Body Image 101 From a Recovering Skinny Person

Trigger Warning: This piece is about weight gain and body image.

From a young age, I didn’t much care about my appearances. Mom would bust out the curling iron one day a week, on Sunday mornings, and, as an elementary-aged child, I couldn’t quite sort it out. The part that confused me as a little girl was this: Why did we change our appearances for God? I mused about this openly with my mother, week after week. Didn’t God love me without the curls? Without the panty hose? Without the bows?

That’s sort of how I viewed my appearances in general: shouldn’t people love me without all the outward bells and whistles?

Now, I need to tell you the other, less noble motivation for looking homeless for most of my adolescent, teenaged, and young adult years: I was lazy.

I hated putting in the effort to blow-dry my hair, or, for that matter, to “do” it in any way outside of a pony tail. Heck, I still choose slide-on sandals (even house slippers!) over shoes that require a tie or a fastened strap or even Velcro.

And when it came to clothes, I was super Plain Jane, largely because putting together a multiple-part outfit took so much work. I had no interest in the extras: the belts, the layers, the accessories. I remember my Grandmother, in her 70s, would take me clothes shopping every Fall, and, in a store. she’d lift up trendy items with their matching accessories, often brightly colored, from across the store to get a nod or a shake from where I was (in the section with very black and navy-blue, non-form-fitting, boring items). I didn’t mean to displease or dispirit Grandmom, but she got a shake every time.

And I guess when it came to the other “extras,” I didn’t really have the money. Highlights in hair costs money. Getting nails done costs money. Beauty products cost money.

But let’s stop talking about clothes and nails and accessories and curls. There’s one biggie I’ve left out of this conversation about appearances.  It’s probably one of the biggest elements on the minds of American women: body image.

It is thrust into our minds, troubles our minds, monopolizes our minds. With every magazine cover and television commercial and shopping mall store billboard, we women are bombarded with messages not only about what we can buy to make our appearances match those images, but also about what we can do to make our body shape match those images.

Somehow, as a tween and teen, I dodged it ALL. I put the body image messaging in the same place I put all the other ridiculousness about what is cool or hip or trendy or in: in the trash can. It was like my subconscious somehow evaluated all that as being on this untouchable, higher plain of existing that I had no business, no ability, and no interest in participating in.

And, did I mention I was clueless? It went over my head. I was just a short little pony-tailed runner girl for most of my teen years (read: until last year), and I had not the faintest idea of what cool was. Not knowing about it made it a lot easier to not care about it.

But I also was skinny. Not on-purpose skinny. Just Johnson-family genetic skinny. You know what makes it easier to not care about the efforts it takes to be skinny? When you already are. I didn’t have long legs or arched eyebrows or any of the other stuff going for me, but I did have a thin figure. And, if I’m being honest, a big reason I escaped the trials and tribulations most coming-of-age girls face when they’re wrestling with their weight and shape is that it was easy to be happy with my weight and shape; besides height (I’m a pitiful 5 ft and 3/4 of an inch), my image matched the figures I saw on T.V.

Until last year, when I got – how shall I say it – more robust

The trigger warning placed at the top of this piece is FOR REALS. I hesitated even writing it, because this is such a sensitive subject. So, allow me to add: What I describe as feeling more robust for me is just that… I’ve added about fifteen pounds; I’m more robust, for me. And, for me, that extra weight is uncomfortable.

And I’m not just talking about how it feels in my pants.

I mean I’m experiencing discomfort emotionally.

So I did what every rational woman since the beginning of time has done when she feels emotionally uncomfortable: I turned to podcasts.

I’m on the other side of a few great episodes about weight and body image.

And I’m 1/200th smarter about it.

I’m not going to lecture you on every single thing I’ve learned. But, allow me to say a couple things:

1)    Weight gain, particularly in midlife, is something I’m not alone in experiencing. Even cavepeople put on a pound or two when their metabolisms kicked the bucket. It’s a common phenomenon.

2)    Exercising, lifting weights, and eating good foods are wonderful things to do, but only if these activities are motivated by the desire to be strong, healthy people. I have a picture of Scott and me in swimsuits in Jamaica in 2004 thumbtacked to my bulletin board. If trying to fit into that itty bitty polka-dotted bikini is my motivation, I’m screwed.

3)    Comparison is the thief of joy. Period.

4)    None of #1-#3 has yet made me self-actualized enough to become comfortable with my Fortyish-Fourteen. I’ll keep reporting back, but – for now – I’m still uncomfortable (in both my pants and my emotions).

In closing, allow me to be vulnerable. I rented a dress from Rent The Runway for a fancy-pantsy event Saturday night. I LOVED it online. I LOVED it when I ordered what I thought was my size. I LOVED it when I took it out of the packaging. And I stopped loving it when THIS happened:

Friends, I even called a girlfriend over to try to help me zip it up. I just thought with a good suck-in and a strong-handed girlfriend, I could get all my sausage in this casing. It takes a good pal to say, “Trish, it’s not gonna work,” which is exactly what she said. I responded as any wise woman would and said, “Shut up. Try again.” After another valiant effort, she looked up at me and repeated, this time with a look of deep compassion, “Trish, it’s not gonna work.”

It was then that I unhooked the top hook and breathed for the first time in ten minutes.

I ended up wearing a dress two sizes bigger. And, man, was it comfy.

If you find yourself in a similar spot, please try not to feel isolated. That’s all I’m saying, here. I certainly don’t have this body image stuff all worked out, and it’s ok if you don’t either… I think what I keep coming back to is the question on my mind as a child: shouldn’t people love me no matter how I look? Rather, shouldn’t I love myself no matter how I look?