What if?...
Let’s travel back to a time when we were kids. It’s summertime and you’re at the pool with your friends and eating a popsicle while it melts down your arm with only a worry about the lifeguard catching you running too fast to the slide. Last year’s swimsuit is a little small but that’s okay, it still works. Then you hear your mom by the chairs call your name. She tells you to put your shirt over your swimsuit, “your tummy is peeking out, you look chubby.”
That was the first time you were told to be insecure. Me, too, it’s fine, we’re fine, we’re over it, she was probably right! It doesn’t end there, though. It continues when you grow up and your friend complains about their body hair. *... am I supposed to hate my body hair too? do I need to start shaving? am I gross?* Someone else says something about how their acne makes them ugly, so now you must be ugly too. You buy all the cleansers and exfoliators and somehow it just doesn’t go away - so now you’re stuck with an “ugly” face. You sister hates her thighs, you hate your thighs. Your mom hates her back rolls, you hate your back rolls. Your friend says her lips are too big so now YOUR lips are too big. Someone justifies their fat and stretch marks because they just had a baby, but then why do you have those things if you didn’t? It goes on and on and on until we hate everything about ourselves, FOR NO REASON other than because someone else hated themselves.
While it might be easy to be angry at these people, have compassion, it isn't their fault. My mom hates her body because her mom hated her own body and her mom hated her body and her mom and her mom… It gets passed down and infects every aspect of our lives because well, what else are we supposed to do? Accept ourselves? But then how would razor companies and diet pill companies and plastic surgeons make any money? What would we do with all of our freetime? Be hot and awesome and unapologetically ourselves? Pffttt… The fact is they didn’t know, and we are just learning. My mom didn’t know that saying, “are you really going to have another plate?” was going to guarantee I made a trip to the bathroom after dinner. If nobody has ever been told that the cycle doesn’t have to continue, how would they know?
Let’s talk about that cycle. How do we break it? Obviously: stop taking normal parts about being human and turning it into a flaw. Yeah, yeah sounds simple but it isn’t. Breaking that mental routine feels impossible, and you can always come up with a reason to justify it because you think bullying yourself works… for some reason… even though it hasn’t so far… and you still try it… and you learned that bullying others doesn’t make you love yourself any more.
What helps me: question EVERYTHING. Who told me I have to hate this? Why do they want me to feel that way? Who does it benefit? Once you realize that not a single one of these destructive thoughts came from your own head, you don’t have to own them anymore. You can start to let them go and heal. The next step is possibly even harder than deconstruction… You have to stop.
You have to wake up each day and choose to not say things like “I feel fat today,” “Ugh I hate my chin,” “I can’t wear that, my stretch marks will show,” “I didn’t shave today, now I’m gross,” “I love ___ on you but I hate it on myself.” If we can pinpoint the day that each of our insecurities are born, we have a duty to each other to not be the reason it gets passed on. I owe it to my nieces to never make them feel bad for having a chest, my nephews to never make them feel like they can’t be sad. I owe it to my partner to not take on the emotional weight of loving me enough for the both of us. I need to show my mom and my sister that it’s okay to just eat the fucking donut. I want little EJ to know that I’m better now, and I wear the sluttiest swimsuits every summer.
What if… nobody made you put on a shirt at the pool when you were a kid and it was okay to just be fat for no other reason than just because you are? What if you never heard someone point out your biggest insecurity in themselves as a reason to not be happy? What if the internet never got to decide the ideal body, and the ideal body is just the one you already have? If nobody else has ever told you, you’re fine. Your friends love you. I love you. Your physical insecurities are simply… lies you’ve been told to keep you down. Don’t stay down, we need you.
