This is me on prom night in 2006. It’s pretty much my favorite photo of myself, ever. I look excited and happy, and I like the way the dress looks on me. I think I look good.
I’m posting this photo and writing that I like it because that’s something I’ve had a hard time with lately: liking the way I look. This post is to publicly remind myself that I often have a messed-up view of my body.
That prom dress is a size 14. When I was a bulimic middle schooler, 14 and 16 were my nightmare sizes, the sizes I swore I’d never get ‘fat enough’ to wear. (I’m usually a 14 or 16 right now, depending on where I shop.) And you know, I just barely squeezed my Spanx-covered ass into that dress.
But dammit, I don’t look fat in it. And even if I did, who cares? I looked excited and happy that night because I was–and most of that had nothing to do with my body or my pretty dress. I was about to graduate from high school, I was dressing for prom with my wonderful friends, and I was ready to dance the night away with my high school sweetheart. I’d been accepted to my first-choice college and my future was looking sparkly.
I’ve had trouble with body image my whole life. I’ve always been tall–I was 5’11″ by 8th grade–and I hit puberty early, so I always had this nagging sense that I was bigger than other girls, and somehow I knew that was a bad thing. I can hardly remember a time when my mom wasn’t on some kind of diet, and by the time I was seven or eight I was asking if I could drink her Slim-Fast shakes. And when I was thirteen, 5’10″ and 140 pounds, a healthy size 10, I became bulimic. I was convinced I was horribly fat and ugly.
A word to the wise? Bulimia isn’t exactly the best long-term weight loss plan. I recovered, with therapy and a lot of hard work, but I gained about 40 pounds in the process. Eating disorders mess with your metabolism in a serious way. I’m absolutely not saying it would have been worth it if I hadn’t gained weight afterward–nothing is worth hurting your own body and mind that way–I’m just saying it because maybe if I had known that before I became bulimic, I would have reconsidered, at least for a moment.
But over the course of high school, I started to feel better about the way I looked. Part of that had to do with everyone else getting taller and rounder with puberty, too, so I could feel a little more normal. I got into theater, dance and yoga, activities that made me appreciate the things I could do with my body and believe that I could be graceful and beautiful without looking like a stick figure. When I got to Smith, I saw a whole new range of ways for women to look beautiful, at every size, even when they dropped the femme conventions that girls at my high school clung to so fastidiously. And now, nine years post-bulimia, I can honestly say that I usually feel at least okay about my body and the way I look.
A few things have happened over the last six months, though, that have chipped away at that carefully constructed self-esteem. I had abdominal surgery in April, and I couldn’t exercise for a while afterward. I ate typical bad-for-you college food during that time, and I gained a little weight–but not even enough to have to buy new clothes. And with graduation, a month-long trip to Europe, the epic, exhausting drama that was my summer-long breakup with The Boy, and moving halfway across the country to start grad school, I’ve been too stressed to get back into exercising regularly again until about two weeks ago. Since then, I’ve been doing pretty well, going to the gym in my apartment complex, going on walks around campus, and trying out my new bicycle. But I’ve still been pretty down on myself a lot of the time.
I’m sure that much of that has to do with my insecurity about my life right now, manifesting itself as insecurity about my body. I’m in a new place, a new culture, really, where I don’t know many people or have any good friends yet. I’m new to this whole grad school thing, and I have to show my writing to all these brilliant people in workshop and ignore the nagging voice in my head that says I’m not talented enough to be here.
And then, of course, there’s the breakup, which is a horribly cliched thing to feel insecure about, but there you have it. What do you do when your seven-years boyfriend asks for your ring size and says he has a proposal plan, and then breaks up with you six months later? Well, if you can move to a new place and start a new life, as I did, that’s probably a good thing. But you can’t help but wonder what happened, too, and get sad and insecure and angry.
And if you then go to a few parties where all the other girls are much shorter and a little thinner, maybe all those stupid middle school fears come rushing back. Why, you might text one of your best friends, do guys always go for the tiny girls?
She wrote back, Ugh, when there is an answer to that I will either be very happy or more depressed. What happened?
After a little complaining, we arranged a phone date for later this week, and a time for her to come visit me this winter.
Now I’m thinking of her, grateful for her love and support and fabulousness. I’m remembering that I always thought she was insanely gorgeous.
That makes my mind do a little rebellious flip because, guess what? She’s tall, too, and we can share clothes. If I think she has a great body, if I think she’s beautiful, why can’t I believe that about myself right now?
Sometimes I can. Sometimes I really do think I’m an attractive person. But it’s an uphill battle, and not just for me, but probably for just about every woman. I wish I had something more articulate to say about that, but all I can say is: it sucks. It really, really sucks.
Because I know, just from looking around me every day, that most women are beautiful. Flat, round, fat, thin, short, tall, light, dark. Beautiful.
