to hear about self-acceptance so badly today. I have ADHD & OCD. I have a 1 yr old & a 4 yr old who (at teacher & pediatrician rec) is in the process of being tested for his own acronym soup. The one thing that is abundantly clear from all the professionals I encountered is the things my eldest needs most from me are the skills I am very, *very* in weak. If hard work, yearning, workbooks, therapist, or medication could have nurtured those skills in me, I would have them. It’s hard to feel like who I am as a person fails my child. I needed to be challenged to love myself in reality: to love my distracted mind, to have compassion on a mind that ping-pongs between obsession & compulsion. To love the me that isn’t going to be enough for my son. And trust that God can provide in any situation. I’m grateful you decided to overthink about that app & share those thoughts.
I'm a plus size, fat, plump, Rubenesque, ugly...I could go on...woman. My hope is to one day be a person who can ignore the comments, the stares, the hurt that results from all of this. Love? I can't even imagine it! Ugh!
Our culture has many body makeover revenge fantasies that follow brutal breakups. I have noticed over the last two years how afraid I am of accidentally running into my ex-husband when my body has put on weight instead of becoming Revenge Body. That is a place of sorrow, and I think that anxiety has actually led to weight gain because it introduced food restriction and corresponding moments of rebellion-by-binge. Now, for the last two months, I've been unraveling myself from diet culture and the mean morality that often surrounds food, and learning to embrace eating more intuitively along with other forms of being kinder to my body.
Reading your post today sent me back to 7th grade when some very mean girls (who stayed mean throughout high school) called me Ewok because of my big eyes. I have huge eyes that caused me much grief as a kid. At 50, I am only beginning to appreciate them. Love to you and your overthinking because you bring light to so many dark spaces.
Thank you for this. As always, it's beautifully written.
Like many people, I have a number of things I don't particularly like about my body, but one that doesn't often get mentioned in body positivity discourse is skin. I've always had acne (and I'm turning 40 in a few months' time), although it's better than it used to be. And then there are the many visible veins on my extremely pale legs... When I was younger, I never wore short-ish skirts or trousers because of this, but I'm learning to care less and enjoy cute little summer dresses.
It's strange, though, isn't it, how many of us have things we don't like about our bodies, yet often tend to feel like we're the only one.
I don't like my feet for whatever reason yet to be fully known to me. Also, I'm 8 months post-partum from babe2 and it's a whole other kind of body learning and loving (and struggling). Working hard to be grateful this body has grown two daughters, so far kept me alive through a pandemic and continues to move and live.
Also, if you haven't seen a copy of Joanna Ho's recent book "Eyes that kiss in the corners" maybe take a look? Perhaps you would like it?
After pretty much hating my body for most of my life, I have made peace with the miracle that it is. Adults with bad body image, peer ridicule - so many things give us bad messaging. I even stopped listening to my local Christian radio station because they were playing dieting ads all day. My body doesn't conform to Madison Avenue's definition of beautiful, but it is healthy and capable, and God loves me as I am (and sends people to remind me of this all the time), and that is enough.
Thank you for saying this!!! I screamed at the phone when a Taiwanese friend posted pictures of her kids, with their newly pale skin and huge round eyes. I want to tell those kids they are beautiful and objectively very, very cool just as they are. As a white woman I don’t feel it’s my place to suck the fun out of a new app, but thank you for calling a spade a spade. I love following you and applaud all that you do.
I have always hated my big nose. But I pretty much made peace with that long ago. The things I obsess about now are generally the result of advancing age—weighing more than I should with a bit of a pot belly and saggy skin in so many areas! But my boyfriend, who is considerably younger than me, always counters my self-criticism with emphatic declarations of his love for my body. He tells me that I am perfect the way I am. I cannot tell you what a gift this is!
Being mixed race and being undefinably brown has been a source of tension and anxiety. Not because I don’t love my skin tone but the need to correct folks when they try and ‘guess’ where I’m from…🙄
I’ve always hated my knees of all things. I was reminded of this recently as I have finally let the South win and bought some shorts to wear this summer. My husband asked me why I’ve resisted so long and I admitted: my knees. He told me he always hated his, too, for opposite reasons of mine. Anyway, my 5 year old has my knees. I hope he loves them and for this to happen I will work to love mine.
Just finished reading the chapter in Jen Hatmaker's new book Fierce, Free and Full of Fire which talks about accepting our bodies. This letter was a double whammy. It is so difficult to really embrace the beauty of the body which is given to us. Almost as difficult as accepting and seeing ourselves as God sees us, but the inner parts are so uniquely tied to the container which holds them.
