Why You Struggle With Poor Body Image & What You Can Do About That
I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s a rather chubby child, at a time when it really did feel like it was the job of girls and women to be as ‘attractive’ as possible, and that all our worth and power resided in how thin and beautiful we were perceived to be.
(No, I know, not much has really changed since then…)
I managed to stop eating for a while during my teens, and revelled in the compliments, the clothes that finally fit, the male attention… but I didn’t really every feel particularly good about myself without the external validation, I never could feel ‘thin enough’ even at a size 8, and anyway, it wasn’t a sustainable way to live.
Eventually, inevitably, my disordered NOT EATING turned into disordered EATING EVERYTHING.
I put on a lot of weight.
And some people treated me differently. Treated me worse.
Especially men.
I felt like a pariah.
So I hid.
Fast-forward and after years of eating my feelings, compounded by 3 pregnancies with big babies, my swimming costume became my nemesis. I dreaded putting it on. I would imagine how others would look at me, what they’d say, (whether to me or to others about me,) how I’d be dismissed or sneered at and even subject to jeering remarks.
As a result, for a long time, I was one of those women that wouldn’t get into a swim suit because I felt ‘too fat’. Come summer I would become a beach-bound body, grumpily sweating under sarongs and baggy t shirts while everyone else was skimpily cooling off in the sea.
I made excuses to my kids as to why I couldn’t come swimming and I even refused to go on holiday a few times because the idea of having to watch everyone have fun while I ‘can’t’ was just too much to bear.
Sad, eh?
But surprising? I’m thinking no.
Rare?
Nope, it’s actually a fairly common story, which is why I’m sharing mine with you here.
Poor body image is VERY common.
And not just among fat people like me.
As a society, we have been systematically trained to have poor body image - to hate real bodies - ours and other people’s.
It’s sad but it’s true. Poor body image is rampant and with it, super-low self-esteem.
There are lots of potential reasons for this, I won’t cover them all here, so let’s go for some sweeping but pretty accurate generalisations…
For a start, we learn to demonise certain types of bodies from childhood.
Example: Disney villains are fat and/or ugly and the good guys are impossibly beautiful and improbably proportioned.
People on TV and advertising tend to be lithe and athletic and immaculately turned out and although wider representation is starting to kick in gradually, young, skinny and beautiful is still the norm.
We learn to associate a certain kind of beauty with success, acceptance, love etc. and it becomes normal to believe that only people who look a certain way deserve these things.
It’s what we are used to seeing.
It’s what is used to titillate us and to sell to us.
We have turned bodies into a product, into something to consume.
If it wasn’t so tragic, if it didn’t do so much DAMAGE, the fact that so doing is eating us up on the inside might be darkly amusing.
Body image: We have been set up to fail
I mean if movie stars with bodies to ‘die for’, to whom we all supposedly aspire, get slammed for the ‘flaws’ on their beautiful, young, well-proportioned bodies in sickening sneak-attacks by horrid magazines, what chance do the rest of us have of achieving universal body approval?
Even the women I know who HAVE got ‘perfect bodies’ (or as close as any human can get to perfection,) obsess about how ‘awful’ they look and pick themselves to pieces as much (or more than) everyone else, who has more ‘normal’ physiques.
It’s a trap, and as long as we try to control others’ views of us and continue to locate our value in others’ gaze, it’s a trap we can’t escape.
What if we decide we don’t owe a certain ‘look’ or body shape to anyone?
I remember being properly shocked when this was first put to me. I hadn’t even considered that I didn’t owe attractiveness to others. I had never questioned the notion that my beauty (or lack of it) was my principle defining characteristic until I read this quote by Erin McKean:
“You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female’.”
It hit me like a sucker-punch - but as much as it knocked me out, it also woke me the hell up.
It occurred to me for the very first time that although it’s always nice to be admired for how you look (or for anything, really,) it’s not essential, is it?
I mean, I meet lots of people I don’t find attractive but that doesn’t make me hate them, or feel let down by them or less interested in them.
