Through highschool, I was slim, with pert breasts and long legs. I couldn’t see these things – all I could see were the stretch marks on my hips and breasts, the dark hair that grew on my legs and the fact that my arms were freakishly long, with a tendency to wave around when I spoke excitedly. Not to mention the standard teenage pimples and that I thought I was horribly ugly.
I was also smart and opinionated, with dark hair and eyes – not something that the boys in my school were lusting after. When you’re fourteen, your body image is tied up in what people think of you, and what you see in the mirror is not your reality.
Like I overheard one boy saying “Nice enough body, but a shame about the face.”
Being a teenager is not designed to make you feel good about yourself.
The one thing I had going for me though, was that I didn’t gain weight. Somehow, inside my head, that became the most important thing about me. Of course, I had Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (undiagnosed) and a tendency to vomit up rich food with little warning, so that probably helped.
Through high-school, I had a steady boyfriend who found me attractive, but I thought he was lying. It’s a hard time for girls, at the cusp of everything and having relatively little confidence in themselves.
Once I finished school, with all of my self-esteem issues firmly intact, I met Nathan. Lovely, adoring Nathan, who thought I was gorgeous and didn’t see any of my supposed flaws. I thought he was blind. He thought he was incredibly lucky to be having sex with me. Win/win.
It was later, after I got pregnant with Amy and was so terribly sick, that my body issues began to surface again. The fact that I lost all of my baby weight within a week of giving birth to her was apparently an admirable trait to everyone else and I was determined to stay as slim as I could.
Amy made this job easier by screaming lots and effectively making sure that the first twelve months of her life included no sleep, long long walks and minimal food. My weight was one of the few things I had control over. I dropped down to 53kg – which on my 173cm frame, made me look like a skeleton.
I wasn’t healthy, but MAN, I was skinny and that’s what people noticed – even Nathan noticed, although he wasn’t admiring, so much as worried that I wasn’t eating enough. He was right – but what did he know? Skinny was the new beautiful.
After Isaac was born, it took a little longer to lose the baby weight and when he was a few months old, a family member commented on how great I was looking. She thought I looked amazing, whereas I thought I needed to lose weight. Incidentally, Nathan thought I looked just fine. I lost the weight anyway – losing weight has never been hard for me. It’s that pesky crappy digestive system you know.
Late last year, I finally gained some weight. A combination of grief, well managed nausea and an excellent diet bumped my weight back up to the healthy range. All I could see was that my clothes weren’t fitting right and that I was softer all over.
Complaining to Nathan did no good – with the extra weight I was carrying, all he wanted to do was take my clothes off and take me to bed. That’s how we managed pregnancy #3.
I thought I was soft. He thought I was sexier than I’d ever been.
I had an epiphany at that point. I’d always been able to see that curves were sexy on other women, but not on me – never on me. My goal was to be as slim as possible, all of the time. I didn’t even realise this – my drive to be slimmer was subconscious.
It’s been hard to admit to myself, that yes, there was always that subconscious desire to lose weight. It never stopped me eating what I wanted, or made me throw up, but it was there, under the surface. My self-worth and body love were always tied up in how flat my stomach was. I didn’t actively think about this, or talk about it ever, but it was there. The subtle food choices, the exercise, the glaring at my stomach in the shower.
When I miscarried pregnancy #3, I realised that being slimmer had never made me happier. That slimmer had, in fact, made me more miserable, and that slimmer was all about control, not about how I looked.
I was nearly 7kg over my “ideal weight” according to my subconscious when I fell pregnant with this baby. Morning sickness made me lose 5kg really quickly and it was both a physical and mental battle to stop myself falling below 60kg. I managed it, but only because I was actively aware of my brain trying to sabotage my body.
I’ve never spoken about this and it’s only recently that I’ve admitted this to myself. Writing this out has been hard. When “slimmer” is what is thrust at you, over and over again, it is easy to internalise “slimmer is beautiful” and hard to learn that confidence is beauty, not body mass index.
This pregnancy has been good for me. It’s scary to watch myself gain weight, but I’m proud that I actually am and that I’m feeling relatively good about the whole thing. It helps that I’ve always found the curves of pregnancy sexy, even on myself. It’s post-pregnancy I struggle with.
I learned some things about myself recently. One is that I am happier and healthier when I weigh more. That I heal faster and I bounce back from illness faster.
Another is that curves are sexy. Even when they’re on me. That while my breasts sag after breastfeeding two babies, my husband really doesn’t care. He just wants me to go to bed with him, especially if there is no likelihood of my hipbones leaving bruises on him.
I learned that my brain will play tricks on me and that it is very easy to become obsessed with numbers. How far I walked on the eliptical, what my weight is today, how many calories does this lunch contain. I also learned that I can ignore these things, eat my favourite cheeses and not feel guilty about adding cream to my fruit.
I learned that what I look like inside my head, is not how other people see me anyway, and my version of weight gain will make some women hate me. I never said my subconscious was sensible, or rational.
And finally, I learned that it is most important that I love myself first. That how much I weigh has nothing to do with how fun I am to be around, and that no one likes it when I am skeletal and sick, least of all me.
Body love. It’s important, and it’s also really really tough.