Growing up my dad always commented on how he admired thin women. By my 20’s I had full blown anorexia. In my mid 50’s I gained weight which is not uncommon. Then I was ridiculed and shamed. After my dad passed, for the first time, I felt a sense of freedom. Thats when I realized I was finally free from competing against by siblings for his attention. I got my piece of parental attention in a house of 7 children by being a size 6 . Don’t ever envy anyone for their size as so many people had shared with me during my life. Its the most inconsequential of attributes and does underlie many emotional struggles at both ends of the scale. Self love is struggle I will never be without.
I totally agree with you on apps like this, and I thank you for the overthinking learnings that you send!
As a small person (5’1 and petite), I have rarely been “the right size” to people. Either I can lose a little around my thighs/butt or people tell me I’m too skinny. Sometimes with the same weight…
Recently I lost weight from being sick and have totally changed my diet to try to relieve pain, so along with everyone else’s commentary, I have this idea of being abnormal and how my body reacts to things or causes me pain. I suppose I should try to switch that narrative to my body communicating with me and I can listen and take care of myself differently.
I will shout this from every social media platform rooftop: the moment I laid my own regular white girl eyes on you, I thought: “he has the kindest most lovely eyes and warm smile I’ve ever seen”. So there’s that.
Love these thoughts. My concern with the app was what horrors for privacy and data collection it might hold. haha
I don't know how to write about my struggles with body. I'm not fat, as in what fat activists would consider fatness, but I'm not thin, as in what is acceptable to the world I have a body in. My doctor's office has a flag for "unhealthy BMI" on my list of issues to check for with every visit, but even by that pseudoscientific bullshit, by any chart I can find online, I'm "normal." I'm in the sort of body that looks like it was meant for thinness, but something went wonky and choices were made and "this is what's wrong with America today." A walking stereotype, here and abroad.
I wish I were thinner, and I wish I didn't have to wish that. I cannot change the inherent biases of the people I am supposed to be "finding." Finding, the ever-constant recommendation to solve all problems. If only I could "find people." People who.... an infinite list promising love and belonging and connection and mental health and companionship and security and spiritual enlightenment. Finding people who don't see my roundness and judge or assume or suggest tips to fix me. There's so many things I would do if I were smaller, I think, if I took up less space. I could be so many things that only thin girls are supposed to be. So I try harder, but never enough. It's genetic, in part, I know, but surely, I can be better, I can earn it, I can win this, my enneagram 3ness tells me it's just enough dedication away, and my 4 wing is drowning in shame. For the cake last night and the pasta I'm about to eat and the years before I eliminated things that wrecked my blood sugar until I had to cut them out.
Shame is the song from the time our mothers first say they don't think we should be seen in public "like that" (not from immodesty, but from our baby fat no longer being cute anymore) and they are just "concerned for our health." From the time our parents bribe us into losing weight by offering to buy us cool, popular girl clothes. From the time we realize the reason the popular girls never let us in. The time we realize why we'll never make the dance team. From the crying in the dressing room when a shopping buddy or family member or salesperson recommends we try on a bikini we are sending heart eyes to, just to see if we like the way we look in it and for the first time, we wish we would die. From the way we self-medicate or are comforted by others with a Dairy Queen Blizzard. Then they judge us for being able to finish it. Or are taught to self-soothe with a drink or chocolate, from the ones we love or from advertising all around us. Then are told we are lazy and stupid for falling for it all, the sign of a degenerate generation, consumers of gluttony, with our twangy accents and chubby faces and bulging jeans symbolic of the worst of humanity. We are too depressed and lonely to make dinner. We microwave something that will inevitably be our shame once again, just to keep ourselves from starving.
So I don't know how to write about my body in a way that has anything inspirational or spiritual to say. I'm a millennial woman, with a childhood made of Happy Meals and sugar in the '90s, a teen of the anorexia-driven 2000s, and survived the diet app 2010s. Born into the try harder, be better, work to win it, no pain no gain, before and after photo, transformation culture... but never escaping.
I needed to hear about self-acceptance so badly today. I have ADHD & OCD. I have a 1 yr old & a 4 yr old who (at teacher & pediatrician rec) is in the process of being tested for his own acronym soup. The one thing that is abundantly clear from all the professionals I encountered is the things my eldest needs most from me are the skills I am very, *very* in weak. If hard work, yearning, workbooks, therapist, or medication could have nurtured those skills in me, I would have them. It’s hard to feel like who I am as a person fails my child. I needed to be challenged to love myself in reality: to love my distracted mind, to have compassion on a mind that ping-pongs between obsession & compulsion. To love the me that isn’t going to be enough for my son. And trust that God can provide in any situation. I’m grateful you decided to overthink about that app & share those thoughts.
I'm a plus size, fat, plump, Rubenesque, ugly...I could go on...woman. My hope is to one day be a person who can ignore the comments, the stares, the hurt that results from all of this. Love? I can't even imagine it! Ugh!