So why should perceived unattractiveness, mine or anyone else’s, feel like a crime?
And as I reflected, I noted that whenever I have heard someone making horrible comments about other people’s bodies, those making the remarks have been consistently shy of the ‘sh*t hot’ category themselves.
Everyone has at least one flaw.
So if you’ve been torturing yourself for your less than perfect body, maybe ask yourself now, does it REALLY matter if there are people who don’t:
Think you’re pretty
Want to f*ck you
Like your body
Approve of how you look
If you’re not sure what the answer is, I’d like to warmly invite you to consider it might be “NO!”
“Ok, so that sounds lovely in theory - but how do you make it resonate - how can we cultivate a good body image when the world tells us over & over that our bodies are a reason for shame?”
Excellent question.
I guess the short answer is that it’s possible but it’s by no means simple.
I’d recommend that you might begin by exploring your feelings around your body.
You don’t have to love how it looks.
But you might work up to seeing if you can aspire to accept it the way it is.
Maybe you can appreciate the good stuff it does for you?
That could be a really good start.
Body Boundaries - Becoming Aware (and Less Open to) the Messaging Around Bodies and How They ‘Should’ Look
It might feel useful to see if you can start creating some boundaries around what you are and are not open to you re body talk, diet culture etc. See if you fancy developing your awareness of and vulnerability to the messages coming at you around your body and your worth. You may decide that you will refuse to be drawn into conversations of body talk that makes you feel ‘less than.’ And you may prefer to participate in (or even initiate) more positive, self-compassionate, nurturing conversations, that support you to feel good about yourself.
Can Counselling and Pyschotherapy Help With Poor Body Image and Low Self-Esteem?
Yes, it absolutely can. It’s not quick fix but yes, in fact I spent a long time in therapy thinking about this stuff myself, and that helped me a lot.
Counselling helped me to:
Stop looking outside myself for validation and approval.
Locate my worthiness in who I am, in what I do, in how I feel and the support I can give to others and not just in my body size, shape or appearance.
Unfriend, unfollow, block and otherwise avoid messages that made me feel bad about my body.
Fill my social media feeds and social circle with bodies and attitudes that more accurately represent what real people look like, fat, thin and everything in between.
Tolerate and accept the fact that some people do find me unattractive; some people will say mean things to and about me and that’s a ‘them thing,’ which is beyond my control and is none of my business.
It was in the therapy room, as a client, that I finally realised, age 40, that whether I was turned into the size 8 that I once was, or forever remained the size 26 that I am now, I would NEVER meet the standards necessary for universal approval.
Because no one gets universal approval.
And so all that being the case, it eventually occurred to me that I might as well get in my swimming costume and jump into the water anyway, because…
No one who matters cares how you look in a swimming costume - they just care that you get in the water!
So I did. And I do.
Now I FROLICK in the pool with my kids.
I ENJOY my body, which exists for me, not for others to assess, lust after or dismiss.
F*CK what anyone else thinks!
I’m going to live my life NOW.
I DESERVE to live my life.
And so do you!
“Well, good for you. But I can’t do that. It’s not so easy for me.”
I know. It’s difficult. I still have days when I have a powerful urge to feel thinner and more acceptable to others’ eyes. It’s an ongoing process.
We all have to start somewhere and we all have our ups and downs with it.
But if you’re out there, dreading summer, living in fear of your swimming costume, sighing over your cellulite and Googling ‘5 Ways to Drop 3 Dress Sizes in 3 Weeks’, maybe….just… don’t?
You don’t need to. You are good enough, right now.
And if you’d like to chat about that - about how you KNOW you’re good enough but you can’t FEEL good enough, I’d love to see if I could help and support you to feel differently.
We could just start small, with a free and friendly conversation.
Take care,
Love from Ali xxx
Self-Love Quiz
Self-love is the foundation of mental health, which is why I created the self-love quiz – to help you measure you self-love level & help you learn how to improve your mental health, so that you can create a happier, more satisfying life!