Our culture has many body makeover revenge fantasies that follow brutal breakups. I have noticed over the last two years how afraid I am of accidentally running into my ex-husband when my body has put on weight instead of becoming Revenge Body. That is a place of sorrow, and I think that anxiety has actually led to weight gain because it introduced food restriction and corresponding moments of rebellion-by-binge. Now, for the last two months, I've been unraveling myself from diet culture and the mean morality that often surrounds food, and learning to embrace eating more intuitively along with other forms of being kinder to my body.
Reading your post today sent me back to 7th grade when some very mean girls (who stayed mean throughout high school) called me Ewok because of my big eyes. I have huge eyes that caused me much grief as a kid. At 50, I am only beginning to appreciate them. Love to you and your overthinking because you bring light to so many dark spaces.
Thank you for this. As always, it's beautifully written.
Like many people, I have a number of things I don't particularly like about my body, but one that doesn't often get mentioned in body positivity discourse is skin. I've always had acne (and I'm turning 40 in a few months' time), although it's better than it used to be. And then there are the many visible veins on my extremely pale legs... When I was younger, I never wore short-ish skirts or trousers because of this, but I'm learning to care less and enjoy cute little summer dresses.
It's strange, though, isn't it, how many of us have things we don't like about our bodies, yet often tend to feel like we're the only one.
I don't like my feet for whatever reason yet to be fully known to me. Also, I'm 8 months post-partum from babe2 and it's a whole other kind of body learning and loving (and struggling). Working hard to be grateful this body has grown two daughters, so far kept me alive through a pandemic and continues to move and live.
Also, if you haven't seen a copy of Joanna Ho's recent book "Eyes that kiss in the corners" maybe take a look? Perhaps you would like it?
https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/eyes-that-kiss-in-the/9780062915627-item.html?ikwid=eyes+that+kid+in+the+corners&ikwsec=Home&ikwidx=0#algoliaQueryId=d4f5fd905e24eb39321045dff06913dc
After pretty much hating my body for most of my life, I have made peace with the miracle that it is. Adults with bad body image, peer ridicule - so many things give us bad messaging. I even stopped listening to my local Christian radio station because they were playing dieting ads all day. My body doesn't conform to Madison Avenue's definition of beautiful, but it is healthy and capable, and God loves me as I am (and sends people to remind me of this all the time), and that is enough.
Thank you for saying this!!! I screamed at the phone when a Taiwanese friend posted pictures of her kids, with their newly pale skin and huge round eyes. I want to tell those kids they are beautiful and objectively very, very cool just as they are. As a white woman I don’t feel it’s my place to suck the fun out of a new app, but thank you for calling a spade a spade. I love following you and applaud all that you do.
I have always hated my big nose. But I pretty much made peace with that long ago. The things I obsess about now are generally the result of advancing age—weighing more than I should with a bit of a pot belly and saggy skin in so many areas! But my boyfriend, who is considerably younger than me, always counters my self-criticism with emphatic declarations of his love for my body. He tells me that I am perfect the way I am. I cannot tell you what a gift this is!
Being mixed race and being undefinably brown has been a source of tension and anxiety. Not because I don’t love my skin tone but the need to correct folks when they try and ‘guess’ where I’m from…🙄
I’ve always hated my knees of all things. I was reminded of this recently as I have finally let the South win and bought some shorts to wear this summer. My husband asked me why I’ve resisted so long and I admitted: my knees. He told me he always hated his, too, for opposite reasons of mine. Anyway, my 5 year old has my knees. I hope he loves them and for this to happen I will work to love mine.
Just finished reading the chapter in Jen Hatmaker's new book Fierce, Free and Full of Fire which talks about accepting our bodies. This letter was a double whammy. It is so difficult to really embrace the beauty of the body which is given to us. Almost as difficult as accepting and seeing ourselves as God sees us, but the inner parts are so uniquely tied to the container which holds them.
Growing up my dad always commented on how he admired thin women. By my 20’s I had full blown anorexia. In my mid 50’s I gained weight which is not uncommon. Then I was ridiculed and shamed. After my dad passed, for the first time, I felt a sense of freedom. Thats when I realized I was finally free from competing against by siblings for his attention. I got my piece of parental attention in a house of 7 children by being a size 6 . Don’t ever envy anyone for their size as so many people had shared with me during my life. Its the most inconsequential of attributes and does underlie many emotional struggles at both ends of the scale. Self love is struggle I will never be without.
I totally agree with you on apps like this, and I thank you for the overthinking learnings that you send!
As a small person (5’1 and petite), I have rarely been “the right size” to people. Either I can lose a little around my thighs/butt or people tell me I’m too skinny. Sometimes with the same weight…
Recently I lost weight from being sick and have totally changed my diet to try to relieve pain, so along with everyone else’s commentary, I have this idea of being abnormal and how my body reacts to things or causes me pain. I suppose I should try to switch that narrative to my body communicating with me and I can listen and take care of myself differently.